Mr. Chair, committee members, I am speaking to you as president of the Fédération québécoise des chasseurs et pêcheurs. The mission of our not-for-profit organization is to represent hunters and anglers and promote safe practices.
Our educational arm, Sécurité nature, has a contract with the government to deliver introductory hunter education courses and the Canadian Firearms Safety Course. Each year, about 60,000 participants take our training.
Ever since we started teaching firearms safety in 1994, the year the course was created, we have always focused on education and prevention rather than gun control. We are doing our part by going above and beyond our training obligations: We carry out firearms safety awareness campaigns, and we provide hunters with a website about safe firearm transportation and storage, along with other one-off initiatives like distributing trigger locks.
Our overall position on gun control is that there should be limited constraints for legitimate gun owners, hunters or sport shooters who have taken training and who hold a possession and acquisition licence.
During the backlash caused by the amendments proposed in November to Bill C‑21, we identified two key issues. The first is that the amendments, as drafted, were not clear enough. The confusion created by the definition of an assault weapon and the list of prohibited weapons shows that this control measure missed the mark. Law-abiding hunters and sport shooters felt justifiably worried about this ban, which could have captured guns that they had been using for years to carry out safe, legal activities.
The second issue is the public's lack of knowledge about firearms, which colours political decision-making. We see that firearms are being placed on the list of prohibited weapons on the basis of aesthetic and ergonomic criteria, rather than objective criteria based on the firearm's capacity. Also, some people see semi-automatic rifles as military weapons, but this mechanism is necessary for certain types of hunting. Let me remind you that magazine capacity is already regulated. Generally speaking, the limit is five cartridges, and in the specific case of migratory bird hunting, the limit is three cartridges under federal law.
We would like the Canadian regulations to focus on the real criminals instead of criminalizing legitimate gun owners.
First, a definition of assault weapon that's based on objective criteria, not the style of the gun, should be created. If the definition is accepted by the majority of the hunting and sport shooting community, it should then be applied retroactively to all the schedules of prohibited firearms. Then it would finally be possible to stop working off lists that are constantly being updated, creating concern and confusion.
In summary, we strongly believe in the power of education and prevention for promoting firearms safety. Our members want to feel safe, too, and they hope new laws intended to improve public safety focus on the right targets. Hunters and sport shooters who comply with the training requirements and get the right licences are the wrong target.