Transcripts & Minutes - Standing Senate Committee on National Security, Defence and Veterans Affairs (44th Parliament, 1st Session) — Evidence — 38ev-56420-e — 41-2
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THE STANDING SENATE COMMITTEE ON NATIONAL SECURITY, DEFENCE AND VETERANS AFFAIRS
EVIDENCE
OTTAWA, Monday, October 30, 2023
The Standing Senate Committee on National Security, Defence and Veterans Affairs met with videoconference this day at 3 p.m. [ET] to continue their study on Bill C-21,
An Act to amend certain Acts and to make certain consequential amendments (firearms).
Senator Tony Dean ( Chair ) in the chair.
[ English ]
The Chair: Honourable senators, welcome to this meeting of the Standing Senate Committee on National Security, Defence and Veterans Affairs. I am Tony Dean, representing Ontario, the chair of this committee. I am joined today by fellow committee members, whom I would ask now to introduce themselves, beginning on our right with our deputy chair.
[ Translation ]
Senator Dagenais: Jean-Guy Dagenais from Quebec.
[ English ]
Senator Cardozo: Andrew Cardozo from Ontario.
Senator Anderson: Margaret Dawn Anderson, Northwest Territories.
Senator Pate: Kim Pate. I live here on the unceded, unsurrendered territory of the Algonquin Anishinaabe people. Thank you for joining us.
Senator Dasko: Donna Dasko, senator from Ontario.
Senator Yussuff: Hassan Yussuff, senator from Ontario.
Senator M. Deacon: Marty Deacon, senator from Ontario.
[ Translation ]
Senator Miville-Dechêne: Julie Miville-Dechêne from Quebec.
[ English ]
The Chair: Thank you, colleagues. To my left is the committee’s clerk, Ericka Dupont.
For those watching the session today, we are continuing our study of Bill C-21,
An Act to amend certain Acts and to make certain consequential amendments (firearms).
Today we will hear from five panels of witnesses consisting of academics, researchers and firearms control and anti-violence organizations.
For our meeting today, we are going to be discussing topics related to gun violence. This might be disturbing, both to people in the room with us as well as some watching and listening at home. If anyone requires support, there are services available 24-7 toll-free through Wellness Together Canada, 1-866-585-0445, if you would like to talk to someone. That number again is 1-866-585-0445.
Senators and parliamentary employees are reminded that the Senate’s Employee and Family Assistance Program is available to them and offers short-term counselling for personal work-related concerns as well as crisis counselling.
In our first panel today, we have the pleasure of welcoming Pamela Palmater, Professor and Chair in Indigenous Governance, Toronto Metropolitan University; and A. J. Somerset, author and subject matter expert. We are joined via video conference by Emma Cunliffe, Former Director, Research and Policy, Mass Casualty Commission and Professor, Allard School of Law, University of British Columbia.
Thank you all for joining us today.
We invite you to provide your opening remarks, to be followed by questions from our members, and I remind you that you each have five minutes for your testimony.
We start today with Dr. Palmater. Dr. Palmater, you may begin when you are ready.
Pamela Palmater, Chair in Indigenous Governance, Toronto Metropolitan University, as an individual: Thank you very much. Thank you for inviting me here. Wela’lin .
This is an issue that is very important to me both personally in terms of my advocacy work but also in terms of the research work that I have been doing. I have been researching and engaging on issues related to national security for 15 years. My focus is criminality and corruption in policing, but also far-right and White nationalist groups, as well as the link between hate groups and gun violence and who is at risk from that.
Domestic threats in the U.S. and Canada from White nationalist groups that spew hate, incite violence, both in person in their tiny little groups and online, is rising in Canada. It is considered a domestic threat both here in Canada and the U.S. It has happened so quickly in terms of the increase that many of us don’t believe that the government is fully prepared for this, and gun control is one of those issues, because that does pose a serious public safety threat, but also a threat to national security.
The White nationalist movement is sometimes hidden under the guise of the so-called populist movement, and sometimes they will call themselves far-right conservatives, but they often align themselves with the gun lobby itself.
You have a mix of White nationalist leaders who also purport to be anti-vaccination, pro-free speech, pro-cop. It is a big mix of people who get into this.
Now we know that they have also, sadly, infiltrated law enforcement and the military. There are two different kinds of national security threats there. They are often in the background, agitating as pro-pipeline, pro-choice, pro-gun and also being anti-immigration, anti-vaccine, anti-feminism and anti-Indigenous. According to all of the data we’ve collected on these cells in Canada, they incite violence against a variety of groups.
One group could be anti-Muslim, and another group could be anti-women and the Black community.
The one common denominator in all of these cells is being anti-Indigenous. So guns especially present a specific threat to Indigenous peoples, and the issue of murdered and missing Indigenous women and girls is a statement to that fact.
You have segments of society — human traffickers and obviously drug dealers and gangs, but also certain segments of society that are involved in targeting Indigenous peoples but also Indigenous women.
We all know that guns are the weapon of choice, especially guns that can have multiple rounds at a time, automatic, semi-automatic, and that causes mass casualties at schools, universities, churches and various other killing sprees, not unlike the mass casualty event in Nova Scotia, sadly.
We also have the highest level of online extremism in the world. That should be a particular concern when it comes to the link between online extremism and White hate groups and gun violence, and their close connection to the gun lobby, cannot be understated in terms of the amount of resources they have access to. They are able to go to court and challenge all of these things,
whereas victims of violence often don’t.
They are different from traditional terrorist groups, which tend to be larger in nature, more identifiable and have been on the radar of anti-terrorism law enforcement,
whereas these smaller groups are much harder to find in the online noise of online hate, which is why I am in favour of significant limits on the purchase of both the types of weapons and the number of weapons. I am also a proponent of in-depth, detailed, ongoing and repeated background checks for everyone, and not just a criminal background check, but details including have they been inciting violence online, have they abused their former spouses, and have they been guilty of other things?
I am also in favour of the confiscation of weapons, at least on an interim basis, when men are charged with violent crimes, including domestic abuse, for example, and I believe we could have avoided many of the casualties in Nova Scotia had that been the case.
The Chair: Thank you very much, Dr. Palmater.
We will now hear from Dr. Cunliffe. Whenever you are ready, Dr. Cunliffe, please proceed.
Emma Cunliffe, Former Director, Research and Policy, Mass Casualty Commission and Professor, Allard School of Law, University of British Columbia, as an individual: Thank you very much, indeed, to the members of this Standing Senate Committee on National Security, Defence and Veterans Affairs for inviting me to speak with you today. I begin by acknowledging that I speak from the traditional ancestral and unceded territories of the Musqueam, Tsleil-Waututh and Squamish peoples in the place we know as Vancouver.
As the honourable chair mentioned, I am a professor of law at UBC. I also had the honour of serving as the director of research and policy at the Mass Casualty Commission. I am not speaking today on behalf of the commissioners, but I will direct this honourable committee’s attention to some key parts of the commission’s final report and share some of what I learned in my capacity as the director of research and policy for the commission.
The commission’s orders-in-council directed the commissioners to examine issues including access to firearms and issues touching on police responses to reports of the possession of prohibited firearms and matters related to coordination among law enforcement agencies including the Canadian Firearms Program and Canada Border Services Agency.
The commissioners were directed to give particular consideration to groups and individuals who were differentially impacted by the mass casualty or had the capacity to be differentially impacted by the recommendations made by the commissioners with the stated goal of identifying lessons learned and making recommendations that could help prevent and respond to similar incidents in the future.
To further their mandate, the commissioners looked closely at empirical research on firearms regulation, including the effectiveness of steps taken in other jurisdictions in response to mass shootings. The commissioners attended carefully to the particular questions of rural Canadian culture with respect to firearms, hunting, and Indigenous rights and title.
The commissioned expert reports received evidence and submissions from participants, including the Canadian National Firearms Association, the Canadian Coalition for Firearm Rights and the Canadian Coalition for Gun Control, as well as women’s anti-violence organizations. They convened expert panels and stakeholder discussions on these topics.
Senators, you may see key aspects of the commissioners’ conclusions and recommendations made on the basis of that body of evidence in
chapter 13 of volume 4 of their final report. The commissioners also addressed some specific aspects of rural firearms culture in
chapter 2 of volume 4, and the broader research on mass shootings in
chapter 7 of Volume 3 of their final report.
The commissioners found, as others have done, that the question of firearms regulation is characterized by growing polarization in Canada. Canadian law clearly states that there is no right to bear arms in Canada and that owning a firearm is a privilege that is susceptible to careful regulation in the interests of public safety and to being withdrawn where appropriate.
The commissioners found that the best evidence demonstrates convincingly that prohibiting handguns for most purposes and prohibiting centre fire, semi-automatic long guns has led, in other jurisdictions, to a statistically significant decline in the rate of homicides by shooting; the overall rate of gun deaths, including suicide; the frequency of mass shooting incidents; and, the lethality of mass casualty incidents when they do occur. This evidence is statistically robust, and it is overwhelming.
The commissioners also found a very significant, indeed overwhelming, body of evidence to demonstrate strong connections between gun violence, intimate partner violence, gender-based violence and mass casualty incidents. In the Nova Scotia mass casualty and as it appears devastatingly in the incident that occurred last week in Sault Ste. Marie, a significant history of intimate partner violence and family violence, coupled with concerns about access to firearms, has led to mass casualty incidents occurring in Canada. Those are two striking recent examples.
They are far from being the only examples, the Renfrew County femicides being yet another. The commissioners found a very strong through line between misogyny and intimate partner violence, gender-based violence and gun violence.
The commissioners particularly considered the arguments made by some that reforming firearms law in response to these incidents is opportunistic or takes advantage of the victims of these crimes. They found overwhelmingly that such reforms had been rational and had rationally addressed gaps and shortcomings in regulations and enforcement that have been identified by incidents such as the Nova Scotia mass casualty or the Sault Ste. Marie killings.
Bill C-21 addresses many of the recommendations made by the commissioners. Those measures must be accompanied by implementation of other measures, which I would be pleased to speak to during the question time.
Thank you, senators, for your attention.
The Chair: Thank you, Dr. Cunliffe.
Finally, Mr. Andrew Somerset. Please begin when you are ready.
A.J. Somerset, Author and Subject Matter Expert, as an individual: Thank you. My chief area of interest is in the rhetoric of firearms politics and also in rationales for gun ownership.
A shift has occurred in gun culture in North America — in Canada and the United States — in the reasons that people own firearms. In the 1990s, only 6% of Canadians reported that they owned firearms for self-defence. According to recent polling done for Public Safety Canada, that number is now 24% to 30%. There has been a great growth in interest in owning guns for the purpose of, essentially, shooting people. That is accompanied by a shift — again, this is North America-wide — toward ownership of assault weapons and handguns. Those are the growth areas for the firearm’s industry now.
I just used the expression “assault weapon.” I will take a moment to define that, because it is contentious. Assault weapon or assault-style firearm — what this has referred to in the past is a class of firearms that has been developed to look military. They have military features such as pistol grips and so on, and they appeal to people who like that kind of thing. They like the military appearance.
This leads to the complaint that efforts to regulate assault weapons are all about cosmetics, because there are guns with the same functional characteristics that do the same things, and we’re not going after them. Why are we only going after the military-looking ones?
This has been the approach that has been used, for example, in California to try to define those cosmetic features. It is an erroneous approach. We should be focusing on the function and not the appearance.
The function is easy to describe. First, they are semi-automatic. A semi-automatic firearm allows an unskilled shooter to achieve a higher rate of fire than one with a manually operated action such as a bolt-action firearm. They have detachable box magazines. This allows an unskilled shooter to change magazines and reload the weapon in four seconds or less, which is much harder to accomplish if you are stuffing shells down the tube magazines of a shotgun one by one, for example. The box magazines also make it easy for people to carry a large quantity of ammunition.
This creates a public safety concern, I believe, around assault weapons. These are the weapons that are most seriously implicated in those mass public shooting events and also in extremist violence when we see that. Extremist violence actually often merges into those mass public shooting events. For example, the Quebec City mosque shooting.
The magazines themselves are also part of the problem. In Canada, we have a problem in that we have legislated a five-round limit on magazines, but the magazines for assault weapons are typically actually 30-round magazines that have been altered so that they can’t hold more than five rounds, typically by adding a rivet that stops the magazine follower from moving. Any person with hand tools can modify these magazines back, and then you have a 30-round magazine, and it takes minutes. That is a significant concern as well. Everyone who is involved in the broad firearms debate actually acknowledges that this is a problem.
In terms of what we can do about this, we can’t prevent mass murder from occurring. Mass murders are going to occur, but we can, at the risk of repeating what has already been said, reduce the frequency of the events, the number of fatalities, and we can reduce the severity of the wounds among those people who are wounded.
In short, we don’t need to make it easy for people to commit mass murder, so there are things that we can do about this.
We don’t have a lot of examples in Canada that we can use for mass public shootings but, fortunately, the United States offers us many.
In the United States, the frequency and severity of mass shootings are up since 2004, which is the date of the expiry of the federal assault weapons ban in the United States. In the period of the assault weapons ban, which was 1995-04, there were annually 3.4 incidents on average and a total of 17.8 annual deaths on average. In the last ten-year period, that is now 6.1 incidents on average and 55.6 deaths. The deaths have increased far more than the number of incidents. We’re seeing a greater number of fatalities per incident.
Also, there’s recent research in the United States — this was in the American Journal of Public Health — in 2019, a 62% higher death toll when we have large-capacity magazines used in a mass shooting. Magazine size does, indeed, matter.
The Chair: Thank you, Mr. Somerset. There will be time to engage further, as you know.
We will now proceed to questions. Our guests are with us until 3:55 p.m. today.
We will do our best to allow time for each member to ask a question. With this in mind, you each have four minutes for each question, including the answer. I will hold up this card to indicate that 30 seconds remain in your time. Isn’t that impressive?
I ask that you keep your questions succinct and identify the witness you are addressing.
The first question goes, as always, to our deputy chair.
[ Translation ]
Senator Dagenais: The way you put it, crime is entirely attributable to white male supremacists. You mentioned people in the military and police. I just want to point out that I was a police officer for 40 years, but I don’t relate to any of that.
Anyway, there were 8,047 gun crimes in Canada in 2021. Can you tell us how many of those were committed by supremacists in possession of firearms? Many were domestic crimes, organized crime score-settling and hunting accidents that I’m sure have nothing to do with the supremacists you’re talking about.
[ English ]
Ms. Palmater: Thank you very much for your question. The problem with these groups is the crossover. Think about discrimination and how there is intersectionality. You cannot just look at race; you also have to look at gender and sometimes disability. It is the same with these groups. A white supremacist group could cross over with an incel group, which could cross over with a drug group, a gang, a guy who commits domestic violence against his partner — for example — or someone who believes in all of that and participates informally. The reach and the crossover is what is extensive.
What we have said is that law enforcement agencies have not done enough to actually look at that crossover, the impact of it, and the numbers attached specifically to gun violence in those crossover areas.
[ Translation ]
Senator Dagenais: Mr. Somerset, the number of mass shootings that happen in the U.S. every year certainly doesn’t compare to what we’ve seen in Canada in recent decades, fortunately. When politicians try to introduce new gun control measures, do you think they’re paying more attention to what’s going on south of the border rather than actually evaluating the behaviour of Canadian gun owners?
Do you think there’s a way to modify Bill C-21 to make it acceptable to hunters and gun owners while tightening control over sale and possession?
[ English ]
Mr. Somerset: With respect to Bill C-21 and its effect on hunters, in the first place, this bill does not change the status of a single long gun in Canada. The only long guns that would be affected by this legislation would be those designed and manufactured after it comes into force. It does not affect hunters nearly as badly as some of the rhetoric we’re hearing pretends.
Something that we know from the recent Environics and EKOS surveys focusing on gun owners, which were done for public safety, is that, in fact, although our gun lobby likes to claim that there is a 2.2 million-strong voting block that all thinks the same way, about 60% — depending upon which poll you are looking at — of gun owners in this country would actually support action to ban assault weapons.
To address the premise of the question: I don’t think this bill is necessarily unacceptable to hunters at large in this country. I think it is unacceptable to a relatively small proportion of gun owners who use hunters as their shield and rallying cry.
[ Translation ]
Senator Miville-Dechêne: This question is for Ms. Cunliffe, who is with us via video conference.
[ English ]
I will ask it in English to make it very clear.
The Mass Casualty Commission recommended that the federal government amend the Criminal Code to prohibit the use of a magazine with more than five rounds. However, I understand the rules on magazines allow the sale of modifiable magazines that are pinned at five but can easily be converted to their full illegal capacity — as several mass shooters have done. It can include drums of 110 rounds if I understand well.
According to you, what should be done? I know you are not talking for the Mass Casualty Commission, but I would like to hear your thoughts on the fact that on the one side, we say that five is the maximum, but on the other side, there are all those exceptions.
Ms. Cunliffe: Thank you, senator, for that important question. This is also a question that was grappled with by New Zealand in the wake of the Christchurch mosque massacre. The path that New Zealand took in response to that problem was, first of all, to extend regulation much more clearly than had previously been the case to magazines that can be switched out and, secondly, to regulate the sale of external magazines only to those that could not be modified in that way.
A switchable magazine is still a possibility but only one that is truly limited to five and can’t be altered simply through drilling out the pin, which is, as I understand it, the way people get around the regulation at present.
You are quite right that I don’t speak for the commissioners. My view is that this would be an appropriate measure in Canada.
Senator Miville-Dechêne: Do you think this could be done in regulation or in this bill?
Ms. Cunliffe: It is my understanding that it can be done by regulation. The value of making it part of the bill is clarity. One of the very important things we heard in the evidence of the Mass Casualty Commission is that there is a great deal of uncertainty about what is and isn’t lawful in the community at large. The commissioners heard from 35 community members who were aware that the perpetrator had an arsenal of weapons but, for the most part, were not sure whether they were legal, whether he had a licence or what to do if he didn’t or shouldn’t.
One of my additional recommendations is that all that can be done to clarify the regulations so that they are simple and easy to apply is worth doing. As well, all that can be done by way of community education so that people understand what is and isn’t permitted and know when something is happening that shouldn’t be, is an effort well spent.
Senator Miville-Dechêne: I have a quick question on violence against women and firearms.
I read somewhere that if there’s one arm or gun in the house, that’s a factor that must be taken into consideration for violence. Is that true? I’m trying to explain in English something that’s complicated.
Ms. Cunliffe: I understand. There is a researcher from New Brunswick, Deborah Doherty, who has done extremely helpful work on gun violence in rural communities, intimate partner violence. She had large numbers of participants over many years. She has found that women’s fear of lethality and the experience of lethality increased by orders or magnitudes with the presence of firearms in the home. She also managed to untangle some of the rural surveys that suggest rural communities are opposed to increased firearms regulation to find that is a gendered phenomenon. Women in rural communities are supportive of increased firearms regulation
whereas men are largely opposed. That reflects a differential experience of personal violence, not least.
Senator Miville-Dechêne: Interesting. Thank you.
Senator Cardozo: Thank you. My question is for Dr. Palmater. I am surprised at your statement that the high level of online extremism is in Canada. That’s most disturbing. Can you talk a bit more about that?
You talked about these multiple groups. I wonder if they are the same people sometimes but with a different message. Would you add anti-LGBTQ, anti-trans rights as part of the latest battle that they are launching? How does all of that relate to gun use?
Ms. Palmater: Right. In the international study done on online extremism — and, it is online where they do the recruiting, the misinformation, the fear mongering, the conspiracy theory stuff, how to make weapons, how to modify weapons, where to access them — there are all different levels. Then there is the incitement. It is not just like people going online saying, “I hate women,” incels, for example. It is a matter of, for example, “This is what should happen to them if only someone were brave enough. Do you know anyone with an assault weapon?
Think of how many people we could get.” Or, “The next time we’re in Ottawa and they try to impose vaccines, let’s bring weapons,” kind of like what they did at the border in Alberta during the whole freedom convoy. It is not just the view, it is the view coupled with the incitement and the fact that Canada has the highest international online engagement with right-wing extremism which obviously isn’t just White hate groups. In almost every case, they are somehow attached to what falls under the category.
Some are neo-Nazis; some are KKK; some are incel groups; some are anti everything that isn’t White male, for example.
This poses a problem because kids are being recruited in these online fora. Kids are being incited to violence. That’s not being tracked at the same level because they are not gun-toting adults saying, “I want my hunting rifle,” or “I want my assault weapon.” It is literally how they morph into that.
Senator Cardozo: Why Canada? In some ways, we have thought of ourselves as being a small-L liberal, open-minded society. Is this a backlash to that, or is there any other factor that would put us on this list?
Ms. Palmater: I think there are a multitude of factors. One, how many law enforcement agencies in Canada are detailed, tracking that and all of the feeding group factors, all of the crossovers, all the threats not only to public safety — which is significant; we don’t want mass casualties, we don’t want people taking trucks and running down people in the street — but also what is the threat to national security in these groups when you have people with those views who participate in those fora informally and are in law enforcement, or in the military, or in some kind of emergency management public safety position. That’s a threat to national security. I don’t think that is looked at enough.
Canada is slow on the draw in terms of considering White hate groups as a domestic terror threat and a link to gun violence. Indigenous people have been killed by White supremacists. Leo LaChance was killed. Look at rural racism — not in the area of White hate groups but having the same feelings. What happened when unarmed Colten Boushie was shot point-blank? What was the response by rural farmers? “Let’s get more weapons. Let’s shoot them.
Let’s kill them and put them in the ground.” It is that kind of incitement to violence that leads people to do things that they might not otherwise do if they didn’t have that community of support. Canada, being the most significant in the world, that should be a bigger concern, but we pay attention to the U.S. to the detriment of our own.
Senator Cardozo: Thank you.
Senator Dasko: Thank you to our witnesses today.
Professor Palmater, your description of the various groups intersecting, makes me think about a massive Venn diagram where you have different overlaps. I would love to know the percentage of Canadians in each of the overlaps in a Venn diagram. Maybe you have that somewhere. That’s what came to mind when I listened to you because we’re not talking about all these people together. We are talking about mixtures of them and overlaps, as opposed to one large group. I think there are overlaps there. In any case, that’s a bit of an aside.
I want to dig deeper into your comments on background checks on guns. You said that you favoured this. Do you have a sense of the deficiencies that exist in background checks? I don’t know if you have done any research in this area, but what is lacking? Who might be responsible? What should we be doing? Does this bill address it or, through the provisions of the bill, are we addressing this in any way?
Ms. Palmater: Those are good questions. Before I get into the background checks, on the issue of far-right extremism and their attachment to White hate groups, obviously one of the things they are doing on social media is speaking to younger groups. They will take an issue that Canadians are upset with, for example, inflation, and they will grab onto that and give an overly simplified solution to the problem that aligns with where they are going. That’s how they draw people in. That’s how many anti-vaxxers were suddenly pro-gun and they weren’t even talking about guns before, or anti-Muslim, that kind of thing.
In terms of background checks, I even hate the word “background check” because I feel we are missing opportunities for prevention. Just like in the environment or in medical situations, we should always use the precautionary principle. How many opportunities or stages of opportunities do we have to catch a problem? Is it only at the point of sale? I would argue that’s a blip in a person’s life. What about when a domestic abuse complaint is made?
Why are we not checking then and not just for criminality, not just for a criminal charge, but also are you running these online fora, inciting people to run down people with vehicles or shoot them with guns? Are you doing that? Have you committed violence against other people that may not have attracted a charge, that might have been settled? Is there a civil suit where you have been doing those things, namely, threatening gun violence and you were sued civilly and not criminally? We don’t have an expensive enough background check and we don’t do it at multiple stages. It should be rechecked on an ongoing basis.
Who someone was when they bought the gun to begin with can be very different 10 years later.
Senator Dasko: That means going back to people who have gun licences and doing these kinds of checks periodically?
Ms. Palmater: Yes.
Senator Dasko: Will this bill deal with that, even through other provisions? Is this a kind of stand alone —
Ms. Palmater: The bill is something. I’d rather this bill than nothing. As Ms. Cunliffe said, we can fill it in with some regulations, but I do think more is needed.
Senator Yussuff: Thank you, witnesses, for being here. I will start with Ms. Cunliffe.
In regard to the mass casualty report, and, of course, the recommendation, is there anything missing in this bill that would aid and support, of course, what the findings were, that is critical and is not currently in the bill?
Ms. Cunliffe: Thank you very much, senator, for that extremely important question. We heard evidence, particularly from Australia, that the success of the firearms reforms that took place in that jurisdiction under a Conservative government in 1996, after the Port Arthur massacre, was very much predicated on the fact that the prohibition of certain firearms, the regulation of magazine size and the strengthening of background checks were accompanied by a variety of other measures that were also intended to address the problems of gun violence.
Those included —and I think this is significant in terms of the polarization that we’re seeing in the Canadian community — close work with sports shooting associations and hunting associations in order to ensure that the regulations worked well, to allow, for example, Olympic sports shooters to continue to compete, and to allow rural landowners to continue to do pest control or manage livestock in the ways in which they needed to do. That was achievable while prohibiting handguns and semi-automatic firearms by working with those people as partners.
Something that concerns me is that there does seem to be an extremely polarized rhetoric playing out. I suspect, as my colleague on the panel said, that there is a quiet majority of law-abiding gun owners who respect the skill, frankly, associated with appropriate firearm ownership and use, and who are concerned by the growing violence and the growing self-protection discourse that’s emerging from segments of their community. I would like to see more done to engage that segment of the gun-owning community, frankly.
I also think that it’s necessary to implement other recommendations made by the commissioners of the Mass Casualty Commission. For example, to ensure that victims of intimate partner and family violence have safe and effective pathways to leave violent relationships and to stay safe; to report concerns about firearms if they choose to stay, as is their right; and to implement public education about firearms regulation, so that community members know what’s allowed, know when they should report concerns and how to do so safely.
It is important to offer culturally appropriate firearms education to Indigenous youth and communities, and to work with those communities to ensure culturally appropriate community-led approaches to firearm safety that allow the exercise of Indigenous hunting rights. It is also important to ensure that rural and remote communities have access to mental health services and addiction treatment, to reduce both the rates of self-harm using firearms and firearm violence in those communities.
The commissioners really emphasized that this is a complete package of recommendations, and while strengthening regulation and coordination, as Bill C-21 does, are both important steps, they need to be accompanied by other measures.
Senator Pate: Thank you to the witnesses for appearing. My questions are for Dr. Palmater and Dr. Cunliffe, but I’m happy to have you also weigh in as well. First, Dr. Palmater: Many people are raising issues around the rights of Indigenous people, First Nations people, to their hunting rights and the like. I am curious how you see this legislation impacting those rights?
Dr. Cunliffe, you mentioned the Port Arthur massacre, and I’m struck by, in addition to using very clear language, like even “mass casualty,” for instance, the importance of looking at all the other factors that contribute — the fact that we often see people who end up convicted of serial killing or mass shootings, first having been known to be perpetrators of intimate partner violence or violence against women. We know that this is so in virtually every situation internationally that’s happened, and yet we don’t take that seriously.
The National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls, they pointed out the same thing yet we don’t take that seriously. What other measures would you like to see included in addition to what you’ve already said in response to Senator Yussuff? I ask that of both of you, but let’s start with Dr. Palmater and then Dr. Cunliffe.
Ms. Palmater: Thanks for the question. It is a really important one because the gun lobby very quickly tried to expropriate and exploit Indigenous peoples to be in favour of unrestricted gun use and no background checks, as if they had any kind of sympathy or compassion for First Nations rights. That being said, First Nations do have a right in this country. In fact, they are the only group in this country that has a constitutional right to bear arms. The Supreme Court of Canada has already said that no one else does, but we do. We have that by virtue of our treaty rights, Aboriginal rights and our rights to protect our territories. Now that’s reinforced not only with
section 35 but with the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, or UNDRIP, the right to govern our territories, which would include things like gun control. That’s on a collective level.
On an individual level, the whole idea that First Nations need assault rifles and handguns to shoot a deer is ridiculous. Never. Never has that ever happened. The two really need to be separated: weapons of significant destruction, like an assault weapon, versus a long gun for hunting. They are not even remotely similar.
We have to make sure that we are taking into account that even First Nation rights, even within a First Nation community and First Nation law, has to be balanced with the safety of women. We do have to take that seriously — and the safety of children and everyone around us. No right is absolute. The First Nation right takes priority over others in the Constitution, but that has to be balanced with safety, and I think this bill can go ahead and pass.
I think you can fill it out with regulations, but I think that the government should also commit to working in partnership with First Nations on how we are going to do joint background checks, identify what the kinds of opportunities for safety that we can do are and what the other limits we should put in place given that we know there are many societal threats to First Nations, in particular, First Nations women.
Ms. Cunliffe: Thank you, Senator Pate. You are quite right that the commissioners drew a strong line between a history of intimate partner or gender-based violence and the perpetration of mass casualties, and that’s very well established in the research. Whether we look at the Nova Scotia mass casualty, the most recent incident in Sault Ste. Marie, or other Canadian examples, such as Renfrew County, we see a history of concerns about a violent man, his access to firearms and his treatment of women. We see that those concerns have been reported to the police, but frequently not properly investigated or taken sufficiently seriously.
A significant thing that should accompany this bill is a very clear focus on accountability of law enforcement agencies to actually implement the law as it is written.
There are presently measures for the withdrawal of a firearms licence in circumstances of concern about public safety. Those mechanisms are rarely used, and they weren’t used in the three mass casualty examples that I’ve just shared, despite the fact that they could have been.
The Chair: I am sorry to interrupt. I apologize, but we have to move on.
Senator Boehm: Thank you to our witnesses for being here and to Dr. Cunliffe for joining us virtually. My question is actually for you, Dr. Cunliffe, but I think our two witnesses here might want to respond to this as well. I am really looking at whether we can learn anything from observing what is going on in other jurisdictions. What do I mean by this? There are parallels between what happened in Nova Scotia and what happened last week in Lewiston, Maine, both from the similar number of casualties to the respective manhunts for the perpetrators, what the lessons might be and what can be learned by Canadian gun policy researchers and advocates.
I don’t expect that we know all the details about what happened in Maine, and don’t know, as was the case in Nova Scotia, of any link between gender-based and/or intimate partner violence.
I am curious, Dr. Cunliffe, about your views on what can be learned across jurisdictions, keeping in mind the gun laws and that, indeed, the debate around guns and the political-cultural aspects are much different in Canada than in the U.S.
Ms. Cunliffe: Thank you, senator. I will try to keep my remarks brief so that my colleagues can also address your questions.
The commissioners found that it is an appropriate strategy for law enforcement and lawmakers to use to look to examples in other jurisdictions rather than wait until they arrive at our doorstep. One of the significant parallels between the sad incident last week in Lewiston, Maine — and Nova Scotia, of course, is the source of the guns — and in the Nova Scotia mass casualty event, the source was largely Maine. We share a border with the U.S., and aspects of the U.S. gun culture are influencing Canada’s gun culture. Studies of those matters that are proceeding in the U.S. are directly relevant and helpful to the conversations we are having here.
Some use that as a reason not to make changes. They say that because we share the border and it is largely undefended, there’s no point in seeking stronger regulation because guns will be smuggled and guns can be 3-D printed. I disagree with that perspective, not least because having clarity around what is and isn’t permitted allows the community to play the role that it must play in assisting law enforcement to enforce firearms regulations — to recognize when there is a problem and to report it.
Mr. Somerset: When we look at the rhetoric of gun politics, there tends to be this attempt to shut down international comparisons, particularly any comparison to events that happen in the States. We absolutely can learn from events that happen in the United States. There’s a great deal of research in the United States. They have a lot of incidents to study. It is a great laboratory for what happens when you don’t regulate. Similarly, we can learn from New Zealand, Australia and the U.K.
Senator Boehm: I find the Maine example interesting. Maine is very close to Canada. The cultures are very similar — small towns, hunting communities, that sort of thing. It might be interesting to look at.
Mr. Somerset: I would add that the idea that we have a different gun culture here in Canada is both true and untrue. There are ways in which we have a different gun culture in Canada. Certainly, the broad attitudes of Canadians toward guns are quite different than in the United States. The culture of gun ownership in this country tends to shift with the culture of gun ownership in the United States. I provided an example of that in my introductory remarks when we talk about self-defence and the growth of the market for handguns and assault weapons.
Senator Oh: Thank you, witnesses, for being here with us.
I have a question for Professor Palmater. I want to follow up on a question from Senator Dagenais that you did not answer. He asked you what percentage of violent crime is committed by White supremacists. Can you tell us a bit more about your studies and comment on the evidence?
Ms. Palmater: For sure, and I can make a submission after this as well.
My point to the senator was that, sadly, law enforcement is failing to be proactive and preventive in this area and is primarily looking at formal groups. You can identify a Ku Klux Klan — or KKK — group and organization, what their membership structure is, where they are and all the chatter online. It is much harder to make statistics when they cross over into an incel group, an informal group or a multitude of these groups.
We have been telling law enforcement that they need to do a better job of disaggregating data on all of this stuff. They need to put this in their report, and they need to look at their associations. Yes, it might be domestic violence and he shot his wife, but what groups was he part of prior to that and who is he affiliated with? Those are the kinds of things that aren’t followed up after the fact unless they consider it relevant for trial. Oftentimes, people plead guilty, so you are not getting that information.
We are saying that we need disaggregated data. We can point to incidences and to all of these things that are happening in the United States but my question is, why wait? Why wait until it is as bad as the United States and then say that we should start collecting the disaggregated data?
Senator Oh: Thank you.
The Chair: Thank you very much. This brings us to the end of our panel. On behalf of the committee, I thank you, Dr. Cunliffe, Dr. Palmater and Mr. Somerset. We greatly appreciate, first of all, you taking the time with us today but, second and most important, the significant contributions you’ve made to our learning as we move through this and to the study we are undertaking. It will serve us well. We wish you all the best. Thank you again.
Colleagues, we will now continue with our next panel. For those tuning into today’s meeting, we are exploring Bill C-21,
An Act to amend certain Acts and to make certain consequential amendments (firearms).
For the next 55 minutes, we have the pleasure of welcoming, Dr. Natasha Saunders, Physician with the Canadian Paediatric Society and at the Hospital for Sick Children; by video conference, Dr. Alan Drummond, Chair Emeritus, Public Affairs Committee with the Canadian Association of Emergency Physicians; and, Dr. Najma Ahmed with Canadian Doctors for Protection from Guns.
Thank you all for joining us today. I invite you to provide your opening remarks, to be followed by questions from our members. I remind you that you each have five minutes for your testimony. We will begin today with Dr. Natasha Saunders.
Dr. Natasha Saunders, Physician, Hospital for Sick Children and Representative of the Canadian Paediatric Society: Thank you for having me here today. As mentioned, I’m a paediatrician at the Hospital for Sick Children and a health-services researcher whose research is focused on firearms, mental illness and their intersection. I have the privilege of being here today to represent the Canadian Paediatric Society.
As an organization, we support the passage of Bill C-21, and I would like to illustrate why we do in terms of its often underestimated potential to affect the lives of children and youth.
To me, the collective measures proposed in this bill are designed to reduce the total load of circulating firearms, especially those sourced from organized crime. Strengths of the bill include increased penalties for weapons offences, creation of offences for processes related to 3-D printing and inclusion of certain firearm parts in offences regarding firearms.
Critics of Bill C-21 have dismissed or downplayed this powerful legislation, suggesting it will lead to modifications in the way they use their firearms for recreational enjoyment or in how they run their businesses or that the total number of firearm deaths in Canada, particularly from legal firearms, is relatively low. I’m here to tell you as a paediatrician that the impacts are much greater.
In Ontario alone from 2003 to 2018, 5,486 children and youth showed up in Ontario hospitals with a firearm injury. Over 500 of them died. Of the over 5,000 injured, over a quarter were assaulted with a firearm. The rest was unintentional or suicide related.
All of these injuries were not just scrapes and bruises. Half were shot in the head and neck, and of those, half resulted in traumatic brain injury. These are not small numbers.
Now, I want you to consider for a second, the ripple effects of just one of these injuries. When a 17-year-old boy is shot and killed in a Toronto community housing complex, caught in the crossfire of gang violence, what then happens to his 15-year-old younger brother who now mourns the death of his older brother and wants revenge? What about his 12-year-old sister who can no longer sleep at night, who can no longer attend school and completely withdraws in fear? What about their mother, whose life has been destroyed by the tragic and premature death of her son?
Then, of course, there is the teen’s entire community that grieves. These, too, are victims of firearm injury, and these lives should always be counted, considered and supported. The impact of firearms on their lives must also be weighed.
I would like to now bring your attention to the school setting. Some argue that there are few domestically sourced guns that pose a problem in Canada, but imagine for a second that just one of these domestically manufactured guns ends up with an active shooter in a school. Picture a school lockdown of 600 students. In school shootings, every time there is a lockdown, every time a ten-year-old has to hide under their desk at school, away from the windows, that is traumatizing and anxiety provoking. Every time there is a gun on school property with an associated lockdown, we have 600 school age victims terrified by the threat of violence.
I urge you to see the forest through the trees in order to see the bigger picture and see how stopping just one of these, whether it is by preventing a legal gun from being diverted or by rapidly removing a firearm from an individual who threatens violence toward others or themselves, as this bill will allow, can be impactful. Through all this debate, we must remember that young people have a right to feel safe and secure at home and at school.
I want to speak briefly about the importance of the proposed red and yellow flag laws in the bill. This past week’s tragic death by firearm of five people in Sault Ste. Marie, including three children aged 6, 7 and 12, is a stark reminder that intimate partner violence is not just about intimate partners. It affects whole families, children and innocent lives.
The introduction of red and yellow flag laws in Bill C-21 provide one tool to protect the public and vulnerable families from assault-related and self-inflicted injury. Specifically, this bill protects children by facilitating licence revocation and weapons surrender in cases of domestic violence with clear and specific
definitions of what constitutes domestic violence, such as coercive and controlling behaviour, psychological and financial abuse and threats to cause harm to any person.
As we move forward, the Canadian Paediatric Society recognizes that all levels of government must work together to make meaningful changes to reduce violence among Canada’s youth. We all have important work to do, and as such, we strongly support the passage of Bill C-21.
The Chair: Thank you, Dr. Saunders.
Next, we will hear from Dr. Drummond. Over to you when you are ready.
Dr. Alan Drummond, Chair Emeritus, Public Affairs Committee, Canadian Association of Emergency Physicians: Thank you very much.
We, in the emergency medicine community, are very strongly supportive of this bill, particularly with respect to the red flag law provision. We believe that that is an application of a public health and injury prevention measure, which has the potential promise of lives saved.
Gun control is increasingly polarized in this country, but I think we can all agree that the prevention of death is clearly sufficient motivation across the ideological divide and in the best tradition of Canadian values.
Of all firearm deaths, 35% to 80% are due to suicide, and if we, as a nation, are to be serious about reducing firearm deaths, then we must make suicide prevention a priority.
There is a little bit of cross-referencing with Dr. Ahmed’s presentation, so I am not really going to go into the statistics, other than to say that there are about ten Canadians who die every day as a result of suicide, and for every one of those, we have literally dozens who show up at the emergency department seeking assistance. Because a gun in a home is a recognized factor for completed suicide, we worry that when we send people home, we are sending them home to an uncertain future, such as a loaded shotgun under the bed or a handgun under the pillow. We just don’t know.
The inevitability of suicide is a total myth. We know that most of these things are impulsive, and if people survive their initial suicide attempt, we know that they will not go on to complete suicide, with little risk of substitution methods.
The other big issue is that of intimate partner violence. Up to 30% to 40% of people who present to our emergency department have been victims of intimate partner violence. Again, the risk of death to a victim of intimate partner violence is significantly higher — fivefold — when there is access to a firearm in the home. The emergency department on a daily basis is faced with individuals who are at potential risk of firearm death, but knowing that there are firearms in the homes, we cannot really intervene. Only in the face of clear and imminent danger can confidentiality be breached.
The other issue is that of mass shootings. The University of Michigan looked at about 6,000 red flag law impositions, and about 10% of those were for shooting threats to intend to harm as many people as possible.
We have been very supportive since 1995 in our original brief to Bill C-68 with regard to a notification system, and so we were obviously quite delighted in 2020 when Minister Blair announced the potential of a red flag law. This is based strictly on the American model, in which there are 22 such laws, so it is a bit of a hybrid, and of those 22 laws, only 3 allow for the physician to breach confidentiality.
It should be noted that the seven states with the lowest rates of firearm death in 2020 all had red flag laws, and in Indiana and Connecticut, for every ten Extreme Risk Protection Orders, or ERPOs, there was one suicide saved.
Canada’s model requires a petition to the court, a judicial hearing and then an unexpected time frame for initial removal of the firearms. We only make some observations and not recommendations, but we are concerned with the absolute need for a petition to the court and judicial hearing prior to the removal of firearms, only because that leads to the potential of time, and a loss of time can lead to increased risk of femicide. Furthermore, from a suicide prevention model, we are concerned, given the abysmal state of lack of access to psychiatric care, that we are sending people home to die by suicide.
Similarly, Canadian provinces have all adopted a medical reporting mechanism, where when a gunshot victim presents to the emergency department, it is reported to the police. We view the development of a direct medical reporting system prior to the trigger being pulled as a positive upstream solution to this increasing problem.
Lastly, and fundamentally, however, the decision to allow medical reporting and the breach of patient confidentiality is a provincial concern, not a federal one, and it is within the purview of the provincial regulatory colleges. Following the passage of this legislation, the next logical step for the federal government would be a collaborative effort with all the provinces and the medical colleges to develop a template for such a medical reporting system and provide the required financial resources for their effective implementation.
Thank you very much.
The Chair: Thank you very much, Dr. Drummond.
We now move to our final witness in this panel, Dr. Ahmed. Please proceed when you are ready.
Dr. Najma Ahmed, Professor of Surgery, Trauma and Emergency Surgery, University of Toronto, Canadian Doctors for Protection from Guns: Thank you very much, senators, and my esteemed colleagues. I’m delighted to be here to speak on this matter.
Nearly five years ago, physicians from across Canada came together to call for stronger legislative measures and other interventions to prevent gun violence because we, as physicians, could no longer accept the many harms being inflicted upon our patients, their families and entire communities; harms like the mass shooting that we all witnessed last week in Sault Ste. Marie that killed a woman and three young children.
In 2021, the Canadian Medical Association declared that firearm-related injuries and fatalities are a major cause of premature and preventable death in Canada. A 2020 Ontario study showed that over a 15-year period, there were nearly 6,500 gun injuries with a fatality rate of 42%. Another Canadian study showed that up to 20% of patients who survived firearm injuries suffer with lifelong disability.
I can tell you that many of my patients never go back to work or school. A B.C. study from earlier this year found that firearm violent crime cost that province nearly $300 million per year.
Canada needs Bill C-21. It will save lives. There are a lot of differing views on this issue, as well as some disinformation. I would, therefore, like to tell you about an event last month intended to inform public policy discourse on this subject.
I had the privilege to serve as a scientific co-chair for a conference themed gun violence as a public health issue co‑sponsored by the Canadian Academy of Health Sciences. In addition to an outstanding cross-section of international subject matter experts, including researchers who have published in some of the most esteemed scientific journals in the world, attendees heard first-person accounts from survivors of mass shootings, physicians, anti-racism educators, community organizers and gun owners, including an Indigenous health leader and hunter.
Several clear and consistent themes emerged, which are relevant to this debate: One, Canada has one of the highest rates of per capita gun ownership and gun deaths among economically developed nations.
Two, evidence presented showed that the more guns in a society the more gun deaths there are, and stricter gun laws result in fewer gun deaths.
Three, Bill C-21 would bring us closer in line with our peer nations such as the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, Japan and Norway, among others. All these nations have banned most types of semi-automatic assault-style weapons firearms that can kill and maim many people in mere minutes. All these countries, like Canada, have robust hunting cultures.
Four, in urban environments where handguns are more predominantly used, racialized communities and Black youth in particular are disproportionately affected. The mental health impacts of this violence in Black communities are enormous, this is why we urge greater investments in the social determinants of health.
Five, there is a strong link, as has been discussed today, between domestic violence and presence of firearms, including to intimidate and control. There is a five-fold increase in the risk of being killed when a gun is involved in an intimate partner incident. Those at higher risk include Indigenous and rural women.
Six, as Dr. Drummond just said, firearm suicides account for about 75% of gun deaths in Canada, mostly affecting men in rural communities. As firearms are the most lethal means of suicide, putting time and distance between a person at risk and lethal means can save lives. More than 90% of people who survive a suicide attempt do not go on to die by suicide. And one presenter at our conference noted that in 48 of 49 studies, firearm restrictions were associated with an overall reduction in suicide rates.
Seven, with respect to Bill C-21’s proposed red flag laws, research from the U.S. suggest that rates of suicide, mass shootings and intimate partner violence can be lessened with tools like a red flag law. Experts stress the importance of a 24/7 process for courts to consider applications, and that sufficient funding and education are required for successful implementation.
Eight, firearms have a specific and dangerous connection to far-right hate groups further strengthening the arguments and need for this bill to pass into law. The conference strengthened our resolve as an organization to ensure that evidence-based, common-sense measures included in Bill C-21 become law.
There is still more to do, and a national research centre focused on studying the various facets of gun violence is needed in Canada. Our members are pleased with the significant efforts toward making all our communities safer. For the last 20 years, I have been treating patients devastated by firearm injuries and consoling patients and families left behind with immeasurable grief. My sole interest today is to protect Canadians and prevent further devastation. Thank you for listening, and sorry for going over time.
The Chair: Thank you, Dr. Ahmed. We will now proceed to questions. The panel finishes at 4:50 p.m. I will limit each question, including the answer, to four minutes. I will hold up this card to indicate that 30 seconds remains in your time. Please keep your questions succinct and identify the person that you are addressing the question to.
The first question to Deputy Chair, Senator Dagenais.
[ Translation ]
Senator Dagenais: My question is for Dr. Ahmed. In 2021, gun crimes accounted for less than 3% of violent crime in the country. Most of the weapons involved were obtained via the illegal gun trade, not lawfully owned by Canadians.
What direct and immediate impact will Bill C-21 have? How can it be amended to help the government find the actual source of the guns being used to commit these crimes and murder people?
[ English ]
Dr. Ahmed: Thank you for the question. In fact, it should be noted that many legal firearms are also used to commit crimes and, of course, the majority of suicides and domestic violence incidents involve legal firearms.
I believe in this hearing, Mark Flynn, Acting Commissioner, Royal Canadian Mounted Police, testified and I quote:
. . . if you look at the number of firearms that we have traced through various tracing efforts, 69% of those firearms were deemed to have been illegally imported into or manufactured in Canada.
Legal firearms that are in Canada are likely contributing to the pool of firearms that are being used in gang-related and organized crime homicides. That doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t address the illegal flow of firearms into our country, but I think it is not accurate to say that legal firearms are not contributing to crime in our country or gun deaths overall. As an example, the gun used in the mass shooting on the Danforth was stolen from a gun shop in Saskatchewan.
[ Translation ]
Senator Dagenais: There has been a significant increase in the number of violent crimes committed by people suffering from behavioural issues that require psychiatric care.
Weapons such as knives and swords are often used instead of firearms, and we know there’s no knife control. Does the medical community have thoughts on the use of guns versus knives that you could share with us? How big a concern are knives right now?
[ English ]
Dr. Ahmed: Certainly, mental health issues need to be addressed. We need to provide people with supports.
But it is a myth that people with mental illness are necessarily violent. In fact, people with mental illness are often the victims of violent crime rather than the perpetrator.
I can tell you as a trauma surgeon, the case fatality rate for a stab wound is much less than for gunshot wounds. Guns are in fact intended to kill and maim people. That is why we quip our armies with them. Knives are much less injurious.
Senator Kutcher: Thank you. I have two questions, one for Dr. Ahmed and one for Dr. Drummond. Dr. Ahmed, soon after the Danforth shooting, you and a group of your colleagues put forward statements about a need for interventions to decrease firearm violence and that firearm violence should be addressed as a public health issue. Because of these statements, you were targeted with a stay-in-your-lane doctor campaign similar to the National Rifle Association, also known as the NRA, actions against the American College of Physicians after it framed gun violence as a public health issue.
Do you think that Bill C-21 should be framed in terms of gun violence being a public health issue? Would you tell us a bit about where those threats against you originated and what impact they had on you and your colleagues?
Dr. Ahmed: Thank you for the question, senator.
Indeed, most scientific communities, medical communities and public health researchers in this area support the notion that gun violence is a public health issue. The gun is the vector. The bullet is the vector. Think about it from a bacterial or virus perspective. In any disease and in any disease state that we look at from a public health perspective, the decreasing exposure to the vector, which is the gun— or the bullet in this case — reduces the harm and disease from that vector. Jurisdictions where they have applied this lens have been very successful in reducing harm, injury and death from guns.
You are right to point out that, in fact, when we started our work — it wasn’t just me; many physicians and health care professionals across the country thought it was time for Canada to address this issue seriously — the Canadian Coalition for Firearm Rights orchestrated a campaign with the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario, or CPSO, which is the regulating body in Ontario that licenses physicians, to have my medical licence revoked on the basis that my advocacy to reduce harm and injury for patients and communities was somehow unprofessional.
In fact, advocacy is a core competency for physicians. It is something that we are tested and trained in. If you think about anti-smoking campaigns, seat belt laws and asbestos laws, all of those campaigns, in fact, were taken up by physicians who saw the harms of those things at the coalface in our emergency departments and hospitals.
That was not an easy time, I must say. The whole medical profession did stand up and support our efforts. I had a lot of support — from a lot of ordinary Canadians as well. All of those complaints against the CPSO — 17 of them lodged by people whom I had never met or treated — were dismissed as moot and frivolous.
Senator Kutcher: Thank you for that.
Dr. Drummond, you have co-authored a paper looking at the Canadian Association of Emergency Physicians, or CAEP, position paper, looking at the impact of gun registry and decreasing firearms-related suicide.
Do you think that as a public health measure, decreasing access to firearms is a factor in reducing firearm-related suicides? As well, since about 75% of all firearm-related deaths in Canada are suicides, do you think Bill C-21 will be likely to decrease the number of firearm-related suicides in Canada?
Dr. Drummond: Thank you for the question. I think it is pretty straightforward. Internationally, the literature over the last 30 years has been strong in terms of the impact of access to firearms and the completion of suicide. There have been studies done in various military settings — Switzerland, Israel — where there was a reduction in the number of firearms being taken home by soldiers on the weekend and consequently a reduction in suicide deaths. Therefore, access to firearms is, indeed, a fairly important and significant factor in relation to increased risks of fatal suicides. Clearly, this is a public health measure in terms of suicide prevention.
I think this bill in its construct will be helpful. There could be improvements in terms of making sure that the web of those who can report an individual at risk could be increased to include all kinds of health care workers, social workers and educators. This is not the first rodeo for red flag laws in Canada. Quebec, following the Dawson College shooting, introduced Anastasia’s law, which basically allows physicians and other health professionals to report an individual at risk. The lesson from Anastasia’s law is that we need to make sure the public and police forces are fully aware of the components of those bills and know how to access those services. Part of the problem is —
The Chair: Sorry to interrupt. We have to move on.
[ Translation ]
Senator Boisvenu: My first question is for Dr. Ahmed. I’m not sure I understand. Did you say that firearms are made to kill people?
[ English ]
Dr. Ahmed: Some firearms are indeed intended to harm, maim and injure people. Handguns with reloadable magazines are an example. Semi-automatic rifles generally cause a lot of injury and harm to patients and can kill with minimal effort.
Certainly, there are other kinds of weapons that —
[ Translation ]
Senator Boisvenu: If we look at the stats in Quebec for 2023, many people with mental health issues killed other people using a car or a truck. Would it be fair to say that trucks and cars are made to kill people?
[ English ]
Dr. Ahmed: I’m not sure that is a relevant comparison. I’m not sure the statement that —
[ Translation ]
Senator Boisvenu: So, why can you make that blanket statement for firearms that are used primarily for sport hunting and target shooting, but I can’t make it in relation to Quebec where, last year in Gaspé and Montreal, people killed people by running them over with their vehicle? Why can’t I make the same blanket statement as you? Is there any scientific evidence?
[ English ]
Dr. Ahmed: There is irrefutable scientific evidence for the testimony I have given today. The scientific evidence and the consensus among public health researchers and physicians who work in this area is that decreasing the proliferation of firearms makes our communities safer. I have two goals here today: to save lives and to prevent Canadians from being injured by firearms.
[ Translation ]
Senator Boisvenu: What steps would you take to control guns entering Canada illegally, the kind that people can easily obtain from street gangs? An experiment was done in Montreal. It takes just 20 minutes to acquire an illegal weapon from a street gang.
The minister said the bill will have little impact on organized crime. How can anyone be sure at this point that this bill will reduce crime and organized crime?
[ English ]
Dr. Ahmed: Again, I would reiterate that although smuggled firearms come into Canada — and we absolutely must address that — there are also domestically sourced firearms that are used in crime — not to mention that the majority of firearms used in suicide and femicide are legal guns.
I believe that it was at these series of hearings that Mark Flynn, the RCMP Acting Commissioner — I will repeat myself — testified last week that if you look at the firearms traced through our tracing efforts, 69% of those firearms were deemed to be legally imported or manufactured in Canada and legal firearms that are in Canada are likely contributing to the pool of firearms being used in gang-related and organized crime homicides.
It is not one thing. Of course it is everything. Ignoring legal weapons in Canada that are used in crime — such as the one that was used in the Danforth mass shooting — would be a grave error.
Senator M. Deacon: Thank you all for being here this afternoon. These are very important testimonies with the focus we have today.
I would open this question up, and I would love to hear from you also, Dr. Saunders — I don’t want to leave you out. My question is coming back to something that was touched on earlier, which is that we continue to hear in Canada that suicide accounts for about 75% of our gun deaths. A gun in a home, regardless of where it comes from, increases adolescent suicide rates by threefold to fourfold. This legislation is not banning firearms entirely. Many Canadian homes still have guns within them. I’m hoping that I can zero in, from your perspectives, on why you think this legislation will assist in lowering these terrible incidents.
For instance, does the presence of a handgun increase this possibility over an individual having access to what might have been a traditional hunting rifle?
You folks are seeing specifics, so I would love to hear from you.
Dr. Saunders: Both a handgun or a long gun — a rifle — in the home increases the risk of suicide, in particular in adolescents with mental illness. The Canadian Paediatric Society strongly recommends that physicians or health care providers counsel removal of any type of firearm from the home where teens are living who are at risk for mental illness. Whether it is a handgun or a rifle, it doesn’t matter.
In terms of the reduction in suicides over time and will this bill improve that, when I have a patient on the wards at the hospital who has attempted suicide and it is nonfatal, that’s an opportunity for us to fight for that child, to fight for that teen, to survive. If they die before they get to the hospital because they have died by just one firearm — however they got it — we don’t have that opportunity. Removing firearms from the home, even if it is just for one kid, saves that one child’s life.
Senator M. Deacon: I want to come back to you because of something you said in the opener: In my background, lots of lockdowns, lots of intruder drills, lots of real weapons, lots of fake weapons, lots of trauma. We always wondered, over time, in the work you are doing, when these young people — not those who maybe are coming in with a weapon or have attempted to take their life — the trauma of these events on others. Is there a databank on what the biggest impacts are for folks that witness, that are shocked, that are already vulnerable, that are going into intruder drills or lockdowns?
Dr. Saunders: We know in Canada more broadly that mental illness is already rising among children. Anxiety disorders are one of the largest increases that we have seen in our hospitals. What is contributing to that is multi-factorial.
It’s very hard to measure the specifics. Did the specific event contributed to the child’s anxiety? But it is certainly not normal for a child to normalize hiding under a desk from the threat of a weapon. That is not a normal part of healthy child development, and it is increasingly becoming that. When my five-year-old comes home after an active-shooter drill, it’s absurd.
Senator M. Deacon: Thank you.
Senator Oh: I have a question for Dr. Ahmed. The government has a limited amount of money, and in the coming years, money will become even tighter. Are you not concerned that wasting $750 million or more on a bill that won’t work will contribute to making our health care system even worse?
Dr. Ahmed: Thank you for the question. In fact, time and time again, we have learned in health care that an ounce of prevention is actually worth a pound of cure. The patients that I see in my hospital, they come in clinging to life, often require many operations, hang in the balance between life and death in the ICU, attached to ventilators and life support. They go back and forth to the ICU sometimes 10 and 12 times during their hospitalization. Once they leave the hospital, they have to go to rehabilitation. Some of them never go back to work or school.
These are young people in the prime of their lives, so, in fact, preventing this will be very cost-effective. We are spending millions and billions of dollars. I cited one study from B.C. showing that that province alone is spending $300 million treating firearm injuries. The U.S. is spending half a per cent of its massive GDP to treat this problem because they have not tackled firearm injuries and gun control in a responsible way.
Senator Oh: Dr. Ahmed, in your experience in the emergency ward, what is the average percentage compared to a normal emergency than a gunshot wound?
Dr. Ahmed: I work at a trauma centre in Toronto. We receive many of these patients, and we receive two or three —
Senator Oh: Do you have any statistics?
Dr. Ahmed: I can tell you my experience. We treat two, three or four of these patients a week, which is two, three or four too many. The majority of patients who attempt suicide by gun, 90% of them will die, so they don’t come to us. They go to the morgue.
Senator Oh: When you say three or four, is that the average every week? Is that government statistics?
Dr. Ahmed: No. I don’t know. I’m telling you my experience. You asked me about my experience. I’m telling you my experience.
Senator Oh: But you are only working in one location.
Dr. Ahmed: I work at St. Michael’s Hospital, that’s right. We are one of two trauma centres in the city. I can tell you that the experience in all of the urban trauma centres in the country is the same.
Senator Oh: Are you sure?
Dr. Ahmed: Pretty sure. We are a tight-knit community. We talk to each other regularly: Montréal, Vancouver.
Senator Oh: Can you get those figures from the government?
Dr. Ahmed: I don’t know if the government is collecting this data, sir. You asked me about my experience. I’m telling you my experience.
Senator Oh: Who collects the data?
Dr. Ahmed: I think, senator, you asked me about my experience, so I answered with my experience.
Senator Oh: I am asking for scientific figures. You told us that in the emergency ward, a gunshot wound was one of the major ones. I want to follow up on that.
Dr. Ahmed: I can tell you the rates are increasing. The injuries are getting more severe. There are more and more victims per incident. I can tell you that we treat two to four gunshots —
Senator Oh: But could it be more on gang violence?
Dr. Ahmed: I am not a member of the criminal justice system. I am a surgeon who treats patients.
Senator Oh: Thank you.
Dr. Ahmed: You’re welcome.
[ Translation ]
Senator Carignan: My question is for Dr. Drummond.
You talked about the link between gun possession and suicide. I believe you were saying the suicide rate is higher in such cases. The Justice Canada website has a
section called “Link Between Overall Availability of Firearms and Suicide.” It cites various authors and studies from other countries that do not come to that conclusion. For example, it says:
The main question is whether the increased availability of firearms is more likely to facilitate completed suicides. . . . So far, however, the evidence about that particular hypothesis is contradictory and mostly inconclusive.
That does not seem to be saying that suicide rates will be higher wherever firearms are available. That information is from the Justice Canada website.
Are there statistics about suicide among those who do not own guns? Is the suicide rate lower within the non-gun-owning population than within the gun-owning population?
You talked about Israeli soldiers, but right now we’re talking about a subgroup and methods for committing suicide within the general population of people who own guns and those who do not. Is the suicide rate similar for both groups?
[ English ]
Dr. Drummond: That’s a long question. I will try to give you a brief answer.
The Department of Justice Canada is not the best resource in terms of trying to determine what is actually happening in Canada. A lot of the information is backdated. You will see people being quoted from studies from the 1990s and the 2000s. What you need to look at is the international literature. Those published in well-resourced international journals should give you that information.
I am confident in telling you, senator, that the reality is that access to a firearm in a home will increase the suicide rate. That is true internationally, regardless of what you are gleaning from Justice Canada.
[ Translation ]
Senator Carignan: Would you please send us that information? Then we can help Justice Canada update its website.
[ English ]
Dr. Drummond: Far more important, to be honest with you — I think we have been clear — is that it is difficult to make a made-in-Canada solution when we use international studies exclusively.
One of the things we’ve been asking for, for a number years now, is a totally funded Canadian research base in terms of firearm injuries so that we would have made-in-Canada research, made-in-Quebec research. That would help guide public policy in a more rational way.
[ Translation ]
Senator Carignan: I agree.
I have another question for Dr. Saunders. You talked about the population, about children who come in with gunshot wounds. That is always so sad.
When wounded patients come in, are you able to calculate the percentage or people wounded by legal firearms versus illegal ones? Or do you just have general stats about people killed or injured by bullets?
[ English ]
Dr. Saunders: The data we have available to us in Ontario are the mechanism of injury. So we know it’s a bullet. We have reports that it may be a handgun, a rifle, a BB gun — we don’t know. It is whatever is reported to us and in the health record. At the hospital, we don’t actually collect the weapon. We don’t know if it is a legally sourced weapon or not. In fact, in most injuries, we never even know what the weapon was. We don’t have the data to be able to say a certain percentage is legally sourced or illegally sourced. It is a real data gap that we need to do better on as Canadians.
The Chair: We have four senators remaining with questions. We have only three minutes, I’m afraid, for questions, so we have to tighten it up.
Senator Cardozo: I thought I could see that coming, but thank you, Mr. Chair, all the same.
I want to thank our witnesses very much for your presentations, especially Dr. Ahmed and Dr. Saunders. Thank you for bringing to us the professionalism you bring forward every day in your jobs in saving lives, in saving children’s lives and the passion with which you do it. We appreciate you taking time from your busy schedules in jobs which are often, I am sure, traumatic every single day. Thank you for that.
I want to ask all three of you about this, if there is time, but to start with Dr. Ahmed and Dr. Saunders. A couple of witnesses last week said the red flag laws were not good because they could target racialized and Indigenous people who would be anonymously complained about.
Could you talk about that suggestion? Dr. Ahmed first and then Dr. Saunders?
Dr. Ahmed: I will be brief. The evidence from various jurisdictions, including the U.S., suggests that a population level, rates of suicide, mass shootings and intimate partner violence can be reduced. Certainly, we have to guard against that. What is needed is a system that allows for confidential, rapid access for people. New York State, for example, has a system where one can go online and, within 24 hours, a court officer can issue an order to the police to have those firearms removed. On balance, this is thought to be protective of the community and protective for women, children and the community at large.
Dr. Saunders: When you have somebody in front of you and there’s perhaps a vexatious complaint you are concerned about, I think that vexatious complaint doesn’t carry the same weight as the actual threat of injury or death that might happen to a woman or a child independent of race. Over time, with this bill — if passed and implemented — we have to monitor by whom it is being used and when there are vexatious complaints. However, at the end of the day, if you are protecting a child or a woman with the threat of violence, that trumps everything.
Senator Cardozo: Dr. Drummond?
Dr. Drummond: If I may, looking at the Colorado experience, which is relatively new, of the first 109 ERPOs issued, there was only a 4% vexatious rate. If you talk to American researchers across the U.S. — and I have — that’s a bit of a canard often used by the pro-gun lobby to try to dissuade people from enacting ERPOs.
The Chair: Thank you for keeping this tight.
Senator Yussuff: Thank you, witnesses, for all you do on the front lines to help Canadians on a daily basis. I can’t say enough about your work. Thank you for taking the time to be here today.
Dr. Ahmed, in regard to being on the front line and the kinds of injuries that you are dealing with in a trauma centre — especially in Toronto; I will ask you to talk about Toronto — is gun violence that you are seeing more prevalent on a day-to-day basis? Is it more frequent in the last while in regard to what you are observing on that basis in the city?
Dr. Ahmed: Sadly, I’m afraid the answer is yes. We are seeing more and more of this. When I was training, we used to have to go to the U.S. to get experience to treat gunshot injuries. Our Canadian trainees no longer have to go there, whether they’re specializing in emergency medicine, or trauma surgery, or neurosurgery, or critical care. Sadly, our urban academic centres provide enough experience with firearm injuries that our trainees become experts.
Over time, we are seeing a rise in the number of patients per incident, a change in the calibre of these bullets and, increasingly, we are seeing these incidents happen during the daytime, in broad daylight. Sadly, that’s why we are here. If this were not an issue or a problem that we saw in our clinical work, I assure you, we would not be here.
Senator Yussuff: Dr. Saunders, as a parent, I am, of course, constantly troubled and worried about the challenges we are seeing with teen violence in this country, specifically around gun violence that affects teens in this country. Based on your knowledge and expertise and the work you are doing with regard to teen violence, is gun violence the cause of some of the trauma you are seeing with teen violence in our hospitals?
Dr. Saunders: In terms of overall violence, guns are not the leading cause. There is the threat of violence — which may not necessarily show up in the emergency room setting — as well as other forms of violence such as stabbings and assaults. Guns are not the leading cause, but it is certainly an important cause.
In terms of what we do about it, it is multi-factorial. We do need to get to the root of the issue, but if we can remove the number of circulating guns and reduce accessibility, that can help. If we can support those, once they have been injured by gun violence so that we don’t see the ripple effects, then that can improve things as we move forward.
Senator Boehm: Dr. Saunders, thank you for being with us. I would like to thank the other witnesses as well.
In your opening statement, you were very compelling about the things that you have seen as a paediatrician dealing with gunshot wounds and horrific injuries. You added later about lockdown drills and active shooter drills in schools. My children have faced that as well, particularly when we lived in the United States and I was working there.
There’s a lot of misinformation and disinformation out there. We have received much mail from people across the country concerned about losing their rights as sports shooters and the like.
My question is very simple: How can hearts and minds be changed? You are on the front line. You see this. Do you have any suggestions?
Dr. Saunders: How do we change hearts and minds?
Senator Boehm: On both sides if that’s appropriate.
Dr. Saunders: As a paediatrician, we have to think about our own kids, our communities, and what it means to have healthy child development. Hunting and shooting at a range is for fun, but personal safety and community safety are the base of the pyramid for child development and well-being. I don’t have the answer to how we change hearts and minds, but if that’s not enough, I don’t know what is.
Senator Boehm: The well-being of children who go through this constantly, of course, is a concern. When I was a child, we had to get under the desk for drills about a nuclear attack. That shows how old I am. We didn’t worry about gun-type drills, but our children do and their children will as well.
Dr. Saunders: Yes, it is increasing. It is something that I never thought we would have to think about, but it happens all the time. Whether it is an active shooter or an active shooter drill, sadly, it happens all the time.
The Chair: Thank you.
Senator Dasko: Thank you so much to our witnesses. Two of you — Dr. Saunders and Dr. Ahmed — work in my city. I am so grateful for the work you do at both hospitals, not far from where I live.
Earlier, Dr. Ahmed reminded us that you are physicians and not legislators, but I do want to ask you one thing about Bill C-21.
There is a gap in the legislation around assault-style weapons. About 1,500 have been prohibited. In the future, new ones are to be prohibited, but there is a gap. There are a number of assault-style weapons that are not being dealt with directly in this bill.
I don’t know whether you’ve taken any position on this, but I wanted to ask you if you had anything in particular to say about that aspect of the bill, or would you say that this bill is good and let’s pass it as is?
Dr. Saunders: I’m not a technical expert by any means. There are some principles that go into whatever guns are prohibited or limited: if they can kill a lot of people, and a lot of people fast, and are easily accessible. Whatever goes behind the technicalities of that, I will leave that to the technical experts, but those are the principles that I think we need to consider.
Dr. Ahmed: I believe that Bill C-21 includes a definition, which is very important, and an evergreening mechanism to ensure that new models that are slightly changed, don’t come successfully to market. I think you are referring to the 350-odd gap guns, which I think should be carefully considered and measured against a definition of exactly what Dr. Saunders is referring to, namely, weapons and guns that can kill a lot of people very rapidly.
I would urge senators to ensure that the definition of “assault-style weapon” is carefully considered in this legislation.
Dr. Drummond: As for an emergency medicine perspective, we’ve always taken the position that it is a societal issue and not so much a medical issue. As a Canadian society, will we be more permissive in our approach to guns in society or will we be more restrictive? It falls on Canadian legislators and lawmakers to decide what kind of Canada they want for their children.
Senator Dasko: Thank you. That’s exactly what Bill C-21 is all about.
The Chair: Senators, this brings us to the end of our panel. Dr. Saunders, Dr. Drummond and Dr. Ahmed, thanks so much for sharing your extensive experience with us today. We are grateful to you. You have brought great gravity to this room, I can tell you. I’m sure Dr. Saunders feels it, and I’m sure that you do as well.
I will join with other colleagues in saying thank you for the work that you do every day — and I suspect on some nights and weekends — to save lives and help protect children and adults affected by these matters. It’s greatly appreciated. I say that on behalf of this committee, on behalf of the Senate of Canada and on behalf of Canadians across the country. Thank you very much.
We will now continue with our third panel of the meeting. For those tuning in today, we are examining Bill C-21,
An Act to amend certain Acts and to make certain consequential amendments (firearms).
We have the pleasure of welcoming by video conference, on behalf of the One By One Movement, Marcell Wilson, Founder and President, and Francis Langlois, Researcher, Observatory of the United States, Raoul-Dandurand Chair, Université du Québec à Montréal.
Thank you for joining us today. I invite you to provide your opening remarks to be followed by questions from our members. I remind you that you each have five minutes for your testimony.
We begin today with Mr. Marcell Wilson. Please proceed whenever you are ready.
Marcell Wilson, Founder and President, The One By One Movement: Good afternoon. My name is Marcell Wilson, founder of The One by One Movement, or OBOM. I am a subject matter expert on gang culture theory. Also, I was recently deemed the expert on gender, diversity and inclusion by the Centre for Gender, Diversity and Inclusion Statistics at Statistics Canada, or CGDIS.
As many of you know, I am a former gang member and former international crime figure. Most of my expertise is rooted in lived experience.
I would like to thank the Senate of Canada for the invitation and for allowing us the opportunity to come here and represent a majority demographic that is affected by gun violence in Toronto. We work directly with boots on the ground in some of the communities most affected. We continuously work directly with people and families who were victims and with some who were perpetrators of this violence.
Our data at OBOM is sourced directly from this pool, which is historically difficult to research and obtain accurate data from. This is due to several reasons. As an example, most of the people that we serve, have a lack of trust in government and are fearful of speaking out due to possible consequences and repercussions from government and/or the streets. This makes it particularly difficult for academia and government bodies to collect accurate and robust data from a demographic on this subject that could possibly or potentially redirect the efforts of our government’s current plan for combatting this problem.
We all know that gun violence is a prevalent threat to many Canadians but especially to individuals in marginalized communities across the country. You now know that most of the guns used in violent crimes, such as homicides, throughout the communities we represent are illegally sourced firearms. I have said it many times, and I will continue to say it, that even one loss of life or injury to senseless gun violence is an absolute travesty, and to effectively combat this problem, we need to focus the majority of our efforts and resources on prevention and root causes. The methods and outcomes of violence are important to address but should be secondary to root causes and their risk factors.
Prevention doesn’t only mean addressing root causes. It also means preventing illegal guns from entering the country, judicial punishment coupled with strong reformation efforts and investing in an underfunded mental health care system, to name a few. I do understand that some of these concerns have been addressed through amendments to Bill C-21, such as the Building Safer Communities Fund, a promise to strengthen our border efforts and others. But if the premise of this bill is to prevent gun violence, then these amendments or add-ons, if you will, should be the focal points of a gun violence prevention bill.
Sadly, people are killed by legal firearms in Canada. This does happen, but I think any expert or rational person can agree that when speaking about gun violence in Canada, this represents a minority. How is it that on such a major issue, the minority has the loudest voice? How is it possible that the majority, their representatives and experts advocating for them, can feel so unheard?
As I was researching the Government of Canada’s website about Bill C-21, I read something that concerned me:
Bill C-21 proposes to strengthen rules to prevent gun violence in our communities by placing responsible restrictions on some firearms used in Canada.
I wish that this statement was true, “to prevent gun violence in our communities,” because if it were, I would absolutely support it. But this claim gives false hope to Canadians who don’t know any better and should be a catastrophic letdown to those who do.
What I am asking from the government on behalf of the Canadians and communities we represent is to simply say it like it is. This is a bill to remove legal firearms from legal firearm owners, not to prevent violence or make our country significantly safer. Please stop exploiting people who have already been through enough for a political agenda. We know better, we want better and we deserve better. Thank you for your time.
The Chair: Thank you very much.
[ Translation ]
Francis Langlois, Researcher, Observatory of the United States, Raoul-Dandurand Chair, Université du Québec à Montréal: I want to thank the committee for inviting me and giving me time to speak. I’ve been studying firearms-related issues for over 10 years now. I’ve looked at technical changes and how firearms are made, marketed and regulated.
I also study different forms of gun culture and causes of and solutions for armed violence. I’ve talked to the media and government authorities about these subjects a lot in recent years. I’ve also written about right-wing extremism in the United States.
Simply put, firearms are weapons designed to kill. They don’t make people violent. However, these tools make violence easier and more efficient. As Mr. Wilson said earlier, this is a problem that affects Canadian cities in general and the most vulnerable communities in particular. For that reason, the way they are made, used and stored must be governed by the law.
Despite its flaws, Bill C-21 contributes to efforts to regulate legal firearms while also tackling ghost guns and strengthening penalties for gun crimes.
As Mr. Wilson said, the goal is to remove guns lawfully owned by Canadians from circulation in Canada, specifically handguns — in the long term — and military-style assault weapons, to use the government’s term.
Although I’m very aware that these two measures will have very little impact, or, at least, little impact on the violence affecting big Canadian cities, I support the bill because it’s an expression of the desire to reduce the risk of mass killings in the future. There was one just last week in the U.S., and there’s no guarantee there won’t be more of them here in Canada. Mass killers tend to prefer assault rifles and other semi-automatic weapons.
That said, the bill has its flaws. The definition of a military-style assault weapon could be problematic. The real cost of the bill and of buying back so-called assault weapons does not seem to me to be well fleshed out because once weapons are bought back, provisions must be made to handle, store and possibly destroy them safely. I haven’t seen any numbers related to those issues.
Nor do we know how many of these weapons are circulating in Canada right now, which makes it very difficult to calculate the cost precisely.
In conclusion, I would say that a bill like this one cannot solve every gun violence problem. Additional measures are needed. As Mr. Wilson said, prevention is key. It’s also important to invest in communities affected by gun violence and destroy the root causes Mr. Wilson was talking about.
Mass killings are virtually unknown in Australia, New Zealand and England because they got rid of assault rifles altogether. It worked. That said, those three countries do not share a border with the U.S., which sells huge numbers of illegal guns that go to Mexico and also come to Canada.
Lastly, mass shootings are high-intensity but low-frequency events. Any reduction in the risk of a mass shooting happening will not really affect the current incidence of gun-related homicide. That’s why we have to be realistic about this bill. I agree with Mr. Wilson. Prevention is key to the fight against gun violence, but I am hopeful that the risk of future mass killings can be reduced.
Thank you.
[ English ]
The Chair: Thank you, Mr. Langlois. We will proceed to questions now. This panel will conclude at 6 p.m. As with the previous panel, I will limit each question, including the answer, to four minutes. I will hold up this card to indicate when 30 seconds remains in your time. Please remain succinct and identify the person you are directing the question to. I offer the first question to Deputy Chair, Senator Dagenais.
[ Translation ]
Senator Dagenais: My question is for Mr. Langlois. I would like to hear your thoughts on ghost guns and 3D-printed guns. There have been a lot of amendments to Bill C-21 to better deal with the market for these guns, which seem easy to make from scratch or with parts available on the market. Is that good enough? What can we control? What will remain beyond our control? Should we be more worried about these guns, or are they a minor concern for now?
Mr. Langlois: Thank you for the question, senator.
Yes, it’s a growing problem around the world and especially here in North America. We’re finding more and more of them all over the place, different models, including automatic weapons that can shoot a lot of bullets very fast. Criminals love them because they’re untraceable, or almost. The polymers used to print them can be broken down to see which printer made them, so if the printer can be located, that’s good, but if not, it’s practically impossible.
That said, during a previous presentation, I did suggest broadening the definition of a firearm not only to the stock, which is printable, but to all the main components, such as the receiver, the barrel, and so on, so as to see who is importing a lot of these kinds of components or pieces. At the moment, in the eyes of the law — especially in the U.S., but here, too — these things are not exactly considered weapons. It would therefore be good to regulate all of the important components that make up a firearm, which is what several European countries, such as Germany, are doing. It’s much harder to get printed weapons there.
It’s relatively difficult to control software and especially the files used to print these weapons, whether they’re made with plastic components or a combination of plastic and metal parts. That’s what criminals are really after. The police officers I talked to told me the metal and plastic guns are almost as good as the original models, especially Glocks, which are very easy to use and copy.
These weapons will remain relatively easy to get unless the federal government figures out how to control the Internet in a “Big Brother” kind of way. I doubt the problem can be completely stamped out, but if the measures I talked about are incorporated into Bill C-21, it may be easier to tackle this phenomenon.
Senator Dagenais: To what extent is the current government correct about what it calls weapons of war and semi-automatic weapons? Can you tell us what kind of people are buying these kinds of weapons? I can’t imagine what purpose they would serve other than for soldiers and major police force tactical teams.
Mr. Langlois: A lot of enthusiasts and collectors who like to do target shooting or compete, and people who like cool technology are very interested in studying and owning these precision weapons. The problem is that some of these weapons are currently restricted, which means they are identified, but, up until recently, many of them were non-restricted.
That means we can’t trace many of these weapons that are in circulation in Canada right now. That’s a problem. We know they were sold at some point, but there’s no real way to know who bought them and how many firearms those people have.
It’s a major problem right now, a nightmare for police, the legal system and governments.
[ English ]
Senator Kutcher: Thank you, both, for taking the time out of your busy days to be here with us. My question is to Mr. Langlois. In your House of Commons testimony, you stated, in Canada, we are hearing:
. . . something very similar to the rhetoric being bandied about in the United States. Proponents of the right to own and use firearms sometimes spout arguments taken directly from organizations such as the National Rifle Association.
I’m sure that you are aware that in 1993, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled that Canadians have no constitutional right to own firearms, and owning firearms is a privilege; yet much of the correspondence on Bill C-21 that I have received seems to be misinformed, thinking that firearm ownership is a right in Canada. Can you share with us some of the U.S.-style disinformation about guns and gun violence that you are seeing promoted here in Canada that you refer to in your House of Commons testimony? Is there anything you would add to the bill to help mitigate the impact of this important rhetoric?
Mr. Langlois: Thank you for the question, senator. Yes, I remember saying that. Last week, I was reading on Facebook groups and on X, this kind of rhetoric coming right from the United States where people were saying, basically, that if we don’t have firearms at home, what can we do to defend ourselves? It is not a right guaranteed by the Constitution to have a gun at home to defend the home. Also, how firearms are related to freedom, and how they are related to a lifestyle that involves firearms. This is all coming from the United States.
Many people are saying that this is a right guaranteed by the United States’ Bill of Rights, which was signed in 1689, if I am not mistaken, because it was in the Bill of Rights at some point. But it was very well known, even at that point, that the King could not disarm his Protestant subjects — not the whole population. Anyway, it was removed here in Canada from the Canadian Bill of Rights and even in the United Kingdom. I think it will be very difficult to stop this rhetoric from crossing the border.
I have a few American — I receive every month Guns and Ammo. It is a mainstream gun magazine from the United States, and a lot of people are subscribing to that kind of publication here. They read the argumentation of people who are writing for those magazines. You can see it online everywhere. I don’t think it is a good idea to try to forbid that kind of publication here in Canada, but what I think is that the government should be clear and explain how the law works, what the Supreme Court has ruled, the jurisprudence, how it works here in Canada and how different it is from the United States. I think that would be key for a better understanding of the gun control debate here in Canada.
Senator Kutcher: Thank you for that. In terms of your own research, are there any organizations that you’ve seen in Canada that promote this kind of American rhetoric based on American perspectives, as opposed to being clear about what the Canadian law states?
The Chair: A 10-second answer, please.
Mr. Langlois: I think some members of the National Firearms Association, Tous contre un registre Québécois des armes à feu and other groups like that, are repeating what is said in the United States. I don’t think they publish it officially, but I would say that’s how I see it and how I read it online.
The Chair: Thank you very much.
[ Translation ]
Senator Cardozo: My questions are for both witnesses. You both talked about measures in this bill that tackle the root causes of the problem. I’d like to know which things you think should be at the top of the to-do list, starting with Mr. Langlois.
Mr. Langlois: Thank you for the question.
Fighting poverty is one of the first solutions to address the root causes of urban violence, as is offering alternatives to youth, different options than violence or crime. Revitalizing local communities by creating programs that integrate local elites, social groups and street workers is important. Of course, a certain small proportion of police is also required; repression may still be needed when necessary.
If not, we need to draw inspiration from the successful experience — albeit undermined by COVID-19 — of New York, Philadelphia and Boston, places where people have invested in communities, met with elites and rebuilt neighbourhoods through greening, for example, simply to offer alternatives to young people who are attracted to crime.
We’ve seen what happens when leading resources are withdrawn, because we saw it during the COVID-19 pandemic: violence increases, because the protective factors that frame people at risk of turning to violence are either undermined or withdrawn altogether. This is where we need to put money, lots of money, more than into repression.
Senator Cardozo: Thank you.
[ English ]
Senator Cardozo: Mr. Wilson, what are your thoughts on new cases beyond this bill?
Mr. Wilson: Yes, my answer echoes the professor’s. I believe that we should start with tackling issues like poverty and dealing with mental health issues in our communities. There are definitely not enough resources. There tends to be a broken chain. Often we hear about a multi-pronged or multifocal approach, which could work, and, in most cases, should work. But what we are seeing on the ground level is a lack of communication between agencies, bureaucracies and government bodies. A quote one of my old mentors used to say is that we are not underserved, we are poorly served. We need to fill those gaps.
Second, from my lived experience as a former criminal, we must definitely fill the gaps at the border, invest more there and stop the flow into the communities. But most of all, we must deal with the culture of violence that we’re seeing.
Mr. Langlois: It should be done in the long term, not for one or two years.
Mr. Wilson: Sustainability.
Mr. Langlois: Sustainability. That’s it. Five years, ten years — I don’t know, but much longer than it’s done right now.
Senator Cardozo: Professor Langlois, just briefly, what are your thoughts on the red flag clauses? There were suggestions that they would affect him minorities and Indigenous people more than others. Any thoughts about the red flag issue?
Mr. Langlois: I must admit that I’m not an expert on that particular topic, but one thing is sure. It should be done in a way that nobody’s rights are attacked.
[ Translation ]
Senator Boisvenu: I have two questions, one for each of the witnesses, whom I thank, initially.
The first is for Mr. Wilson. I recently met with a group of Montreal youths, many of whom are often in indirect contact with gang members. The comment other groups made to me was the underfunding of street workers, people who work with 14- to 18-year-olds, the primary manna for street gangs.
We’re going to invest nearly a billion dollars in gun buybacks. Isn’t there a contradiction between buying back firearms, whose impact on crime is likely to be relatively minor, and having groups intervene with young people in cities, especially big cities that are underfunded, knowing that we’re going to lose these young people to street gangs? Isn’t there some kind of contradiction when it comes to the government’s priorities?
[ English ]
Mr. Wilson: Thank you for your question, senator. Yes, I would have to agree 100%. We currently work with many young people. That is where I was trying to go with my opening statement. I feel that many of our young voices and many of the people who can play a major role in combatting this issue, their voices are not being heard or taken into account.
If the data were collected properly, coming from young people, from people who are living in marginalized communities and from those who are most affected by gun violence, it could help sway the government from spending this much money on an issue that will not impact those who are affected in the communities in which we work. Those young people are right, 100%.
[ Translation ]
Senator Boisvenu: My next question is for Mr. Langlois.
Toronto’s police chief claimed that 86% of weapons seized from the criminal underworld and other sources came from the United States. There is no strategy in this bill. In fact, when the Minister of Public Safety came to testify, he was asked what his strategy would be to prevent guns from entering Canada freely.
I’m trying to understand how we’re going to spend a billion dollars buying up so-called “legal” firearms to take them off the market in Canada. What’s more, 86% of the guns entering Canada come from the United States, and we have no strategy to stop this illegal entry.
Are there not contradictions in the bill? Because we’re going to invest massively to buy illegal weapons and do very little to prevent the entry of illegal firearms from the U.S.
Mr. Langlois: Thank you for the question, senator.
Yes, this seems to me to be a major weakness in the bill, unless another bill or program is in the works that I haven’t heard about at the border.
The figures you quote about Toronto are for handguns recovered from crime scenes in the Greater Toronto Area, around 86% of handguns. Some other police forces have told me that 90% of the handguns that are seized in major cities would come from abroad, particularly the U.S.
In fact, there’s a problem with gun trafficking at the border. The border is very porous. Weapons sometimes enter on a massive scale, as was the case in March 2021, south of Dundee, where a young man was arrested with 249 Glock-type pistols. In other places, in the town of Stanstead in 2011, a group of amateur dealers were caught with six or seven pistols. They had swapped backpacks in the bathroom of the library that straddles the border between Derby and Stanstead. There are a multitude of entry points and methods to bring these weapons in. Indeed, we don’t hear much about strategy—
[ English ]
The Chair: Mr. Langlois, I’m sorry to interrupt. We have gone a bit over time.
Senator M. Deacon: Thank you to our witnesses for giving us this very important time and testimony today.
My initial question is for Mr. Wilson. I have been intrigued by your testimony at the House. I have read it a few times. Without being too invasive on your life as a group of senators, you have a pretty authentic background and you have been on the street. If it is appropriate, I will ask this question in two parts.
For our learning perspective, what drew you into your gang life and existence and what drew you out of it?
The second
part is supplementary to what my colleague said. You mentioned in your testimony that this bill and the conversation around the money might be a bit of a distraction to the heart of the work that you are most concerned about, which you have talked about today.
On this latter point, the government is looking at increasing the maximum penalty from 10 to 14 years’ imprisonment for firearms-related offences, including firearms smuggling and trafficking.
As we review this and as we think about you and your background — which I hope you will share more about — I wonder what more you think the government can do to address this bill. Do you think we may have missed some parts?
Mr. Wilson: Thank you so much for the question.
In terms of how I got in, what we do in The One by One Movement is we try to track the history of an individual. Our programs are tailored specifically to an individual depending upon their risk factors. My risk factors were definitely the neighbourhood I grew up in. I grew up in Toronto community housing, right across the street from abundant wealth that I could see every day. It seemed there was no way out from watching my mother struggle and watching the people around me struggle.
Unfortunately, the guys I had to look up to were involved in criminal activity. This culture of violence becomes a survival mechanism. It doesn’t make a person good or bad per se. This will lend to my answer later about justice and incarceration. It doesn’t make people bad. I definitely wanted to survive. I actually got good grades. I did well in school, and I wanted a way out.
People in this situation become good at sniffing out the need for protection and survival. That is what happened in my case. I felt the need to feel protected, to earn and to elevate myself in life, and I got involved with the people around me. Unfortunately, I entered that world with both feet and a lot of bad things happened — a lot of trauma and a lot of things that I suffer from now.
The way out was simply to remove myself slowly from the things that were around me. I fell in love. I started to embrace components of mental health. I started to understand that it was okay to love and to show compassion and that this made you human. I used those opportunities to take a step back.
What makes my story unique is that I asked permission. I spoke to the people around me and I said