Institutions — 7 April 2016 (41st Legislature, 1st Session)

CI 2016-04-07

Quebec — Committees

(Onze heures trente et une minutes)

Le Président (M. Ouellette) : À

l'ordre, s'il vous plaît! Ayant constaté le quorum, je déclare la séance de la Commission des institutions ouverte. Je demande à toutes les personnes dans

la salle de bien vouloir éteindre la sonnerie de leurs appareils

électroniques.

La commission

est réunie afin de poursuivre les consultations

particulières et auditions publiques

sur le projet de loi n° 64,

Loi sur l'immatriculation des armes à

feu. M. le secrétaire, y a-t-il des remplacements?

Secrétaire : Oui, M. le Président. Mme Hivon (Joliette) est remplacée par M. Roy (Bonaventure); M. Leclair (Beauharnois) est remplacé par M.

Bergeron (Verchères); et Mme Roy (Montarville) est remplacée par M. Spénard

(Beauce-Nord).

Président (M. Ouellette) :

Nous entendrons cet avant-midi la Coalition pour le contrôle des armes, Mme

Wendy Cukier et Mme Gwendoline Decat. Ce

sera Mme Cukier qui fera la présentation. La présentation va être en

anglais. Les questions vont lui être posées en français. On a une traduction

simultanée. Et Mme Cukier a fait part de son désir de faire sa présentation en

anglais et de répondre en anglais à nos questions.

Donc, Mrs. Cukier, you will

have 10 minutes for your speech, and after that there will be an exchange with

the Minister, and after that

the other MNAs. So, you can start your presentation right now.

Mme Cukier (Wendy) : Merci beaucoup. C'est un plaisir d'être ici aujourd'hui. Pardonnez-moi, mais je dois parler en anglais.

I am Wendy Cukier. I am the president

of «la Coalition pour le contrôle des armes à feu», and I have been for 26 years. I'm also a professor at Ryerson University in Toronto, and my biography is at

the end of my brief.

It is a bold step that the Government of Québec is taking with Bill 64, the Firearms Registration Act, to fill an important gap in our firearms regime. The

dismantling of the

Canadian Firearms Registry

ended the requirement to track who owns which non

restricted firearms, including many powerful semi-automatics weapons, and

you've heard about that, it also destroyed

the registry data for the rest of Canada — the status of the Québec data is uncertain — and it eliminated the requirement which had been in place since 1977 that gun

sellers track gun sales. Some of us remember that after the Montréal massacre on December 6, 1989,

the killer was identified because police went store to store to find out

who had purchased a Ruger Mini-14. Today, we no longer even have that level of information.

Coalition for Gun Control is a non-profit organization which is supported by

more than 300 organizations across the country, including 100 of them in Québec. Appendix 1 of the

brief lists those groups. And I'm pleased that my partners at the Fédération des policiers et

policières municipaux du Québec are here, and you'll be hearing from

them as well as many of our other supporters.

Firearms

regulation is an important

piece of an evidence-based strategy to prevent gun crime and injury and to support law enforcement.

Considerable research has shown that the regulation of firearms is linked to

reduction in firearm homicides and suicides, and we strongly support the

Government of Québec with this legislation and encourage the opposition parties

to do so as well.

have already heard a great deal about the problem of firearms, and while

handguns and restricted weapons dominate urban violence, unrestricted firearms, rifles and shotguns are

the firearms most often used to kill in Québec. They're used in suicides, they're used in unintentional injuries, in

conjugal violence and in the murder of police officers, as well as political violence. While opposition to

the firearms registry is higher in rural areas of Québec, these are the

areas where there are higher risks. These

are the areas where there are more suicides with firearms, more incidents of

conjugal violence with firearms, more accidents with firearms and where more

police officers are killed in this province. And my brief outlines more of

those details, which I will provide in French after this presentation.

want to move on to why the registration of firearms is important. The

principles of firearms registration are well understood internationally. I did a book a number

of years ago called The Global Gun Epidemic , which looked at

firearms regulation worldwide. The

registration of rifles and shotguns is an essential part of firearm control

regimes in virtually every other

industrialized nation in the world. The United States is an exception. You have

heard how firearms registration reduces the risk by holding gun owners

accountable for their firearms, and I believe it has also been mentioned that the Supreme Court of Canada was explicit in saying

the registration provisions cannot be severed from the rest of the act. The licensing provisions require everyone who

possesses a gun to be licensed. The registration provisions reinforce

those. So, there is a strong link between licensing and registration, which has

already been discussed.

I have spent a lot of my career researching the illegal gun

trade. It is very important to recognize that every

illegal gun begins as a legal gun, and one

of the principal purposes of firearms regulation and registration is to keep

legal guns in the hands of legal owners and the reduce the chances those

guns will be diverted to illegal markets. There are many examples in the province of Québec of how the long

gun registry was used to combat the illegal gun trade. In

March 2011, for example, a licensed gun

dealer from Sainte-Béatrix was criminally charged for illegally selling 63

guns, including rifles and shotguns,

to Montréal street gangs. Without registration, you cannot prosecute people who

sell rifles and shotguns illegally because you have no way to attach the

gun to the individual.

have also heard about how the registry has been used to support preventative

action. Some of you may recall, after the Dawson College shooting, the registry was used to remove guns

from a young man who was making threats, and shortly after that, in another incident, the police used the registry,

they confirmed that the suspect had a valid license and nine long guns and were able to recover all of

them. So, the use of the registry by police you've heard a lot about,

and it continues to be one of the most important justifications for the

legislation, and its usefulness in prosecutions and investigations has been

well documented.

other piece I think that's important, that perhaps hasn't been talked about, is

making sure that we understand the international

context for firearms regulation. The Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police

wrote to the Public Safety Minister in May

2011 asking that the registry be kept intact because it would allow Canada to live up to various international agreements and to facilitate gun tracing with

the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.

Many

people do not realize that since the Federal Government eliminated the

registration of firearms, we now have fewer controls over rifles and shotguns. We have

less ability to trace those guns than they do in New York State, for example.

It's also perhaps noteworthy

that your cousins in France, as part of the European Union's directive,

register firearms. The European Union is

particularly attentive to firearms control now, especially given the concerns

about political violence. Belgium is trying to strengthen its controls

even though they're opposed by the gun lobby.

my brief outlines much of the international context as well as the fact that

globally there is no right to bear arms, globally there is a right to freedom from

fear, and the United

Nations has said repeatedly

that countries that fail to fulfill their obligations to protect civilians from firearms violence

are failing their obligations under international human rights law.

There is very strong support for this not just in research, but also in the

global context.

like to turn your attention to page 7. Page 7, I think, illustrates quite

clearly what the impact of Québec's long

standing commitment to firearms regulation has been. If you look at Québec, compared to the Canadian average of homicide rates and suicide rates, you will see you

are one of the lowest. You want, I think, to keep it that way. We have also provided a technical analysis of the

legislation which goes through clause by clause. We support the suggestion

that verification of licenses should be part

of the bill if possible. We think that you may need to introduce

accommodations for aboriginal people

consistent with what was in the federal legislation. But overall we think this

is a very strong piece of legislation. We're suggesting as well that the

Province of Québec use its

provincial influence to try to get the federal

Government to step up to its obligations.

the last point, if I may make it before I end, is to say that I know this is

the first time in 26 years that we have seen organized opposition to gun control in Québec. I would ask that you look at the polls. The

polls show very clearly the vast majority of Quebeckers and the

vast majority of Québec gun owners actually support the legislation. Much of what you are seeing is being orchestrated outside of the

province, and the National Rifle Association in the United States of America is

paying a lot of attention to what is going on in your province.

I would like to conclude by saying : De par

le passé, l'histoire, la langue, les valeurs et la culture du Québec lui

ont permis de faire front face à l'influence du lobby des armes à feu des

États-Unis. Le Québec a une forte tradition de placer la sécurité publique au-dessus de la politique. Faites en sorte,

s'il vous plaît, qu'il n'en soit pas autre... Désormais, le reste du

pays vous observe, le reste du monde aussi a les yeux rivés sur vous. Merci

beaucoup.

Président (M. Ouellette) :

Thank you, Mme Cukier. I

think your French is so good. So, I will let the Minister

starting a round of questions with you, and I appreciate that you make that

effort also and that can keep on going. Probably you will be fluently French

real soon. Mr. Minister.

Coiteux : Well, my first words will be in English just to say that we

welcome your presence today, and it's a very

interesting intervention here to explain why you support Bill 64 as it is and

the reasons that you mentioned for that support.

Maintenant, pour le bénéfice de tous ceux qui nous écoutent, je vais passer en français,

mais je pense que vous avez la traduction simultanée. Il y

a une chose que vous avez dites qui a

capté mon intérêt, mon attention, c'est que vous avez dit que depuis la disparition du registre fédéral, on

aurait des mécanismes de contrôle des armes à feu à un niveau inférieur

à celui de l'État de New York.

J'aimerais ça que vous nous expliquiez ça un petit peu plus, parce que

c'est quelque chose, je crois, qui surprend, là, a priori, là, parce qu'on toujours tendance à penser qu'aux États-Unis

c'est un système très,

très, très libéral par rapport à l'usage... bien, pas à l'utilisation, à la

possession des armes à feu.

Le Président (M. Ouellette) : Mrs.

Cukier.

Cukier (Wendy) :

Yes. In the United States, firearms regulation is divided

between federal responsibility and State responsibility, so there is huge variation. Some States have

very few control and in fact make it very easy to carry handguns. Others

have quite strict control. So, States like Massachusetts, Hawaii, New York

City actually have stronger regulations than we do in that they require that

sales of rifles and shotguns be recorded at the point of sale as part of their obligations. And, as you know, we no longer have that in

place. That is the provision that was in place in 1977 in Canada and we no longer have it. So, someone with a licenc

Document details

Collection	Quebec — Committees
Citation	CI 2016-04-07
Type	committee
Volume / chapter	en travaux parlementaires commissions ci 41 1 journal debats CI 160407.html
Language	en
Format	html
Source	PROVINCIAL
Identifier	4294ff01be55c5a60b4b1241afda2159bd684476

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