Madam Speaker, on April 26, I posed a question to the Minister of Public Safety about gun safety and the answer I received missed the mark, so I am very grateful to have the opportunity for this follow-up question.
I was prompted to ask that question last month in response to a gangland-style shooting in broad daylight in my community of Langley, B.C. A man was shot and killed in front of the Langley Sportsplex where my grandkids play hockey, so it hit pretty close to home to see that on the six o'clock news that evening. It was reported that it was the third such gang-related killing in B.C.'s Lower Mainland in a period of a few weeks.
Fast-forward a couple of weeks and I am sad to report that the murders, in broad daylight, in crowded places in the Lower Mainland, continue, the most recent being this past Sunday, Mother Day's, at Vancouver International Airport. The Vancouver Sun reported that fatal shooting was the 10th in the Lower Mainland since the middle of April. People in B.C. are very concerned and, no, this not about supporting gun manufacturers, as the minister sarcastically suggested in his answer. My only concern is keeping our streets safe and I am supported in that by people in my constituency of Langley—Aldergrove, including the many hunters and sport shooters who live here. They, of all people, law-abiding citizens and lawful gun owners, want fewer, zero, illegal guns on our streets.
In his answer, the minister said that three ways that criminals get access to guns are being examined. They are smuggled across the border, they are stolen from lawful gun owners or they are criminally diverted, where people buy them legally, sell them illegally, or “straw purchasing”. I thought I would fact-check the minister's answer and I was surprised to learn in the process that we do not really know the source of gun crimes because Canadian law enforcement agencies are not required to track this in any meaningful, consistent or reliable way and they do not always share this information.
There is not even a consistent definition of what a crime gun is. Is it a gun used in violent crime or is the definition so broad to also include guns, for example, owned by lawful gun owners who inadvertently allow their licences to lapse? This is a very important question because the answer could make the data we gather either very useful for developing policy or completely useless. Where is Canada in this data-gathering process?
According to the CBC about a year ago, May 2020, “Statistics Canada has started a project to increase the amount of information collected on guns used in crime.” It is a good thing, of course, because we need good, reliable data, but I was quite surprised to learn that we are just starting that project.
In the same article, a professor at the University of Toronto, Dr. Lee, who studies gun violence, is quoted as saying:
It's important to determine the origin of crime guns because any attempts at legislating the sale and flow of firearms has to recognize that the United States is a global supplier of firearms....We just simply don't know how many guns are Canadian in origin versus American in origin.
This is my follow-up. Toronto's chief of police said that 80% of crime guns were smuggled into the—