Public Safety Committee on March 7th, 2023

[The Chair, Liberal, Ron McKinnon]

I call this meeting to order.

Welcome, everyone, to meeting number 59 of the House of Commons Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security.

We will start by acknowledging that this meeting is taking place on the traditional unceded territory of the Algonquin people. I personally am participating today from the traditional unceded territory of the Kwikwetlem First Nation.

Today's meeting is taking place in a hybrid format, pursuant to the House order of June 23, 2022. Members are attending in person in the room and remotely using the Zoom application.

Pursuant to Standing Order 108(2) and the motion adopted by the committee on Friday, February 3, 2023, the committee resumes its study of the effects of withdrawn amendments G-4 and G-46 to Bill C-21, an act to amend certain acts and to make certain consequential amendments (firearms).

Today, we have two panels of witnesses. We'll deal with the first one.

In the first hour, with us in person from the Mohawk Council of Kahnawake, is Chief Jessica Lazare. By video conference we have, from the Gwich'in Tribal Council, Grand Chief Ken Kyikavichik.

I apologize to everyone for mispronouncing names. I'll do my best, but thank you.

Each of you will have up to five minutes to make opening remarks, after which we'll proceed with rounds of questions.

Welcome. I now invite Grand Chief Kyikavichik to make an opening statement. Please go ahead, sir, for five minutes.

[Grand Chief Ken Kyikavichik, Gwich'in Tribal Council]

Drin gwiinzii.

Good afternoon, honourable committee members.

My name is Ken Kyikavichik, and I am the Grand Chief of the Gwich'in Tribal Council of the Northwest Territories. I was elected in September of 2020 for a four-year term, and I am here speaking on behalf of the over 3,500 participants to our Gwich'in Comprehensive Land Claim Agreement, a modern treaty that we signed with Canada in April 1992.

I would like to thank you for the opportunity to speak to the committee on this very important topic. We, the Gwich'in, are the most northerly first nations people in North America. We are part of the Athapaskans, which include the Slavey, the Tlicho, the Han, the Tutchone, the Apache, the Navajo and other groups in Canada and the United States. The Gwich'in reside in 11 different communities, stretching from the interior of Alaska through northern Yukon and into the Mackenzie Valley of the Northwest Territories of Canada.

For millennia, our Gwich'in Nation has lived a nomadic and subsistence lifestyle, largely following the Porcupine caribou herd. We coexisted with these vital resources by following our values of honour, kindness and laughter; our stories; honesty and fairness; sharing and caring; and, last but certainly not least, respect.

This value of respect is where I'll be focusing my presentation. It is the basis of the perspective of the Gwich'in Tribal Council on the proposed amendments as contemplated through Bill C-21 and the current federal government strategy on firearms.

As we are all acutely aware, successive massacres, including at École Polytechnique in 1989, Concordia University in 1992, Vernon, B.C. in 1996 and, more recently, Mayerthorpe in 2005, Parliament Hill in 2014 and Nova Scotia in 2020, resulted in the tragic loss of officers of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and other Canadian citizens.

It is the individuals who committed these atrocious murders who are to blame for the senseless acts of violence. Mental illness, misogyny and criminal intent were behind these tragedies. However, it was access to some of the firearms specifically mentioned in the draft legislation, such as handguns and automatic assault-style rifles, that should concern us all.

Therefore, we are of the view that the proposed amendments in Bill C-21 do not go far enough in the licence revocations for known or potential assailants through the red and yellow flag laws. Our suggestion would be an automatic 60-day suspension for those with a yellow flag, and a 90-day suspension for those who have been red-flagged. This is particularly important in situations involving domestic violence.

Simply put, the Gwich'in Tribal Council supports the restriction of high-powered automatic assault weapons that are generally utilized in military applications. Far too often, some of these weapons have completely overwhelmed the authorities that we depend upon for our public safety. We cannot allow this to continue to happen. This is the reason I am here to present today.

For our Gwich'in Nation, we need to balance the public interest with the treaty-Crown partnership that was established with our organization to ensure the continued exercise of our harvesting rights throughout our established territory in the Gwich'in settlement region, which totals some 90,000 square kilometres. The essential firearms that we require to exercise our inherent and treaty rights are typically bolt- or lever-action rifles or pump-action shotguns. Rifles such as a .243, .270, .308, .30-30, .30-06 or 6.5-calibre Creedmoor are typically used for larger animals such as caribou, moose or bear, whereas 12-gauge shotguns are generally used for migratory birds such as ducks and geese. Smaller rifles, such as .22-calibre—at times semi-automatic versions—and .410-calibre or 20-gauge shotguns are used for smaller game such as rabbits, muskrats and grouse.

Our people require weapons that are durable enough to withstand our Arctic conditions, and that provide protection from foreign objects such as sand, mud and willows while also being able to be easily transported on snowmobiles or in boats along the expansive river systems of the Nagwichoonjik, or Mackenzie River; the Teetl'it Gwinjik, or Peel River; or the Mackenzie Delta of the Northwest Territories.

SKS and other long-range rifles and semi-automatic shotguns have been listed on the proposed amendments from December 2022. These are common across our communities. Specifically, the Lee-Enfield .303-calibre rifles, which are known as “ranger guns”, have historically been distributed to our participants belonging to the Canadian Rangers. These specific models will require review, as I explained in a call that I participated in with Minister Mendicino on January 31, along with other indigenous leaders from across the Northwest Territories.

If some of these models are listed under this legislation, a practical and proper process for a buyback program would be of interest to our participants and communities, in order to compensate for any loss that may result from the passing of this legislation. We would also be interested in potential exemptions for certain models that are critical to Gwich’in hunting and stewardship, as mentioned earlier.

We do not question the intent of these amendments. However, there's a clear requirement for continued engagement and consultation with indigenous nations such as the Gwich’in, and, more broadly, Canadians at large. People are passionate about this issue because, for many indigenous and non-indigenous Canadians, the respectful harvesting of this country's natural resources and the ability to traverse our great lands with pride and safety constitute some of our basic needs and human rights, along with rights enshrined in our treaties or established in common law. There does, however, need to be a proper balance of public safety with our rights to exercise this privilege to coexist in these habitats we all call home.

With that, I'd like to say hai', or thank you, for your time and for the opportunity to present today.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ron McKinnon]

Thank you, Grand Chief.

We'll go to Chief Lazare for an opening statement.

Please go ahead for five minutes.

[Chief Jessica Lazare, Mohawk Council of Kahnawake]

[Witness spoke in Mohawk]

[English]

I am Chief Jessica Lazare of the Mohawk Council of Kahnawake.

[Witness spoke in Mohawk]

[English]

I'm happy to be here. I'm here to present our position on your proposed bill.

We cannot overemphasize how integral hunting and harvesting are to our identity. Today I will present examples of how this bill will affect our ability to express that. There are potential repercussions for our right to carry out a deeply rooted cultural practice that is already restricted within the existing framework. I will also call out the lack of consultation with indigenous communities and the effects of this deficiency in creating your bill.

Harvesting is deeply woven into the Kanien’kehá:ka Mohawk culture and the fabric of who we are. As onkwehonwe, meaning “original people”, we have inherent practices that we've been engaging in since time immemorial. These practices are deeply ingrained in our ceremonies. They stem from inherent roles and responsibilities that are integrated into who we are from a generational and family level, from birth.

Six years ago, my son was named in a naming ceremony—

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

Point of order, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ron McKinnon]

Go ahead, Madame Michaud, on a point of order.

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

There's no French interpretation of Ms. Lazare's speech.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ron McKinnon]

Very well.

Mr. Clerk, could you look into that?

Ms. Michaud, were you able to hear everything from the beginning?

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

If Ms. Lazare could start over from the beginning, I would appreciate it. It's working now.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ron McKinnon]

Thank you.

Chief Lazare, if you wouldn't mind, please start from the top.

[Chief Jessica Lazare]

[Witness spoke in Mohawk]

[English]

I am from the Mohawk Council of Kahnawake. I am here to present our position on your proposed bill.

We cannot overemphasize how integral hunting and harvesting is to our identity. Today I will present examples of how this bill will affect our ability to express that.

There are potential repercussions for our rights to carry out a deeply rooted cultural practice that is already restricted within the existing framework. I will also call out the lack of consultation with indigenous communities and the effects of this deficiency in creating your bill.

Harvesting is deeply woven into the Kanien'kehá:ka culture and fabric of who we are. As onkwehonwe, meaning “original people”, we have inherent practices that we have been engaging in since time immemorial. These practices are deeply ingrained in our ceremonies and stem from inherent roles and responsibilities that are integrated into who we are from a generational and family level, from birth.

Six years ago, my son was named in a naming ceremony. His name was raised and words were spoken, letting him know that when the time comes, his uncles will teach him our ways and how to take on our inherent roles and responsibilities. They will take him hunting on the land. He has potential to be a father, to provide for a family and to be supported by the other men in his family to fulfill this role.

In our culture we are taught to balance our roles and responsibilities as humans with those of the other living beings here on mother earth. All this inherent knowledge and understanding is what we carry day to day.

This understanding of our roles and responsibilities, and the respect for the cycle of life, make us who we are as onkwehonwe. This cycle and balance have been interrupted by colonization, which has also established an evolution of our practices from bows and arrows to firearms in order to fulfill our obligations in sustaining that balance.

At the same time, the development of lands has had a cumulative impact on the hunting locations, which are now more isolated, affecting migration paths, which have decreased breeding areas. This development is detrimental to ecosystems.

Losing culture through restrictions of our rights is not just theoretical. This loss has been lived in real time by me and my family, as well as my community and those of my sister communities of the Iroquois Caucus. The restrictions on our rights under the current licensing structure are already unacceptable, and further restrictions could be fatal to our cultural practices.

Urban sprawl and buildup around Kahnawake mean we cannot hunt where we live; nor can we travel with our appropriate firearms to hunt in Tioweró:ton, a hunting territory located in the Laurentians that is shared with Kanehsatà:ke.

We often must drive many hours and take time off work, managing yearly harvests under severe time constraints. This bill and its amendments will further limit the potential for our families to harvest for sustenance during each crucial harvesting cycle. It will impact both our hunting methods and our success rate. When you start to interfere with that success, you interfere with food security and how that person can provide sustenance to their community and family.

In this context, and speaking from experience, I know that the possibility of firing successive shots can make the difference between downing an animal that will feed my family through the winter and injuring an animal that may, at best, take hours to track or, at worst, result in an injured animal dying in the woods, and wasted meat.

We understand that some of the firearm prohibitions and suspensions include a sustenance exception, requiring that firearms remain available to individuals who demonstrate that they need a firearm to hunt. However, we would like to point out that those exceptions fall short in acknowledging and respecting the reality of the people from my community, as well as those from the Iroquois Caucus.

The realities of indigenous people who travel for sustenance harvesting with their firearms are being overlooked due to the lack of consultation. Your government needs to take the time to ensure there is recognition and acknowledgement made to reflect our indigenous rights and realities.

Systemic racism in policing is also an issue for many indigenous communities. Exemptions are accessible only when other law enforcement are properly trained to understand our reality. Impacts of the provincial and federal failure to educate outside police forces are already felt by community members who face problems such as establishing and documenting their rights as sustenance harvesters and transporting firearms for hunting in other parts of Canada.

There is no carve-out in Bill C-21 for the exercise of our inherent jurisdiction rights, nor was any consultation carried out to solicit our input. There is no recognition of the way existing prohibitions and licensing already limit and have adverse impacts on our rights, and no attempt made to help us determine which specifications or models need to be protected, ensuring there is a balance between our safety and sustenance. With this, the Iroquois Caucus requests a meeting with the committee. It is for the Kanien'kehá:ka of Kahnawake, not for Canada, to decide what is fitting for our people.

We have entrusted enforcement to the Kahnawake peacekeepers. I'd also like to point out that this bill will place an administrative burden on our peacekeepers, who already face chronic underfunding, understaffing and intransigence regarding our proposals for culturally appropriate firearm control.

Concurrently, the lack of in-depth and comprehensive consultation with indigenous communities is demonstrated in the incoherence and inconsistency of this bill, the proposed amendments therein and the lack of acknowledgement of the rights of indigenous peoples.

The retracted amendments would have prohibited a broad spectrum of hunting rifles, shotguns and other long guns used by our hunters. Evergreen definitions may not be any better. They will curtail our ability to access new developments in firearms, as other witnesses have already pointed out. Even a cursory review of the retracted amendments reveals important inconsistencies in the firearms selected for inclusion.

You see that when you talk about firearms as objects, you forget that it's the person holding it who makes it either a tool for sustenance or a weapon. We ask that you address the real underlying problems that cause gun violence, not further restrict indigenous people from carrying out their lives in a sustainable, ceremonial and generational way.

Find a way to support firearm safety training. Find a way to support awareness against gun violence and address the mental health issues that lead to gun violence. Help demonstrate that with handling the power of a firearm comes great responsibility.

Niiowén:nake.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ron McKinnon]

Thank you, Chief.

We will start our rounds of questions now, with Mr. Motz.

Please go ahead for six minutes.

[Glen Motz, Conservative, Medicine Hat—Cardston—Warner, AB]

Thank you very much, Chair, and thank you, Chief Lazare.

I think that's probably one of the best testimonies. It's honest and real, and it speaks to the issues that we have been talking about with this bill, so thank you for that plain look at how it impacts you and your community.

I want to take you back to a comment you made early on in your introduction, about your indigenous exemptions under the order in council that came in May 2020.

We know this government is particularly bad at legislation, and now I understand. The Liberals will sometimes say the right thing, but making it happen is a different issue when it comes to actually getting the job done.

Here's a case in point. The order in council of May 2020 took away indigenous firearms that were used for sustenance hunting. The Liberals then paraded out this exemption that they talked about—an amnesty, if you will—respecting indigenous rights under section 35.

There are limitations to that, however. You touched on them briefly. I won't read the whole thing, but one of the things the excerpt talks about in the act is that the amnesty permits the person “if the specific firearm was, on [April 30, 2020], a non-restricted firearm, ...to hunt in the exercise of a right recognized and affirmed by section 35 of the Constitution Act, 1982, or [for sustenance hunting by] the person or the family—until they are able to obtain another firearm for that use”, which, to me, seems to be a cop-out.

The Liberals give you a juicy talking point. There's no substance that potentially violates section 35 with that one short sentence in there, but it puts indigenous hunters at risk of being criminalized if they are caught with a firearm when they could possibly have taken a prohibited firearm and not bought a new one.

What are your thoughts on that? How do you address that with your community? Have indigenous hunters from your community addressed that as a concern to you?

[Chief Jessica Lazare]

It definitely is a concern, as I have brought it today. I was only given five minutes to speak on it.

However, when it comes to the criminalization of these weapons, like I have mentioned, it's really difficult to prove that we have the right to the weapons. The permitting, especially in Quebec—my community is located in Quebec—is not consistent. It is non-functioning at the moment. I know there are a few of them waiting for their PALs and waiting for different permits in order to hold different weapons and, I guess, the essence of family hunting as well.

There are limits, as well, on the kinds of guns you can have or the number of weapons you can have. If families go hunting together, they cannot travel together, because there are limits to that. It affects the present practices we have in hunting.

[Glen Motz, Conservative, Medicine Hat—Cardston—Warner, AB]

Thank you for that.

I also appreciated your explanation in regard to how the act as proposed in C-21 really doesn't impact public safety. It goes after the wrong issue. It impacts your community as indigenous hunters. It impacts sport shooters, hunters and farmers across the country.

One of the things I have seen recently is that the government in Quebec is spending some money dealing with some of those issues they find to be the real problem, which is smuggling from the U.S. into Canada. They're spending over $6 million over a number of years to try to make that happen. The minister of public safety in Quebec talked about the money that will make that region safer.

We've mentioned a lot in this committee and the House that if we really wanted to impact public safety, we would need to close some of the porousness of our border and provide resources at our border to impact the illegal smuggling of firearms into this country, rather than spending the resources going after law-abiding Canadian firearm owners, including indigenous communities, who are not public safety risks.

How do you see what this Quebec initiative is doing? Do you have any suggestions from your nation for the federal government as to what we need to do to seal up our border to stop the illegal smuggling of firearms into this country? This is a significant problem, as identified by law enforcement across the country.

[Chief Jessica Lazare]

In speaking with Minister Mendicino, I think it was two weeks ago, I mentioned that the perspective of the federal government is on the weapon itself as being the killer. I made it clear to him that his position on that was different from ours and that we see the person behind the weapon itself.

As for the border issue, I think more resources and funding should go to investigative approaches to, I guess, the smuggling ring, if you would call it that, and more education and funding on the expertise and funding towards policing.

[Glen Motz, Conservative, Medicine Hat—Cardston—Warner, AB]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ron McKinnon]

Thank you, Mr. Motz.

[Glen Motz, Conservative, Medicine Hat—Cardston—Warner, AB]

Already? I just got warmed up, Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ron McKinnon]

Well, maybe you'll get a chance in the next round.

We'll go now to Ms. Damoff, please, for six minutes.

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

Thank you.

I'd like to begin by thanking both of our witnesses for being with us today. Your testimony is very important to our work to determine what to do next on assault weapons.

My first question is for both of you.

Mr. Motz mentioned the order in council and that there was an amnesty for indigenous people exercising their section 35 hunting rights. If there were something brought forward dealing with an assault weapon ban, would you support something similar that would exclude indigenous people from that ban?

I'll start with you, Chief Lazare, and then we can go to you, Grand Chief.

[Chief Jessica Lazare]

In terms of the assault rifle ban, I'm going to be extremely honest. I'm not completely privy to all the different types of weapons that are listed. I'm not completely aware or completely understanding of the different types of weapons.

However, I would not be able to answer questions like that based on the fact that we have not had the opportunity to consult across the confederacy and across the Iroquois Caucus. To answer that question would require further consultation.

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

That's fair. Maybe you could take it back. My thinking is that anything we did would exclude indigenous people who are using their firearms for hunting.

Grand Chief, do you have any thoughts on that?

[Grand Chief Ken Kyikavichik]

Well, of course, we need to understand the details behind this, but as I stated in my opening comments, we would support any restriction on high-powered, automatic assault weapons that are generally used in military applications, for example.

I listed out the common firearms that we utilize in our territory of the Northwest Territories and the Yukon of Canada, and I did that by design so that people can see the types of weapons that we require to exercise some of our section 35 rights and also those that have been enshrined in our modern treaty.

With that said, we know our lifestyle and our subsistence harvesting will evolve in accordance with our rights. What I have declared as the common weapons today—rifles and shotguns, primarily—may change over time. We need to be cognizant that any changes in our harvesting practices to keep up with technology and conservation, keeping in mind our subsistence way of life, are not infringed on unnecessarily by any future bans on these types of weapons.

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

Thank you, Grand Chief.

I wonder if you could clarify something for me. My colleague, Mr. Lloyd, just tweeted that in your testimony you said the bill is targeting hunting rifles. Does that accurately depict what you said? That's not what I heard.