Thank you. My organization is Communities for Zero Violence.
Thank you for inviting me to speak in this forum. My name is Evelyn Fox. I'm the founder of Communities for Zero Violence, a non-profit agency that provides peer-led supports for homicide survivors and victims of community violence, as a way to interrupt the cycle. Communities for Zero Violence was formed eight months after the homicide of my eldest son Kiesingar Gunn in 2016.
Over the past five and a half years I have taught myself about the firearm laws and regulations, educated myself on the chief firearms officer's functioning and taken the firearms safety course, just for the knowledge, and was very impressed to hear the instructor's constant reminders of how to handle and store a firearm safely.
Every instance of violence has an intervention point that has been overlooked or not been acted upon by either people closest to that person, service providers or those in positions of power whose job it is to intervene. For instance, you can imagine my surprise when I learned that only 10% of personal references are contacted when someone initially [Technical difficulty--Editor] and none of the references contacted when renewing the licence, especially with trainers emphasizing the fact that the references would be contacted before being approved for the licence.
How is this ensuring public safety? Why are references not being contacted?
We live beside a country that has a patchwork system to regulate firearms that are illegally seeping through our borders in one form or another. CBSA is only required to inspect 1% of shipping containers that come over our borders: one of every 100. CBSA has seized vehicles at the border with multiple firearms hidden in them. How many times have those individuals smuggling the firearms been successful before getting caught? How will this be addressed? What improvements to the borders will be implemented?
More regulation for firearms in Canada as a way to eliminate community and gang violence, when all the community-level violence is being committed by those who are not licensed to possess or use them, will not be effective. Canada has adequate laws for firearm ownership, and the gatekeepers of ensuring our laws remain intact and strong have done an amazing job keeping them this way.
The talk of allowing the municipalities and provinces to ban firearms within their borders is an American-style regulation that we know does not work. To even suggest it is irresponsible and not in the best interest of any Canadian.
There has been discussion after discussion, report after report, with all the same recommendations for the past 14 years about addressing the social determinants of health and investing in communities across Canada, and still a gun ban and more regulation of firearms is a primary focus of investment. The significant polarization of opinions do not allow us to have an honest and meaningful discussion about the gun violence across the country. We cannot talk about a firearm ban without speaking about banning poverty and all the underlying issues that stem from it. We have traumatized communities that are never able to heal due to the continued occurrences of violence and the lack of resources to provide them support.
When my son Kiesingar was killed, my younger son was 12. He went from being a straight-A student with aspirations of being a human rights lawyer with the United Nations to failing all of his classes due to his inability to focus and his invasive thoughts. He started engaging in at-risk behaviour and self-medicating. He started engaging in illegal activities that started to escalate into various serious crimes. If I hadn't done everything I could to intervene, he was destined to end up being killed or killing someone else.
This is what all levels of government should be focusing on. There should be proactive, not reactive, approaches to eliminating the violence. The “Review of the Roots of Youth Violence” report, which outlines the most pervasive risk factors of why youth engage in violent acts, was issued in 2008. All levels of government are aware of the risk factors and recommendations set out in the report, and every party since in majority has cut the areas of recommendation and are now surprised that we have escalating community and gang violence.
Our communities are in crisis and it is long past due to do what is right by Canadians whose voices have been largely ignored, who deserve gainful opportunities to enrich their communities and their lives.
Those of us who have had our loved ones murdered are real people who suffer with real trauma. We deserve to have the support of our elected officials to make our communities safe. We should feel safe enough to allow our children to go to school, play in playgrounds, and attend social events and recreational facilities without the fear of them not returning due to the escalating violence that is terrorizing our cities.
Community safety is a right: A right my son had to go out and enjoy his time with his fiancée, a right to return home after enjoying his night and a right to exist free from violence wherever he chose to travel throughout the city, our province and our country. That—
