Public Safety Committee on Nov. 3rd, 2022

[The Chair, Liberal, Ron McKinnon]

I call this meeting to order. Welcome to meeting number 46 of the House of Commons Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security.

We will start by acknowledging that we are meeting on the traditional unceded territory of the Algonquin people.

Today's meeting is taking place in a hybrid format, pursuant to the House order of November 25, 2021. Members are attending in person in the room and remotely using the Zoom application. In accordance with the committee's routine motion concerning connection tests for witnesses, I am informing the committee that all witnesses have completed the required connection tests in advance of the meeting.

Pursuant to the order of reference of Thursday, June 23, 2022, the committee resumes consideration of Bill C-21, an act to amend certain acts and to make certain consequential amendments regarding firearms.

We have two panels of witnesses today. For the first hour, we will have with us, by video conference, from the Canadian Association of Emergency Physicians, Dr. Atul Kapur, emergency physician and co-chair of the public affairs committee; and in person here with us in the room, we have, for the Canadian Coalition for Firearm Rights, Rod Giltaca, chief executive officer and executive director.

Welcome to you all. We will start by giving each group an opportunity to make a five-minute opening statement.

Dr. Kapur, please go ahead for five minutes, sir.

[Dr. Atul Kapur, Emergency Physician and Co-Chair, Public Affairs Committee, Canadian Association of Emergency Physicians]

Thank you, Mr. Chair, and good evening. Thank you for the invitation to appear before the committee.

The Canadian Association of Emergency Physicians, of which I am proud to be a member, is at the forefront of treating patients and families with [Technical difficulty—Editor] traumatic injuries, including firearm injuries and death. As such, we have a unique perspective on how we can work to [Technical difficulty—Editor] trauma of such injuries and deaths.

As well, we are particularly aware that, despite a lot of publicity regarding homicides, three out of every four firearm deaths in Canada are suicides. We think that important element is often missing from the discussion and dialogue around firearm safety. That is one area that we would wish to focus on.

Where there are more firearms accessible, there is increased trauma. There are increased injuries—

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

I have a point of order, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ron McKinnon]

Pardon me, sir. We'll just pause.

I don't think interpretation is available.

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

The interpreter is telling me that connectivity issues are preventing interpretation.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ron McKinnon]

I'm sorry. We're going to suspend for a couple of minutes. We have some translation issues.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ron McKinnon]

Let's resume the meeting. I'll ask the doctor to carry on, and we'll make the best of it.

Dr. Kapur.

[Dr. Atul Kapur]

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.

[Peter Schiefke, Liberal, Vaudreuil—Soulanges, QC]

I have a point of order, Mr. Chair.

I believe there is a quorum call in the House of Commons. Is that possible?

[The Chair, Liberal, Ron McKinnon]

That is possible.

[Peter Schiefke, Liberal, Vaudreuil—Soulanges, QC]

Can we verify that, and if so, ensure that—

[The Chair, Liberal, Ron McKinnon]

If that is the case, we will need unanimous consent to carry on. I'll ask the clerk to check into that.

Meanwhile, we'll let Dr. Kapur carry on with this statement. I'm sorry for the interruption once again.

[An hon. member]

I'd like to move to suspend.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ron McKinnon]

Okay, we'll suspend for a few minutes.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ron McKinnon]

Thank you all for bearing with us.

When the lights start going off in the room here, it means a vote, or that the House is adjourning or starting. In this case, it was a quorum call. Generally speaking, if there's a vote or something, we require unanimous consent to continue.

However, it seems as if the quorum call has been resolved and we can continue.

Once again, with apologies, Dr. Kapur, perhaps you could carry on with your statement.

[Dr. Atul Kapur]

Fortunately, or unfortunately, as an emergency physician, I am familiar with being interrupted.

To come back to the point regarding our concerns about the red flag law provisions currently in this bill, the requirement to go to court is a significant roadblock to the effectiveness of this part of the legislation. It would need to be combined, we feel, with the allowance for physicians, particularly emergency physicians, to report issues of concern of higher risk to police so that intervention could occur in a timely manner.

There is one example of a red flag law in Canada already and that's Anastasia's law in Quebec. It has also been rendered less effective because of the lack of resources that have been provided in order to support its use and to educate the public and physicians on how to use it appropriately. We would also call for adequate resources in terms of knowledge dissemination, education and the ability for proper response to occur once a situation has been reported.

Finally, as emergency physicians, we continue the call we've been making for many years for appropriate resources for research and data gathering, so that we can have more accurate information and scientific evidence on which to make further policy decisions.

I believe that was my five minutes, Chair. I appreciate the time.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ron McKinnon]

Thank you, Doctor.

We'll carry on now with Mr. Giltaca. Welcome.

Please go ahead for five minutes.

[Rod Giltaca, Chief Executive Officer and Executive Director, Canadian Coalition for Firearm Rights]

Members of the committee and Mr. Chairman, I'd like to thank you for this opportunity to chat with you. I really appreciate it.

I guess we can just jump right into it.

Concerning Bill C-21, there are some provisions in this bill—or maybe the motivation behind them—that our group can support. The reason I say that is we want a safer Canada too. In fact, I might add that we share a lot of the same safety concerns as a lot of the individuals and groups that you've heard from in this committee so far as well.

For example, we support revoking the licence of those who are guilty of domestic violence or those who are subject to a protection order, granted that the order was proven and justified. That's really important because, obviously, we don't want innocent people being caught up in a new system like that. We support those kinds of things because they just make sense.

We obviously don't want the wrong people being able to legally buy guns—although, in my experience, that and a lot more already happen. Currently, anyone can contact the police at any time if they have a safety concern involving firearms. It's taken very seriously and the police have the legal ability to search and seize almost anything, depending on the level of concern they have for public safety. You've heard that before. You're not hearing that from me for the first time.

There are other provisions in the bill that, of course, are absurd. I think most people realize that already.

There's a new charge for modifying a cartridge magazine. It's already a very serious criminal offence to be in possession of a cartridge magazine that can contain more than the prescribed number of rounds. The possession offence is the only one you could ever really prove anyway, unless you caught someone with a prohibited cartridge magazine in one hand and a file or a drill bit in the other. Plus, you can 3-D print magazines. That provision really doesn't serve any practical public safety purpose.

Another example, unfortunately, is raising the maximum penalty for firearms trafficking from 10 to 14 years. I'm not aware of anyone—ever—who got 10 years for firearms trafficking. I don't know that, because I haven't been on CanLII for days on end, but I have just never heard of that. I have heard a lot to the contrary, and you guys have heard that as well from law enforcement professionals. That measure ends up being a little bit meaningless too.

When I look at those two measures it just says to me that these are opportunities for tough-on-crime talking points. I just don't think there's a place in legislation for that kind of stuff. It's a bit of a concern.

We're most concerned about the handgun ban. I understand the limitations of this committee process and why we're here. I will just offer a little bit of perspective and we can talk about the provision after that.

To say it simply, the handgun ban is unjustified. The committee heard some great information in this process and, obviously, some blatant misinformation. You've heard from numerous active duty law enforcement personnel that the ban on handguns of licensed individuals will have no meaningful benefit to public safety. Here's a quote from the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police:

We believe that a handgun freeze is one method of reducing access to these types of firearms, while allowing existing law-abiding handgun owners to practice their sport.

That's fair enough. They continued:

However, we continue to maintain that restricting lawful handgun ownership will not meaningfully address the real issue....

They go on to talk about gangs and other criminal activity. That's right from the Association of Chiefs of Police.

You've heard numerous retired members of law enforcement say essentially the same thing. You've heard from an exceptional criminal defence lawyer that the handgun ban won't change the behaviour of criminals or the level of access they have to illegal firearms. You've heard from sport shooting organizations that the ban will hurt them in the short term and extinct them in the medium term.

You've heard from gun owners that their property will be taken from them for no fault of their own whatsoever, and that their identity and culture is repugnant and there's no place in Canada for them. I would suggest that law-abiding, licensed firearm owners are deserving of respect and they're just as entitled to their place in Canada as anyone else, as outrageous as that might sound.

For those who don't own guns, the nuclear option of gun bans sounds reasonable only because it's predicated on the idea that handgun ownership is some frivolous, self-centred and unnecessary hobby and that it ought to just be swept away, along with the 650,000 people that are licensed to own handguns in Canada.

I'll tell you, that does not align with reality at all. Therefore, I don't envy you for having to deal with a bill like this. I would ask that you explore other options to mitigate the illegal handgun problem—which we all can see very plainly—before supporting a ban that affects only those who comply with the law.

I appreciate your time and I'd be happy to answer any questions.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ron McKinnon]

Thank you, sir.

We will start our questions with Mr. Lloyd, please, for six minutes.

[Dane Lloyd, Conservative, Sturgeon River—Parkland, AB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you to the witnesses.

I'm going to start with you, Dr. Kapur.

The studies that you just cited on suicide and homicide, can you tell us if those studies were done in the American or the Canadian context?

[Dr. Atul Kapur]

Most of those studies I believe were done in the American context. I believe there are some Canadian studies, but as I said in my opening comments, one of the things that we have repeatedly called for is the resources to research—

[Dane Lloyd, Conservative, Sturgeon River—Parkland, AB]

Yes, and I agree with you, we need that. We definitely do need better data and information on this. I would just hope that you can table those studies that you cited to this committee, because I asked for them from other witnesses previously and they didn't hand them in. I hope I can get a commitment that, if you have those studies available, you would table them with the committee so that we can review them at a later date.

Something I was a bit concerned about—and maybe this is an education opportunity—is that there's nothing stopping you as an emergency room doctor, or any doctor, from calling the police if you have a safety concern about somebody who owns firearms. Are you aware of that?

[Dr. Atul Kapur]

There is actually a restraint on me from reporting things that are held confidential due to the medical relationship, the doctor-patient relationship. However, there are specific areas where I am relieved of my duty of confidentiality, for example, in mandatory reporting of drivers where I have reason to believe someone has a condition that would make it dangerous for them to drive. For that there is specific legislation that relieves me of my confidentiality restrictions.

That doesn't necessarily apply in the situations that I'm describing here, where patients may have increased risk of suicidality or dementia and impulsive behaviour. That is a restriction.

[Dane Lloyd, Conservative, Sturgeon River—Parkland, AB]

That's interesting because I've seen cases here in the Ottawa area where somebody had a mental breakdown and the doctors did call police and they seized his firearms. He actually had to go to court to prove that he did not have a mental condition or that he had passed the mental condition and it wasn't an issue, in order to get his firearms back. That's very interesting and it's something we'll explore further. Thank you.

Mr. Giltaca, would it be fair to say that your coalition represents the views of hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of law-abiding firearms owners in this country?

[Rod Giltaca]

I don't think I can claim to represent that number of people, but that's pretty much the consensus I think of certainly most people who would have a restricted PAL, meaning they're licensed to own handguns, and certainly a great number of the 2.3 million other licensed Canadians who own a variety of different firearms.