Thank you, Mr. Chair. I will speak slower and more clearly.
As I said, we want to highlight that three out of every four firearm deaths in Canada are suicide rather than intentional homicide or accidents. In fact, Canada has one of the highest rates of suicide by firearms in the developed world.
There is strong and robust scientific evidence that having a gun in the home is associated with a higher risk of suicide. For every 10% decline in gun ownership, firearm suicide deaths dropped by 4.2% and overall suicide rates dropped by 2.5%. As well, availability of guns is associated with homicide and particularly with domestic violence homicides.
We also note that the vast majority of suicide deaths are impulsive. If you can reduce access to means with high lethality, people will not usually switch to other means, which is the so-called “substitution effect”. With means of lower lethality, there are more chances to intervene and prevent the suicide altogether.
With that, we wish to focus on the red flag law provisions of the bill in front of you. CAEP has, for many years, called for a mandatory reporting system and a red flag law in Canada. By that, we mean a medical reporting system of individuals at risk. However, we have concerns that, in its present form, the language in the bill will have very limited effectiveness.
This is principally because the law will require an application to a court to have firearms removed from a home or an individual's possession. We continue to maintain that this is far from the timely responsiveness that is required. We, as emergency physicians, must be able to report the incident or a patient at higher risk to the police directly in order to protect the individual and their friends and families. When minutes and hours count, taking days or weeks to act is indefensible.
This applies to patients who are at a high risk of suicidality, but do not reach the level of needing to be admitted to hospital. It also applies to patients with a history of dementia and impulsive behaviour, and particularly to patients whom we identify to be at risk of domestic or interpersonal violence.
Placing the onus on victims of interpersonal violence or on a family member of a depressed person or demented parent is largely unworkable and an unwelcome hindrance to getting the guns temporarily out of the homes of those in crisis.