SPEECH: Bill C-71, Amendments to the Firearms Act

Honourable Senators: I rise today to speak on Bill C-71. I would like to thank the sponsor, Senator Pratte, for his efforts stewarding this bill through the senate.

It is only natural that I reflect first on the violence in the city I come from Toronto.  As you all know, we have been hit by a spate of gun violence that has dismayed us and left us saddened and left too many dead or injured. As just one example, on July 22 of this year, a man killed two people and injured another 13 on the Danforth, a busy and popular local neighbourhood. He fled the scene but soon turned the weapon on himself and committed suicide.  We later found out that he likely suffered from mental health problems.

All too sadly, such horrific instances are becoming more and more commonplace. There is a mythology out there that gun violence is an urban problems. That it is in big cities that gangs are using guns to exert their power over others. This is certainly true of much of the violence that we have read about in Toronto.

But as I looked at the evidence, I have come to understand that gun violence is not just only an urban problem, not just a gang problem and not just a problem emanating from illegally obtained firearms. It is a Canadian problem. That it not only touches our urban centers but it also touches all parts of Canada. In cities big and small. In towns and rural areas across the country.

Statscan reports the use of a shotgun or rifle in violent crimes in rural areas is 4 times that of urban areas. Saskatchewan has twice the rate of gun violence per capita than urban Toronto and homicides in Saskatchewan were more likely to occur in a rural setting.  Most often the weapon used was a rifle and not a hand gun.

Other areas of the country struggle with violent gun crime. Edmonton, Winnipeg, Moncton are places in Canada that are seeing an increase in gun-related violent crime

All told Stats Can reports gun related crime is at the highest level since 2005.  Gun related crime increased by a full 23% between 2015 and 2016.  What is of particular concern is the growth in the numbers of young people who are accused of gun related crimes.  Their share rose by 20% in 2016 as compared to 2013. The rate of adults accused of firearm-related violent crime increased by 37%  from 2013 to 2016, due to increases in Ontario, Alberta and Saskatchewan.

Moreover, 18% of firearms related violent crimes involved shotguns or rifles. That is almost 1 in 5 violent crimes involving a firearms is done so with one that is likely legally obtained and therefore the most easily accessible.

It is then no wonder that Canada performs badly in comparison to other countries. Gun related crimes are about ten times greater in Canada than in the United Kingdom, where they are far more tightly regulated than here.  Canada ranks fourth among OECD countries in rates of firearms death. Korea and Japan were the lowest. And I think we all know that the US tops the list.

Honourable senators:  These are perhaps merely numbers, but behind every number is a tragic story.  I want to focus my remarks on the connection between guns and domestic violence.

I think it is important when we talk about gun violence that we recognize the people that have lost their lives. We should know their names. Their stories.

In Calgary this year, Nadia El-Dib, a 22 year-old women, was stabbed 40 times before being shot twice as she tried to escape her ex-boyfriend.

In Mississauga this year, Alicia Lewandowski’s was shot by her boyfriend. She was only 25 years old.

In 2016, Christina Voelzing, a 24 year-old woman was killed by her former boyfriend on Easter Sunday. The former boyfriend used a .22 calibre hand gun and left her to die.

In 2015, in Renfrew County, just outside of Ottawa, a man shot three of his former partners to death. He showed up unannounced at their doors carrying a sawed off pump-action shotgun.

And of course, Senator Cormier touched on the tragedy of the Desmond family. And I can’t help wondering that if this law had been in place, if the proposed checks had been carried out, then perhaps this family would have still have been alive.

These are just some of the stories of domestic violence that have resulted in death at the hands of perpetrator using a gun. An Ontario study found that a quarter of domestic violence homicides are committed with firearms. A study in rural New Brunswick and PEI found that two-thirds of the women whose homes had firearms made them more fearful for their safety.  70 per cent said it affected their decisions whether to tell or seek help from others. Senator Miville Dechene told us that the presence of firearms in a home is one the key factors in spousal violence.

Honourable Senators: Canadians not only pay with their lives, devastating families and communities but we all collectively pay a steep price for gun violence. According to Amanda Dale from the Barbra Schlifer Clinic, each year, Canadians pay $7.4 billion to deal with the aftermath of spousal violence, including primary health care, loss of income, social supports after escaping violence, and other costs ranging from funerals to the intangible human costs of pain and suffering. As you can see the ripple effects are huge. It affects families, communities and the national psyche.

Every bill that comes to us from the House has a gender based plus analysis attached to it, but since it is part of Cabinet documents, we are not able to see it. I think this is a problem, and one that we may have to find our own fix for. So for instance ensuring that every bill that goes to committee, is subject to a GBA plus analysis as part of its study. Or we find some other way of getting this information. In this case, I hope that the committee looking at this bill will do so through a gendered lens.

Honourable Senators: This Bill provides some reasonable measures that help strengthen our firearm laws in Canada. Extending background checks to include a person’s life history, not only the previous 5 years, is a reasonable approach. Why would we let someone who has a violent or even a disturbed past own a gun?

It also seems reasonable to me that retailers that sell guns should maintain a record of who they sell to. Most retailers already do. It makes sense that all shops should do it. This would help police trace guns that are used in crime.

Mr. Mario Harel, President, Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police, said “…police have been effectively blind to the number of transactions by any licenced individual relating to non-restricted firearms. The absence of such records effectively stymies the ability to trace a non-restricted firearm that has been used in crime. The tracing of a crime gun can assist in identifying the suspect of a crime and criminal sourcing of a trafficking network.”

So I think that this bill deals with two separate questions: first prevention. Looking at a person’s history beyond the immediate past may reasonably contain the potential for harm in the future. Second, this bill will make it easier for the authorities, in particular the police to trace weapons and therefore find the criminals and perpetrators.  I think it is important to do both, but I invoke an age old metaphor: an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. And I believe that the prevention that is embedded in this bill will be reasonable deterrent to misuse of firearms.

Let me address some of the concerns that have been voiced in the Chamber and in the many many emails that we all have received. That most gun owners are law abiding people and that this bill unnecessarily targets them instead of focusing on gangs. Yes, we should focus on gangs and we should focus on hand guns, and I certainly hope that we will see legislation in the future to deal with these issues.

This bill is not meant to address all the many issues related to fire arm violence. But it is meant to address a growing problem.

Almost 20 percent of firearms related violent crimes involve a non restricted firearm. So clearly, this is not the majority of cases. But the figures leave no doubt that there is a small percentage of people who have used guns for other purposes: I have cited the statistics on domestic violence. But let’s not forget the link between mental health, suicide and guns. Between 2014 and 2016, an average of 600 Canadians killed themselves with a gun. Just imagine that number. We would have to fill the chamber here five times over to grasp the magnitude of this tragedy.  And just as in cases of domestic violence, the weapon of choice seems to be a rifle or a shotgun.

I conclude that the numbers are serious enough for us to pay attention to them. And even if the numbers were not, I would still argue that every single life deserves our attention because as John Donne so aptly wrote: “Every man’s death diminishes me because I am part of mankind”.

So back to the law abiding citizens who are peaceful gun owners. I don’t believe that they should feel targeted by this, in fact, if I was one of them, I would feel more secure that the few bad apples would no longer infect the forest.  That my interest in using a weapon for sport, hunting and recreation would be secured from the ill intentions of a few. And yes, I grant that there may be some inconvenience involved, as Senator Gagne has pointed out, but I believe that some inconvenience may be necessary if as a result lives are protected.

We encounter various forms of inconvenience every day on a personal level to protect the collective public good. We stop at red lights, we go through security checks at the airports, we renew our driver’s licenses, we moderate our driving limits so as to not to be a danger to others, we smoke in designated places only, we wear seat belts in cars,  and so on and so forth. I don’t want to minimize the inconvenience to legitimate and law abiding gun owners, but it deserves to be pointed out that owning a gun is a privilege, it is not a right. With every privilege comes a responsibility.

It is our responsibility to send this bill for further study to Committee and because of the seriousness of the matter, I urge us to send this bill to committee sooner rather than later.