Public Safety Committee on Feb. 10th, 2022

[Jeff Latimer]

We have been working with multiple partners, including the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police, Public Safety and a number of our other key stakeholders, to develop some feasibility studies, for example, on collecting the source of a firearm following the incident of a criminal event. As I said earlier, the way in which it is currently sourced and stored does not allow us to have national comparable statistics, but this year we hope to conduct a feasibility study to be able to do just that.

We're also working with the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police and all police forces in Canada to be able to collect information on the racialized identity and indigenous identity of both accused and victim in Canada. We're making terrific progress. We've almost finished our national consultation. We hope to roll out national standards very shortly.

[Tako Van Popta, Conservative, Langley—Aldergrove, BC]

Good. Thank you.

I'm going to turn to Mr. Friedman. Thank you for your evidence and for being here today.

I'm going to put the same question to you. We're hearing this wide variety of evidence. One witness said it's 70% domestically sourced. Another witness said it's 86% foreign-sourced. I suspect that this goes to conflicting definitions of what is a crime gun.

Perhaps you could expand on that a bit.

[Solomon Friedman]

Sure.

It's good to hear that Statistics Canada recognizes that this is a problem because, of course, it's impossible to make good policy without good data.

Once again, police services seize firearms for a wide variety of reasons. They are all perfectly legitimate. They could collect a firearm at a crime scene or they could have a noise complaint, go in and investigate it. I gave an example of an elderly gun collector who might be losing his faculties and shouldn't possess those firearms anymore. They seize them and take them back to the detachment. Those are both absolutely valid exercises of the seizure powers given at different places within the Criminal Code.

When it comes to making policy, those guns are not the same. One firearm may never have been involved in a violent confrontation; the other might have been, but they are all lumped in together.

I think what is really important is that, number one, Statistics Canada needs to take the lead on this. We have really anecdotal evidence coming from individual police services. I'll give you an example. I did a murder trial by firearm, in which the Crown at one point in the proceedings actually pulled statistics from the Ottawa Police Service about the seizure of crime guns and the proliferation of crime guns in Ottawa. These are statistics that are being collected locally by police services. They do not use consistent definitions from service to service. For example, when I inquired into the definition of a crime gun, I got an answer from the Toronto Police Service that was different from that of the Ottawa Police Service.

We need consistent definitions. Of course, there's no entity better positioned to do that than Statistics Canada.

[Tako Van Popta, Conservative, Langley—Aldergrove, BC]

I don't know how much time I have left, Mr. Latimer, but I'm just going to put it right back to you to talk about a good workable definition of what a crime gun is, so that we're all talking about the same thing.

[Jeff Latimer]

Yes, that was an excellent comment from my colleague.

We have been working on the definitions of both what would constitute a shooting and what would constitute a crime gun. We are making tremendous progress, and we're hoping to start rolling that out very shortly across this country. I think we will be addressing the comments that were raised by my co-panellist.

[Tako Van Popta, Conservative, Langley—Aldergrove, BC]

Good. Thanks very much.

Mr. Chair, do I have any time left?

[The Chair, Liberal, Jim Carr]

You have 25 seconds, Mr. Van Popta.

[Tako Van Popta, Conservative, Langley—Aldergrove, BC]

I'll just go very quickly, in that short period of time, to Mr. Spratt.

Thank you for being here. You're advocating a ban on handguns, but we understand that most handguns that are used in crime are smuggled in from the United States and are illegally possessed by the person committing the crime. Do you have any comments on that?

[Michael Spratt]

Of course, nothing is a panacea, and nothing is going to fix the problem in and of itself, but we do see legal handguns being used. Domestic violence and domestic homicides often involve legal handguns, and those are a large problem in terms of the number of homicides we see.

[The Chair, Liberal, Jim Carr]

Thank you.

[Michael Spratt]

Nothing is a panacea, but a total ban would be better than a diffuse divesting of that responsibility to the municipalities, which would result in a patchwork across Canada.

[The Chair, Liberal, Jim Carr]

Thank you very much, Mr. Spratt.

I will now turn to Mr. McKinnon.

You have six minutes of questioning, sir. Take it away.

[Ron McKinnon, Liberal, Coquitlam—Port Coquitlam, BC]

Thank you, Chair.

I'd like to start with Mr. Spratt.

First of all, it's always good to see you. It has been some years. I used to see you testify before the justice committee many times.

I'd like to propose to you that there seem to me to be a number of different categories of violence involving firearms. First, there's the violence involving people engaged in criminal enterprises, part and parcel of doing business as a criminal enterprise; second, domestic violence; and third, ideological and extremist sorts of activities.

Would you agree with those categories? If so, would you suggest that there are different requirements for controlling firearms access in these different circumstances?

[Michael Spratt]

I think so. Each situation is unique and, of course, any violence with a firearm or a handgun creates harm. Even merely possessing it and never discharging it as part of a criminal enterprise can create harm. Those individuals are all in different places, whether it be poverty or domestic violence issues or mental health issues that drive the offence.

Different regulations, recognizing the different circumstances of the potential offender and the offence, are important. However, solutions that occur after a firearm is used come, by definition, too late for the individuals impacted by that firearm. We can do a better job of getting ahead of those problems in each of those different categories.

[Ron McKinnon, Liberal, Coquitlam—Port Coquitlam, BC]

Can you suggest different means of controlling access to firearms, perhaps in advance, as you say, in respect to these different categories of offences?

[Michael Spratt]

In all fairness, Mr. Friedman might be more of an expert on this issue, but certainly control of sales, how one possesses a gun and who can legally possess a gun, is important.

Of course, there are better people to speak to border controls and the like, but certainly it is always better not to have any sugar at all in the gas can, so to speak, than to try to take the sugar out of the gas once it has been added.

[Ron McKinnon, Liberal, Coquitlam—Port Coquitlam, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Spratt. I'll take your invitation and move over to Mr. Friedman.

Mr. Friedman, if you'd like to comment on those previous questions, feel free to do so, but I'm also interested in.... I take your point that a revamping of the firearms regulations from the ground up would be a good thing. Absent that, I understand there are problems right now with the purchasing of parts that are not necessarily restricted by current regulations. I wonder whether the regulations, to the extent that they continue, need to be modified to address that problem.

[Solomon Friedman]

I'll just briefly overlap with what Mr. Spratt was saying in terms of access to firearms.

It's important to remember that in order to legally possess a restricted firearm—and handguns are largely restricted; some are prohibited, most restricted—you need to, of course, pass significant scrutiny, including a background check and references check. In fact, your name is run daily through a database, the FIP database, which will show flags for mental health, criminality, domestic abuse and so on. Therefore, there are very strong controls right now in terms of who can legally possess a firearm.

The trouble with handguns—and this is where we get some other conflicting statistics—is that there's a statistic from the PWEU, the provincial weapons enforcement unit, Ontario's joint firearms task force, which found in 2018 that 77% of handguns used in offences came from the United States, therefore, of course, completely bypassing any regulatory regime.

You asked about the regulation part. That's a really interesting question—at least it's interesting when you're a law nerd like Mr. Spratt and I are—because the definition of “firearm”—in other words, what is a firearm—obviously originates in the Criminal Code, but most of the heavy lifting is done, as it often is, by our courts. We have case law upon case law on that question, the very question that should be an important one for firearms regulators, which is, when does a piece of metal become a gun? When does a collection of parts become a firearm, and at what stage are these pieces regulated?

Generally speaking, you have some interpretations taken by CBSA and the RCMP for enforcement purposes, but no real clear answer in the legislation. Whether it's this committee or justice, I think that's something that needs to be looked at in terms of coming up with a definition to what should be a simple question: When does an object become a firearm?

It's not a simple question, but it's one that absolutely has to be examined in the context of the code and the Firearms Act regulations.

[Ron McKinnon, Liberal, Coquitlam—Port Coquitlam, BC]

I have 40 seconds left.

In the current regulations, it is legal to buy parts for a firearm that are not themselves a firearm yet. Can you buy the parts without having a firearms licence?

[Solomon Friedman]

What you can't buy is the receiver. The receiver is the essential part of the firearm. It's sometimes also called the action. You could purchase the barrel, trigger or components, etc. The real problem is not about buying those other parts, because they are useless without a receiver. The issue is a partially finished receiver that, up to a certain point, is simply a block of aluminum before it becomes a firearm.

That issue needs to be addressed to ensure that only licensed, background-checked and pre-screened individuals have the ability to possess not only completed firearms, but also potential firearms in whatever form.

[The Chair, Liberal, Jim Carr]

Thank you very much, Mr. Friedman.

[Ron McKinnon, Liberal, Coquitlam—Port Coquitlam, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Friedman.

[The Chair, Liberal, Jim Carr]

I will now turn to Ms. Michaud, who will have six minutes to pose her questions.

The floor is yours, Ms. Michaud.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I'd like to thank the witnesses for being here with us today and welcome them to the committee. We are grateful for their expertise in the subject.

Mr. Friedman, I found your comments about the definition of a firearm extremely interesting, and about when an item becomes a firearm. Am I wrong in saying that you are not generally in favour of more legislation or regulations?

Would it be preferable to provide a better definition of firearms right in the Criminal Code rather than establishing a list of banned weapons?

We could, for example, define what a military-style firearm is, and everything pertaining to firearms. Even if we were to draw up a list of banned weapons, similar weapons would remain on the market without being placed on the list.

Would it not be more productive to have more clearly defined firearms and to legislate accordingly?

[Solomon Friedman]

Was that question for me?