Public Safety Committee on Oct. 25th, 2022

[James Smith]

That would be an issue of trust, but through the regulations, as we currently have them, you can't just start shooting at IPSC. You have to take the black badge course and maintain a certain amount of participation to maintain it. If you do not participate for two years, you lose your black badge qualification and have to either retake it....

As far as an influx is concerned. if we are the only handgun sport in Canada, we would presume that people who want to go to the Olympics and preliminarily do other sports will join. That statement came based on the fact that at this point our instructors are flat out. We'd need a larger group to start doing it, and we would probably need accommodation. The ranges would not be able to handle such a great influx.

[Pam Damoff, Liberal, Oakville North—Burlington, ON]

Is that monitored, then? You talked about the training and having to compete every two years, so how is that tracked and how do you ensure that records are kept? How do you ensure that this is kept up to date, and who enforces that?

[James Smith]

Every section in Canada is responsible for their members, so that would be mostly every province. Every province keeps a database on who participates and monitors it. If you go past the two-year mark, you would get a notice and you would be able to recertify. If you don't recertify at that time, you'd have to start at zero and come back and take the black badge course again, and you'd lose your membership.

[Pam Damoff, Liberal, Oakville North—Burlington, ON]

Is IPSC funded or sponsored by gun manufacturers?

[James Smith]

Not as a rule. They may sponsor the nationals and they may sponsor a prize or two, but there's no direct funding to the athletes. There are prizes at the international and national competitions, but not very much.

[Pam Damoff, Liberal, Oakville North—Burlington, ON]

What exemptions would you like to see written into the law, into Bill C-21?

[James Smith]

I'd like to see Bill C-21 not take place at all, but if it is going forward, as it seems it is, we would like to have IPSC added under proposed paragraph 97.1(b)(i) as equal to the Olympics and Paralympic sports.

[Pam Damoff, Liberal, Oakville North—Burlington, ON]

Okay, thank you.

I will say that I'm not going to apologize in any way for this legislation coming forward, in spite of what my Conservative colleagues said. I would just comment that 75% of people who die in Canada by firearms are dying by suicide, and if there's a gun in the home, they're five times more likely to die.

In a previous panel, my colleague Mr. Chiang quoted the statistic that one in four women in a home with a firearm is at risk. I don't think we can forget about intimate partner violence and we can't forget about people who are dying by suicide. I respect people talking about their sport, but I'll go back to what Dr. Cukier said earlier about it being a choice that we're making between a hobby and people's lives.

I know I only have about 15 seconds left, Chair, so I'll leave it at that.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ron McKinnon]

Thank you, Ms. Damoff.

I will now give the floor to Ms. Michaud for six minutes.

[Kristina Michaud, Bloc, Avignon—La Mitis—Matane—Matapédia, QC]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

I would also like to thank the witnesses for being here.

I'll pick up where my colleague left off. I want to come back to what the British Columbia Section of the International Practical Shooting Confederation said. I will repeat it in French, as this is rather important, even disturbing. A message to the region's members states that, if the bill grants the International Practical Shooting Confederation's requested exemption to the handgun freeze, it would become a gateway to handgun ownership in Canada and can expect a huge increase in membership.

It's disturbing to see the reasons behind the request to obtain an exemption. Is it really to continue to practise a sport, or is it to become a recognized institution in Canada for handguns? There is enough here to raise questions.

Mr. Smith, I heard your answer to my colleague, so I would now like to hear what Ms. Russell has to say about this.

Does the International Practical Shooting Confederation agree with that statement? Is that what you think as well? Do you think that it may have gone too far? I'd like to hear from you on that.

[Medha Russell]

Thank you for the question. I would like to respond in my role as a coach and instructor, the first female instructor in Canada.

To get into the sport of IPSC is not very simple. It can take six to eight months. You need a Canadian firearm safety course. You need a Canadian restricted firearms safety course. You need a restricted possession and acquisition licence, an RPAL, and those holders in Canada, who number hundreds of thousands, are monitored 24-7.

You need membership with a shooting range or a club. You need to take the club-level safety training or their new member course. You need insurance coverage. That's a federal requirement. It is mandatory. Then you proceed to take your black badge course, but as a coach, I will not have you come into this sport if attitude is an issue, regardless of your age. Your age doesn't matter. You could be a junior, a senior or a super-senior. If you have an attitude, we ask you to leave, to exit.

You have to have basic minimum skills and basic minimum equipment, the right attitude and the willingness to learn and train. As coaches and instructors, we will put you through several drills, an intensive course of two days or more to ensure that you first of all meet safety standards and then, secondly, that you are ready to compete in our sport. By the way, an elongated paper and steel stop sign is out target, which sometimes I equate to looking like a snow cone. Those are what we engage with as athletes in our sport, and as a coach and an instructor, I ensure that people are ready to come into this sport.

It is a long process. It is not something that comes tout de suite. You don't get in because you decide that you want to get into this sport. No. There are lots of hoops and steps that you must follow.

[Kristina Michaud, Bloc, Avignon—La Mitis—Matane—Matapédia, QC]

You talked about attitude, respect and safety, and I truly respect that. You make sure that all these values are respected in your sport, and I think it is indeed your duty to do so.

Unfortunately, there are always exceptions to the rule. Your sport is based on realism, and uses stages to try and fully duplicate real situations, such as alleys or buildings. This could lead people to take training the wrong way. I may be expressing myself poorly. As I was saying earlier, people who owned legal firearms committed crimes, and they trained in shooting clubs. We need only think of the shooters in the Québec City mosque, at Concordia University, at Dawson College and in Moncton.

How can we guarantee that there will never be an exception to the rule? I know you hold to the values you talked about, but how can we guarantee that everyone will be truly responsible, in the end?

[Medha Russell]

What I can say on my role as an official is that we have a very strict no-tolerance policy to safety violations. We have a process that is followed such that if anyone is found in a safety infraction or breaking a rule, they will be visited by our coordinators. Our NROI, National Range Officers Institute, will review it. The instructor coaches and the director that put on the match will review the situation to see why this happened.

To answer your question about bad people and how you prevent and stop that, I wish I had the answer, because then maybe I could try to help you as elected officials solve world problems.

I will repeat that we do not tolerate any form of bad behaviour. We have governance in place. The organization itself has a structure that has a code of ethics about conflict of interest, gender equality and long-term athlete development, but involved in there is the fact that safety is number one, and it is totally not tolerated if you don't follow that.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ron McKinnon]

I'm sorry, but I'm going to have to cut you off there.

[Medha Russell]

We do what we can to stop bad behaviour.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ron McKinnon]

Thank you, Ms. Michaud.

Mr. MacGregor, please go ahead for six minutes.

[Alistair MacGregor, NDP, Cowichan—Malahat—Langford, BC]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Thank you to all of our witnesses for coming here today. Your testimony is appreciated.

Mr. Smith, I'd like to start with you, because what I've seen with Bill C-21 is that we seem to be presented with an either/or situation when it comes to shooting disciplines and public safety, especially with the handgun freeze—that is, no more exemptions can be made because they're going to lead to public safety issues and so on.

Concerns have been raised that if an exemption were given, people would join IPSC just so they could go and buy a handgun and then they might forget about their membership with IPSC because they would have their handgun. Do you have any thoughts on whether there's a middle road here, whether Bill C-21 could be strengthened so that a requirement for continuous eligibility would be written into the legislation so that people would have to demonstrate they're active and ongoing participants in IPSC just to satisfy some of the public safety concerns that are out there with the handgun freeze and so on?

[James Smith]

We do have the maintenance. Currently we do monitor who is shooting and whether they're still active and they have to go. I wouldn't see any problem if we had to do something in the regulations that monitored that in order to keep our sport in existence. Maybe the CFOs would be involved.

In the Australian model, they've totally banned handguns, but IPSC is still a sport there. They do a preliminary licensing there. In order to introduce new people to the sport, they require you to do six months under a preliminary licence. Then you're fully licensed and you move on to being a full member and you're allowed to acquire a handgun. Through the regulations, I think we could come to some kind of terms. I don't know if it needs to be written right into the bill. Some of the discussions I've had with some of the members of this committee have included suggestions that those details be worked out at the regulation level.

[Alistair MacGregor, NDP, Cowichan—Malahat—Langford, BC]

Mr. Smith and Ms. Russell, I'd like to have both of you chime in on my next question.

As has been correctly pointed out, especially when someone is contemplating suicide, when there is a firearm in the house, there is a 90% success rate of a suicide attempt resulting in death. That is a very real concern. The mental health of many Canadians is a worrying thing. We've seen mental health concerns go up in this country, especially over the last couple of years.

I know that the IPSC community is quite close-knit and I've seen the camaraderie first-hand. Could you talk a little bit about how your members are checking up on each other? I'm sure you've met some people who participate in the sport who have had bad days. Within the theme of safety, can you talk about how you're checking up on each other to make sure everyone is doing okay?

[James Smith]

Yes. Earlier, IPSC was referred to as a hobby, and I don't really see it as a hobby. Most of the people who are shooting in IPSC are fully dedicated. Some spend up to 10 or 15 hours a week. They go to the range weekly. There's a lot of camaraderie, and certainly we all look after each other. I know of instances of divorce in which people volunteer to take the firearms out of the house to make sure there are no complications. There are mental health issues in which people intervene to make sure a person gets looked after. To my knowledge, we've never had any instance of an IPSC shooter in Canada involved in any kind of suicide. Maybe I shouldn't speak to that, but we are a giant family of people who look after each other.

I have friends nationally. If I get stranded in Toronto, I put it on Facebook and I get six offers for a place to stay. If I'm in Vancouver, people take me to dinner. I've been to every province, and it's more of a lifestyle than it is an actual hobby.

[Alistair MacGregor, NDP, Cowichan—Malahat—Langford, BC]

Ms. Russell, would you comment?

[Medha Russell]

Thank you for the question.

You actually bring up a very good point. What we need in Canada—and of course you have the ability to see that Canadians get this—is more money for mental health. We need more money for education at the grassroots level and in that family structure, which is where you're going to learn the three Rs—respect, recognition and responsibility—and at the same time learn to look out for your fellow people.

The IPSC community, as Mr. Smith has said, I consider to be my family. I am also an IPSC club rep, so I am responsible to put on sanctioned IPSC matches.

By the way, I don't just decide I'm going to throw on a match just like that. It involves informing my section with 30 days' notice, setting it up, getting everything organized with the club, meeting the club rules, and meeting the municipal, provincial and federal rules and regulations before I actually can put on that sanctioned match.

In Ontario, our statistics show that we have over 2,000 members. The attendance rates at the matches that we have held number over 10,000. At these matches, range officials like myself—I'm a chief range officer—and fellow members look out for each other. If we see that someone is not exactly in a good place, we pull them aside. There's a camaraderie. We work together. We look out for each other and we respect each other.

Yes, mental health is a very important issue in this country, and it needs more funding.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ron McKinnon]

Thank you, Mr. MacGregor.

That brings our first round of questions to an end. We'll start our second round.

We have a hard stop again today and once again we're a little short of time for the second round, so I'm going to have to cut the time back.

[Alistair MacGregor, NDP, Cowichan—Malahat—Langford, BC]

When's the hard stop?

[The Chair, Liberal, Ron McKinnon]

It's at 5:45, and we always go over because I hate cutting people off.

I'm going to cut the time down to four minutes each for the Liberals and the Conservatives and two minutes each for the Bloc and the NDP.

With that, we will start with Mr. Shipley for four minutes, please.