The Hon. the Speaker: Those in favour of the motion, please say “yea.”

The Hon. the Speaker: Would Senator Ringuette take a question?

An Hon. Senator: 45 minutes.

Hon. Andrew Cardozo: Will Senator Ringuette take a question?

We’ve had a good discussion on the issue of omnibus bills. You’ve said that this should be the first item, or we should deal with it pretty soon. I’ll note a few ideas that have been put forward: Senator Tannas suggested that he would launch an inquiry. Senator Shugart suggested that the National Finance Committee should review it. There has been a suggestion for a motion. Senator Cordy talked about having a deadline for when we would accept the bills.

Are these the types of items that you think we can take to reach a conclusion and to make our voice clear in order to let the House know how we want to proceed on omnibus bills going forward?

The Hon. the Speaker: We will return at 5:52 p.m. Call in the senators.

Motion in amendment of the Honourable Senator Tannas negatived on the following division:

The Senate proceeded to consideration of the fifteenth report of the Standing Senate Committee on Legal and Constitutional Affairs (Bill S-12, An Act to amend the Criminal Code, the Sex Offender Information Registration Act and the International Transfer of Offenders Act, with amendments and observations), presented in the Senate on June 20, 2023.

The Hon. the Speaker: I think the “nays” have it.

And two honourable senators having risen:

The Hon. the Speaker: Those opposed to the motion, please say “nay.”

The Hon. the Speaker: Is leave granted?

The Hon. the Speaker: Honourable senators, when shall this bill, as amended, be read the third time?

(On motion of Senator Busson, bill, as amended, placed on the Orders of the Day for third reading at the next sitting of the Senate.)

On the Order:

Resuming debate on the motion of the Honourable Senator Yussuff, seconded by the Honourable Senator Boehm, for the second reading of Bill C-21, An Act to amend certain Acts and to make certain consequential amendments (firearms).

The Hon. the Speaker: Senator Cotter, are you asking for more time?

Senator Cotter: Two more minutes, if I may.

The Hon. the Speaker: Honourable senators, when shall this bill, as amended, be read the third time?

(On motion of Senator Busson, bill, as amended, placed on the Orders of the Day for third reading at the next sitting of the Senate.)

On the Order:

Resuming debate on the motion of the Honourable Senator Yussuff, seconded by the Honourable Senator Boehm, for the second reading of Bill C-21, An Act to amend certain Acts and to make certain consequential amendments (firearms).

Hon. Senators: Agreed.

Hon. Mobina S. B. Jaffer: Honourable senators, I rise today to speak to Bill C-21, An Act to amend certain Acts and to make certain consequential amendments (firearms). This bill is a necessary and urgent step to protect the lives and safety of Canadians, especially women and other marginalized groups who are disproportionately affected by gun violence.

I would like to thank Senator Yussuff for sponsoring this bill, and Senator Coyle, the Independent Senators Group’s legislative lead, for her work on this bill.

[Translation]

I want to begin with a story. It is a story that many of you know very well, one that we need to tell over and over again when we deal with issues like those raised by Bill C-21.

On December 6, 1989, engineering students at École Polytechnique in Montreal were studying. At around 5 p.m., a 25-year-old man, later identified as Marc Lépine, entered the building. He was dressed in a military uniform and was carrying a concealed Ruger Mini-14, a lightweight semi-automatic rifle that he had bought at a local sporting goods store three weeks earlier.

[English]

After spending an hour in the lobby, Lépine made his way to the second floor of the building, where he intruded on a classroom of about 60 students, women and men alike.

Forcing the men to leave, he proclaimed to hate feminists, and at 5:10 p.m., he opened fire. Quickly, he left the classroom and shot numerous women as he made his way to the ground floor and to the third floor, where he intruded into another classroom.

Having taken the lives of 14 women and injuring 10 others and 4 men, Lépine fired his last shot at 5:29 p.m., ending his own life.

That day, Lépine left behind him the grieving families and friends of those he killed. Among the confusion that ensued, Lépine was deemed insane by the press and professionals, who chose not to focus on the gender of Lépine’s victims.

The horrific event has become etched in the psyche of Canadians, sparking a national debate on gun control and violence against women. However, it also revealed how much work still needs to be done to prevent such tragedies from happening again.

That is why I believe we need to study Bill C-21. It introduces several measures that aim to reduce the risk of firearm-related violence and death in Canada. Honourable senators, despite this tragic incident, violence against women remains a persistent challenge in Canada.

In 2018, around 600 incidents of police-reported intimate partner violence involved firearms, up from 401 in 2013. In 2020, Public Safety Canada stated that women accounted for almost 8 in 10 victims of intimate partner violence. Furthermore, a 2022 Statistics Canada report revealed that women and girls are disproportionately affected by gun violence, as are visible minorities, LGBTQ2 people, children and youth, lower-income families, those living in poverty and people in northern and remote communities.

Bill C-21 is a safety bill which aims to keep Canadians safe from gun violence. No single solution is ever perfect, but there are measures we can take to mitigate risks of injury or death by firearm.

As you know, gun violence has been on the rise in Canada this past decade. Statistics Canada reported that in 2013, 26% of all homicides involved a firearm. By 2020, that number had risen to 37%.

A 2021 Statistics Canada study revealed a woman in Canada is killed by an intimate partner approximately every six days. The Canadian Women’s Foundation also found that access to a firearm is the best predictor that domestic violence will turn lethal.

Bill C-21 seeks to address intimate partner violence and gender-based violence by enacting red flag and yellow flag laws. The red flag provision would enable anyone to make an application to a provincial court judge for an emergency weapons prohibition that would require the immediate removal, within 24 hours, of firearms from an individual who may pose a danger to themselves or others. This provision is further strengthened by the applicant’s ability to apply for a limitation on access order if the respondent has access to someone else’s firearms.

In such a situation, the judge can decide to immediately remove firearms from that individual as well. The temporary prohibition would last 30 days. However, a longer prohibition is possible — up to five years if a judge decides that there are reasonable grounds to deem that the firearm owner continues to pose a risk to their safety or the safety of others.

Furthermore, the bill protects the safety of red flag applicants by allowing judges to close red flag hearings to the public and media, seal court documents for up to 30 days or remove identifying information for any period of time that the judge deems necessary, including on a permanent basis.

The yellow flag provision is an administrative process through the Chief Firearms Officer. It allows any member of the public, including medical professionals, to notify a Chief Firearms Officer of a situation or behaviour that may affect someone’s firearms licence eligibility. If the Chief Firearms Officer determines that there are reasonable grounds to suspect that a person is no longer eligible to have a firearm licence, they will suspend the holder’s authorization to use, acquire and import firearms for up to 30 days while conducting an investigation.

If through the investigation the Chief Firearms Officer decides that the individual is no longer eligible to hold a gun licence, they will issue a revocation and the firearm owner will need to surrender all firearms to the Chief Firearms Officer, firearms officers or a peace officer within 24 hours of notification.

These provisions, though not perfect, are well-received by a majority of women’s organizations who foresee positive impacts on reducing gender-based violence, intimate partner violence and family violence in Canada.

Senators, these are good provisions, but there is still an issue that I have in mind. The government has great laws, and there are many laws for violence against women in this country, but there are no resources to prosecute them, and some violence that is on the books has had no prosecutions at all. So I urge the committee that will be studying this bill to ask: What resources will be provided? Otherwise, the red and yellow flags will mean nothing if the government is not willing to give resources.

[Translation]

Honourable senators, I believe that all senators will agree that armed violence is a real and urgent problem. However, some may disagree on how to solve this problem.

[English]

Bill C-21 plans to enhance background checks and further expand the $250‑million fund to address root causes and social determinants of gun crime such as poverty, racism, mental illness and gang involvement. This will help prevent crime before it happens, and offers positive alternatives and opportunities for vulnerable youth. I ask the committee to study whether this money will really be applied to what it is set out to, and how it will be applied.

Nevertheless, there has been a sufficient amount of misinformation and disinformation spread about this bill, which has caused fear among firearms owners. However, I would be remiss if I did not speak to the valid criticisms and weaknesses of the bill. I hope these issues will be comprehensively studied in committee.

To start, there is a widespread misconception that the main purpose of Bill C-21 is to target lawful firearms owners, including hunters, and that it does not focus on criminal activity and gang members who tend to use illegal arms. Indeed, the Service de police de la Ville de Montréal claimed that 95% of handguns used in violent crimes come from the black market, and that there’s a strong correlation between the drug trade and firearm violence. This is something that needs to be studied at the committee stage.

This leads to a second point that Parliament should be addressing the U.S.-Canada gun trafficking problem. Indeed, illegal guns often arrive in Canada by boat, train or drones, which is why we should make more resources available that enable border service officers to patrol our borders between our official border crossings.

[Translation]

Third, some have said that Bill C-21 will have negative repercussions on sport shooting and airsoft, which have nothing to do with the increase in crime.

Finally, some maintain that our government should invest more money and resources into mental health, because some of our young people are being radicalized or joining gangs for several reasons.

[English]

Honourable senators, I believe these concerns should all be studied in committee, and I call on those who study this bill to take these issues seriously.

I will close this speech with another very sad incident that is very close to my heart and to my faith. I’ve had the possibility to go to the Quebec mosque in Quebec City many times, from the second day this incident happened. The last time I visited this mosque was with the Human Rights Committee, and I had the privilege of meeting Imam Boufeldja Benabdallah of the Quebec mosque last summer when we took part in the Standing Senate Committee on Human Rights’ study on Islamophobia.

He had a kind smile and an open mind. He welcomed us into the mosque where a nightmare had taken place to the congregation and held a service in our presence. On that day, the imam took us to the main praying hall. Slowly, we were shown where his fellow members — his brothers in faith — were shot and killed in 2017 by Alexandre Bissonnette.

We were told that six men had tried to cram themselves in a small opening in the wall to protect themselves from bullets. We were told that someone had died in the corner and someone else on the ground. These victims had families, wives and children, and one man had not seen his mother for six years, and she had just come from Gabon.

When I first went there and saw that woman who just saw her son for two days before he was shot, I will never forget that. That was the deep and profound tension in the air — fear, anger, pain, devastation mixed with a sense of dignity and even hope.

During our visit to the mosque, a man stood up and asked a question. I still think about that question often. I have tried to answer it myself ever since. This man asked us — senators — how our visit would be any different from the previous ones, and how our hands would be different than those he shook last month.

May I have five more minutes? I have one page of my speech left.

The Hon. the Speaker: Is leave granted?

The Hon. the Speaker: Senator Cotter, are you asking for more time?

Senator Cotter: Two more minutes, if I may.

Hon. Mary Coyle: Honourable senators, I rise today on National Indigenous Peoples Day, on the lands of the Algonquin Anishinaabe people, to speak at second reading of Bill C-21 — a bill that aims to build on existing national gun control legislation in order to build a safer Canada.

Many colleagues will remember Bill C-71 — the most recent firearms legislation, which received Royal Assent in 2019. Bill C-71 expanded background checks, required businesses to keep point-of-sale records for non-restricted firearms and reinstated a requirement related to authorization to transport restricted and prohibited firearms.

My intention today is to quickly touch upon the main elements of this new firearms bill — Bill C-21 — including clearly stating what is not in the bill; and then I will highlight a few key areas and key stakeholders that I would suggest the committee examine in their study.

Honourable senators, let’s review the main elements of the bill:

First, the bill brings in a national handgun freeze in order to cap the number of legal handguns circulating in Canada. It is not a ban; it is a freeze. There will be no confiscation of legally owned handguns.

Second, it brings a new prospective, not retroactive, definition of assault-style weapon characteristics.

Third, as you have heard Senator Jaffer mention, the bill introduces red flag laws and yellow flag laws, with the purpose of reducing and preventing firearm-related family violence, self‑harm and suicide.

Fourth, the bill includes a number of elements aimed at strengthening border controls, including anti-firearms smuggling and trafficking measures, and requiring a firearms licence in order to import ammunition.

Fifth, it includes measures to address illegally manufactured firearms, otherwise known as ghost guns. The prevalence of 3-D printing of guns makes traceability very difficult. This law will provide a new definition for a “firearm part,” and require a person to have a licence to import, purchase or transfer a prescribed firearm part.

Sixth, and finally, there are new firearm-related offences and strengthened penalties in this bill.

To clarify again, the government is not proposing in this bill to ban or confiscate any existing hunting guns. The new prospective “assault-style weapon” definition only applies to long guns designed and manufactured after Bill C-21 receives Royal Assent.

Senator Yussuff, the bill’s sponsor, addressed these key components of the bill in detail in his speech kicking off this debate, and I will not repeat what he’s already said so thoroughly.

Public Safety Canada’s technical briefing on Bill C-21 is entitled Building a safe and resilient Canada. We know that this piece of legislation has more than one purpose. It is aimed at reducing and preventing gun violence that we are seeing in cities, often perpetrated by gangs; it is aimed at preventing further mass tragedies, such as the one experienced in my province in 2020, as well as l’École Polytechnique murders, and the Quebec City mosque murders that we’ve heard about tonight; and it is aimed at addressing family violence, self-harm and suicide.

Our job will be to determine whether this bill is, in fact, fit for purpose. Will the bill’s measures contribute — and contribute effectively — to the intended outcomes? This legislation is meant to enable Canada to make advances in these critical areas and — pardon the analogy — it is not meant to be a silver bullet. As with most legislation, this bill is meant to be one piece of a much larger puzzle.

I will now turn to a few key areas that I would recommend the committee investigate.

Colleagues, we have heard Senator Manning and Senator Boisvenu speak about the scourge of femicide and intimate partner violence. Several of us have spoken to Senator Boniface’s inquiry on intimate partner violence; we have heard about this tonight.

With that in mind, it is important to examine if — and how — Bill C-21 responds to the recommendations of the Nova Scotia Mass Casualty Commission and the Renfrew County inquest. The proposed red flag laws and yellow flag laws respond partly to Recommendation C.22 of the Mass Casualty Commission, as well as recommendations 56 to 62 and recommendations 70 to 72 of the Renfrew County inquest.

It will also be important, colleagues, to examine which firearms restrictions are handled through regulations versus legislation. We know that around 1,500 firearms were banned through regulations in May 2020 in response to the mass murders in Nova Scotia and the case of intimate partner violence which kicked off that horrible rampage.

In the House committee, the government proposed amendments to Bill C-21 that would ban those firearms and others through legislation, but, as we all know, they later withdrew those proposed amendments. Therefore, those are no longer part of this legislation.

I also believe that it will be important for the committee to examine how Canada measures up internationally on gun control and gun violence. In the recent Time magazine article entitled “Canada Risks Following the Path of the U.S. on Gun Violence,” the authors point out that Canada has the fifth-highest gun ownership in the world, and now has the third-highest rate of firearm homicide among populous high-income countries, after the U.S. and Chile. Worldwide, Canada has the ninth-highest age-standardized rate of firearm-related suicide among men — more than twice the global average.

Canada’s gun control measures are stricter than those of the United States, but less stringent compared to some other Western countries. Countries like Australia, the United Kingdom and Japan have implemented more comprehensive gun control measures than Canada, and these countries have achieved lower rates of firearm-related deaths and mass shootings compared to Canada. The U.K. banned handguns following the Dunblane school massacre in Scotland in 1996. In the U.K., there have been no school shootings and one mass shooting event since then.

Studies suggest that red flag laws in the United States have prevented potential acts of violence. Research conducted in Indiana and Connecticut found a reduction in firearm-related suicides after the implementation of those laws.

In the U.S., states with more comprehensive “red flag” laws, adequate resources and strong community outreach have seen better outcomes. All of this important international data and much more will be critical for the committee to examine in detail.

It will also be critical for the committee to listen to the perspectives of a number of key stakeholder groups, and these include mass shooting victims’ groups such as PolySeSouvient, Danforth Families for Safe Communities and Centre Culturel Islamique de Québec. These groups are devoted to the prevention of future tragedies.

The committee should also meet with women’s organizations, including #Women4GunControl, a coalition of 33 women’s and feminist organizations, which includes the National Association of Women and the Law. These groups are naturally engaged on this given that access to firearms is one of the top five risk factors when determining a woman will die in domestic violence situations.

It might be instructive for the committee to hear from Lisa Banfield, the spouse of the Nova Scotia mass murderer, on how she was subjected to coercive control and almost died herself the night of the mass tragedy.

It will be important to connect with both urban and rural women’s groups, as the risks related to firearms and the implications of “yellow” and “red flag” laws have different nuances in different contexts. These women’s groups are clear that gun violence against women needs to be treated as a distinct issue from the “guns and gangs” issue. They want us to look at both of those.

Indigenous groups such as the Assembly of First Nations, the Federation of Sovereign Indigenous Nations, Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami, the Métis National Council, the Native Women’s Association of Canada, Pauktuutit, Les Femmes Michif Otipemisiwak — Women of the Métis Nation and others should be contacted and communicated with.

We know that Bill C-21 includes a specific provision stating that nothing proposed within it derogates from the rights of Indigenous peoples, recognized and affirmed under section 35 of our Constitution. It will be very important to balance the valid interests of hunters with the rights of all people to live in safe homes and communities in all communities in Canada, be they Indigenous or non-Indigenous.

Of course, police groups, including the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police, the National Police Federation and the Association des directeurs de police du Québec, should all be called to testify. They will have feedback on all of the measures in this bill, as well as issues related to the capacity to implement those measures. And, of course, court officials who will handle “red flag” laws will have an important perspective to add as well.

With the main focus of this legislation on prevention of smuggling and trafficking, the Canadian Border Services Agency will have important feedback on, again, the specific measures as well as their own capacity to implement those measures.

It will be important to hear from firearms advocates and hunters, including the Canadian Coalition for Firearm Rights and the National Firearms Association.

I live in rural Nova Scotia and I know how important hunting is to many families in my area. We’ve heard from Senators Wallin, Richards and LaBoucane-Benson on the importance of respecting hunters. I believe that part of respecting hunters is equipping those hunters with honest information on what is actually included in this bill so an honest discussion can be had.

Consulting sports shooters, including the Shooting Federation of Canada and the International Practical Shooting Confederation, is very important.

The handgun freeze in Bill C-21 does not remove handguns from any current owners but makes it illegal to acquire one, with exemptions for Olympic and Paralympic competitors and select individuals such as police officers. The exact rules for an individual to qualify as training for Olympic handgun disciplines will be determined by regulations.

Finally, and very importantly, as we’ve heard from Senator Kutcher in his speech, it will be essential for our committee to hear from people with expertise in health, mental health and suicide prevention. The group Canadian Doctors for Protection from Guns argued that this legislation should be informed by public health science.

Colleagues, my staff team has done extensive research on the perspectives and positions of these key stakeholders and expert groups. As legislative lead on Bill C-21 for the Independent Senators Group, I’ve shared some of that research with our ISG colleagues, and we would also be happy to share it with anyone else in this chamber who would be interested; just let us know.

Unfortunately, colleagues, we know there has been a well‑organized campaign of disinformation on this bill.

Colleagues, I came to this chamber from St. Francis Xavier University in Nova Scotia, whose motto is Quaecumque Sunt Vera — “Whatsoever things are true.” As you all well know, it is our responsibility as senators to pursue, find and share the truth.

Senator Yussuff said in his speech introducing Bill C-21 at second reading:

. . . I want to recognize . . . that the conversation about guns is never an easy one to have. It is usually filled with high emotion and strong opinions, and it can be very divisive and polarizing because it is about life and death . . . people’s rights and privileges.

Colleagues, we may not all agree on the best ways to keep Canada and Canadians safe, but I know we all believe we share a responsibility to protect Canadians from gun violence. Colleagues, that is what Bill C-21 is intended to do.

Honourable senators, while second-reading debate on this bill is essential — and I look forward to hearing Senator Plett in a few moments — I believe we are close to being ready to send Bill C-21 to committee. There, at committee, I have confidence our colleagues will work diligently to seek and consider the evidence required to further inform our deliberations on whether and how this bill is or can be fit for purpose.

Colleagues, let’s fulfill our duty to Canadians and move this bill to committee.

Thank you, wela’lioq.

Hon. Donald Neil Plett (Leader of the Opposition): Another thing about the good old days was we had a bit more room in our seats. That has nothing to do with the makeup of the Senate but, rather, of the building.

Honourable senators, I rise today to speak to Bill C-21. Before I get into the meat of my remarks on this bill — and I have a lot of meat here — I wish to devote a few comments to the unjustified pressure that this government has attempted to exert on us here in the Senate to simply adopt this bill without even hearing from witnesses, as they have with so many other bills.

I find it extremely objectionable that both the minister and the Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons have, in recent weeks, been pressing for the Senate to simply rubber-stamp this bill. Even before Senator Yussuff or a single senator spoke on this bill in the chamber, the Parliamentary Secretary tweeted that I should stop delaying the bill.

To set the record straight, I believe it is useful to go over the timeline of Bill C-21.

Bill C-21’s journey began in the House of Commons with first reading on May 30, 2022. Second reading occurred on June 23, 2022, and the bill was then sent to the House committee. There, the bill ran into multiple and serious problems.

As I will explain in my remarks, this is a very badly thought‑out bill, and its problems were made worse by the amendments that the government itself attempted to make to the bill in the late fall of 2022. As we shall see, these amendments were proposed with no meaningful consultation and certainly without meaningful consultations with the Indigenous people whom they seriously impacted.

The government was forced to withdraw these amendments from the bill itself, though I do not believe that it had actually abandoned the objectives behind those amendments. I will discuss this matter as well in my remarks later on, but I think it is fairly clear that the government will now attempt to leave further changes to future regulation and orders-in-council, just as they have already done through the arbitrary gun ban they imposed in 2020 and through their arbitrary ban on the purchase and sale of legal handguns held by licensed sport shooters and collectors, which they imposed last year through an order-in-council.

To stifle all further debate, the government then introduced time allocation in the House and forced the bill through third reading on May 18, 2023. It was only then that Bill C-21’s journey in the Senate began. Although the bill was introduced in the Senate on May 18, debate did not begin until May 31, when our colleague Senator Yussuff, the sponsor of the bill, delivered his speech over a period of two days. But even before Senator Yussuff had said one word, the parliamentary secretary to the Government House Leader was again accusing me of delaying the bill.

The minister then followed this up with a letter sent to the leaders of the different Senate groups on June 8, demanding that we pass the bill. The minister even had the gall to write to the chair of the Senate National Security and Defence Committee with this demand. Colleagues, the Senate itself determines which committee will study any piece of government legislation, and the minister attempted to intervene in that process before we had even taken a decision.

The minister not only demanded that the bill be passed without any substantive debate; he also prejudged which committee might review the bill. In effect, he made additional demands about how exactly the committee should review it. This represents an unprecedented level of interference in the business of the Senate, and it fully exposes the very little respect the government has for this chamber.

Since June 8, we have had a number of senators who are not from the official opposition speak to this bill, and I submit that these senators had every right to prepare their remarks to be able to speak to this bill. We have an unwritten rule here that the critic is typically the last person to speak. I have done the same as my colleagues and spent a fair bit of time preparing my remarks. I was also informed by a critic briefing that I received from officials. My remarks are also informed by the research that my staff had to do on this bill. That research work reveals how deeply flawed this bill actually is, and I submit that it will be absolutely the duty of the Senate to hear from a broad cross-section of Canadians who are very concerned about this bill and who have views on all sides of this issue in relation to this legislation.

In that regard, colleagues, I want to assure the government that up until now, the official opposition has not delayed this bill. However, having personally reviewed the very negative implications of this bill, I wish to say that since the last speaker in this chamber spoke on the bill literally two minutes ago, I have now officially begun to delay Bill C-21. So let there be no question, and let the minister know so the minister and his parliamentary secretary can mark that in their calendars for future reference.

Colleagues, this bill amends the Firearms Act and other legislation to impose new requirements and restrictions on Canada’s legal firearms owners. There are currently well over 2 million gun licences in Canada, and in almost all cases, Canadian gun owners are extremely responsible members of our society. That has been the case throughout Canada’s history.

I think we need to understand who Canada’s gun owners are. They are, of course, Indigenous peoples who have used firearms as an integral aspect for their sustenance for centuries. They are Canadian hunters who have also used firearms responsibly for centuries. They are rural and urban Canadians. They are sport shooters and collectors who use firearms at clubs across the country. They are shooters who use pistols in a variety of disciplines, including Olympic competition.

These are people like Linda Thom from Ottawa, who won the Olympic gold medal at the 1984 Olympics in the 25-metre pistol competition. They include people like Lynda Kiejko, who won double gold at the 2015 Pan American Games, also in the 25‑metre pistol event. They include thousands of Canadians who participate in International Practical Shooting Confederation matches across the country. They are people who will be subject to the new restrictions being proposed by Bill C-21, a bill that the government claims is “. . . part of a comprehensive strategy to address gun violence and strengthen gun control in Canada.”

Bill C-21 does no such thing. It does not do so since there actually is no strategy from this government to address gun violence in Canada. In fact, this bill not only fails to address gun violence, it also significantly weakens gun control in Canada, and it may even destroy it.

In my remarks today, I will examine the policy rationale for this bill. In doing so, I will need to speak about the many flaws of this bill.

Second, I will discuss some of the implications of this bill and, in particular, about how I believe this bill will actually contribute to a growth in violent crime on our streets.

Third, I will address what I believe are the negative implications of all of this for gun control in Canada.

I want to begin by looking at the government’s policy rationale for this bill. At a core level, I believe this legislation illustrates the fact that ministers in charge of this bill don’t know very much about firearms. I believe this ignorance explains many of the serious flaws of this bill. It also explains why, over the past year, this bill has faced so many tumultuous ups and downs.

This became particularly evident late last year when a series of amendments were hastily proposed to the bill, which made it clear that ministers themselves did not understand the key issues. The government now claims to have abandoned these amendments, but I believe the mistaken ideas that led to the amendments remain at the heart of this bill. It is reasonably clear that the government will now attempt to do by regulation what they failed to do as completely as they would have liked through legislation.

The amendments in question were proposed by Liberal MP Paul Chiang, and what they did was expand the scope of the bill significantly to try to introduce bans on a wide range of hunting rifles. The amendments opened to complete prohibition any semi-automatic centrefire firearms that were designed to accept a detachable cartridge magazine and whose magazine capacity was greater than five cartridges. The provision would have immediately applied to as many as 1 million legal firearms in Canada, most of them non-restricted and almost all of them owned by hunters. I do not believe ministers gave the slightest thought about the likely impact these measures would have on Indigenous hunters, many of whom rely on them for subsistence hunting. I do not think that ministers really understood that when one talks about semi-automatic firearms, these are actually employed by hundreds of thousands of Canadian hunters.

For the information of colleagues who may also not be familiar with long guns, rifles and shotguns are actually manufactured in several different firing modes called actions. Some firearms are pump-action firearms, where the cartridges are moved into the chamber based on a pumping action. Some are lever-action firearms, where the same process is accomplished through a lever-action mechanism. Some are bolt-action firearms, where the process is accomplished — you guessed it — through a bolt‑action mechanism. Some are semi-automatic firearms, where the process is accomplished automatically when a previous round is discharged.

All of those actions can be fast, particularly when the firearm is in the hands of an experienced shooter. It is a commonly held belief that the semi-automatic action is the fastest, but that is not necessarily the case. Much depends upon who is using the firearm and how well it is maintained.

In Canada, semi-automatic long guns are legally limited to no more than five rounds in the firearm. That has been the case for decades, colleagues. There is no similar limitation for lever‑action, pump-action or bolt-action firearms. Those firearms might commonly hold 10 rounds, for example.

What colleagues should understand and what ministers should have understood is that semi-automatic long guns are very common among hunting firearms. They should also have understood that semi-automatic firearms already have magazine restrictions that are greater than those imposed on other long guns.

I think a reason that was overlooked and not well understood is because the government has consulted so inadequately on this bill. They certainly did not consult with Indigenous authorities on this amendment. We have often heard government ministers claim that when it comes to laws impacting Indigenous peoples, the slogan “nothing about us, without us” applies. But the reality is that this slogan is observed more in its omission than in its implementation.

Despite the government’s repeated claims that the enactment of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples requires them to consult with Indigenous peoples on issues affecting them, that certainly did not occur in any systematic way on Bill C-21.

The question, “With whom did you consult?” was posed to the officials during my critic’s briefing on the bill. When the officials were asked to describe their process of consulting with Indigenous peoples, they turned and looked for answers to the representative who was present from Minister Mendicino’s office. Departmental officials did say they had consulted on the previous Bill C-21, which died on the Order Paper, but they engaged in no such consultations with Indigenous peoples in advance of introducing this bill, which has different provisions from the previous bill.

Subsequent to my critic’s briefing, officials sent my office a list of meetings they held with Indigenous groups after the bill was introduced. In other words, those were meetings held between January and May this year. But that was months after Bill C-21 had been introduced and only occurred after the public opposition to the government’s amendments had arisen, colleagues.

As on so many other occasions, Indigenous peoples were only an afterthought. That really makes a mockery out of the claim that when it comes to Indigenous peoples, it is “nothing about us, without us.”

On Bill C-21, officials also failed to consult with outside experts who are well-informed on firearms.

All of that makes Bill C-21 remarkably similar to another Liberal gun bill, Bill C-68 in the 1990s, which enacted a universal firearms registry. Like that earlier bill, Bill C-21 will achieve almost nothing when it comes to enhancing public safety. Yet it will prevent legal handgun owners from buying or selling their firearms, but it still allows them to keep those guns and use them. Where, exactly, is the public safety benefit in that?

The bill will also set up a red flag law that will permit Canadians to take other Canadians to court if they fear that those other Canadians have guns and might pose a risk to others. Colleagues, Canadians can already call the police to deal with those sorts of concerns, so where is the public safety benefit in that?

That is what makes Bill C-21 so similar to Bill C-68 of the 1990s. Bill C-68 was ultimately rejected and, in large measure, repealed because it could not be explained how creating a universal gun registry at an enormous cost would enhance public safety.

Remember, colleagues, that the Chrétien government originally claimed that creating a universal firearms registry would carry a net cost of $2 million, but those costs subsequently exploded to $2 billion. By the time the Harper government repealed the long-gun registry, the public safety benefits of the costly long-gun registry had become impossible to explain.

Like Bill C-68, the provisions of Bill C-21 are already proving difficult to explain and to justify, and the bill has not been enacted yet. Ultimately, the Canadian public lost confidence in what was being claimed would be the benefits of Bill C-68. The same is already happening with Bill C-21, and once again, we have a piece of Liberal legislation that risks undermining the very foundations of gun control in Canada.

What, then, is the government claiming that it will achieve with this bill?

When he spoke on the bill in June 2022, Minister Mendicino stated that this bill is “. . . how we will eradicate gun violence and protect all Canadians.”

Reluctantly, I take the minister at his word that this is actually his objective and the objective of his government. In that sense, it is an emotive reaction to the scourge of gun crime. I’m sure that every senator in this chamber would agree that gun crime is a scourge on our society, but the minister says that his government’s goal is to eradicate gun violence. The word “eradicate” is defined by the Merriam-Webster Dictionary as “to do away with as completely as if by pulling up by the roots.” That is a very noble objective in theory, but the sad reality is that no piece of government legislation can hope to accomplish such a sweeping objective when it comes to any criminal activity; it is simply not possible.

We do not know if the minister literally believed what he said, but if that is actually his goal, then he simply doesn’t know what he is doing, and we’ve raised that issue in the Senate a few times here in the last few weeks.

If we consider the other bills the government has enacted when it comes to criminal justice — ones like Bill C-5 and Bill C-75 — those bills have actually undermined the ability of law enforcement to fight gun crime.

Under Bill C-5, the government repealed a number of mandatory sentences for gun crime, including the following: using a firearm or imitation firearm in the commission of an offence; possession of a firearm or weapon knowing its possession is unauthorized; possession of a prohibited or restricted firearm with ammunition; possession of a weapon obtained by commission of offence; discharging a firearm with intent; robbery with a firearm; and extortion with a firearm.

The mandatory sentences for all of those offences were repealed. Many of those provisions had actually been put in place not by the previous government, but by previous Liberal governments.

In 1995, Justice Minister Allan Rock said the following about the need for mandatory penalties for gun crimes:

The right approach to firearms control in Canada is to find an efficient way to fight criminal use of firearms while respecting legitimate uses and interests of law-abiding firearms owners.

. . . we must strengthen controls at the borders and impose tougher sentences for smuggling and trafficking in illegal firearms.

. . . the longest mandatory minimum penitentiary terms in the Criminal Code for those who use firearms for any one of ten serious crimes, including robbery; the prospect of a mandatory jail term for possessing stolen or smuggled firearms . . . .

The minister continues:

Our efforts at the borders must be more effective. It makes a mockery of our domestic controls if we cannot staunch the flow of illegal arms coming into Canada.

That, colleagues, is what the Liberal Minister of Justice said in 1995.

To be sure, what Allan Rock did in creating the long-gun registry was foolish, but he was at least right when he spoke about the need to prevent firearms trafficking and the criminal use of firearms.

Is it not strange for today’s Liberal government to declare that its objective is to completely eradicate gun violence, and then to turn around and deliberately eliminate mandatory sentences for those very same crimes?

As Allan Rock argued, the reality is that mandatory sentences can assist in reducing gun crimes. They are particularly useful in removing violent and repeat offenders from circulation on our streets and in preventing them from committing new violent crimes. Mandatory sentences provide some measure of assurance that gang members and other violent criminals won’t be back to prey on people in vulnerable communities that are most often plagued by gun crime.

But keeping measures in place to stop that sort of crime has not been a strong consideration in this current government’s policy-making. Instead, this government decided that a range of firearms offences should no longer attract any mandatory sentencing. How is that consistent with the government’s pledge to eradicate gun violence?

And, of course, the government did not stop these contradictory measures with Bill C-5. Under Bill C-75, the government also introduced a new legislative “principle of restraint” for police and the courts to observe when it comes to granting bail. The government argued that these specific measures would “. . . ensure that release at the earliest opportunity is favoured over detention . . . .”

The impact of this policy has been nothing short of devastating, and I now want to discuss some of these impacts.

In British Columbia, a recent study looked at 425 bail hearings involving a suspect both accused of a violent crime and with a breach of bail conditions on their file. Of those 425 hearings, the Crown sought detention orders in only 222 cases, or 52% of the time. That meant that in nearly 50% of the cases, violent criminals with bail breaches on their files were back on the streets.

If we look at Ontario, this province has experienced a 57% increase in serious violence and weapons cases before the courts between 2018 and 2021. Who was in government?

Constable Greg Pierzchala of the Ontario Provincial Police was shot and killed last year. He was murdered by a repeat criminal, Randall McKenzie, and another man. McKenzie was out on bail on assault and weapons charges. He also had a warrant out for his arrest.

At the time that Bill C-75 was passed, the eradication of gun violence was supposed to be the goal of this government. But somehow that goal did not impact the provisions of Bill C-75. When Bill C-75 was passed, the government already knew that crimes committed by repeat offenders were skyrocketing. And Bill C-75 added fuel to that fire.

The Toronto Police Service reports that in the last two years, 17% of accused in Toronto charged with shooting-related homicides were already out on bail at the time of the alleged fatal shooting. Think about that, colleagues: Of the perpetrators of fatal shootings in Toronto, 17% were out on bail. Once again, how did the government’s supposed goal of eradicating gun violence fit with this outcome?

Colleagues, we can only come to two possible conclusions when we consider facts like these: Either the eradication of gun violence is really only a slogan for this government, or this government is completely and totally incompetent. If we are honest, colleagues, it’s probably a mixture of both.

This is a government and a minister who pay far too little attention to the details of policy. Like the Prime Minister who leads them, they somehow believe that slogans are sufficient and that slogans themselves will determine and set policy. We see this approach time and time again, and it is leading to disastrous policy outcomes. The government’s policy approach in Bill C-21 is only the latest illustration of this incompetence.

In his second reading remarks on Bill C-21 a year ago, the minister referenced the experiences of numerous Canadians who have been impacted by gun violence. No words can ever comfort those whose loved ones have been murdered in senseless acts of violence, but if he actually wants to eradicate gun violence as he claims, then the problem is that he has absolutely no idea how to accomplish that objective. That is because this government blames society for the actions of criminals. It is a government that identifies legal gun owners as the primary problem when it comes to gun crime. And it is a government that somehow believes that shorter periods of incarceration, even for repeat violent offenders, will produce less crime.

Colleagues, this is an incompetent approach, and it has significantly contributed to increasing violent crime in the past eight years. According to Statistics Canada, in 2021, 788 people were murdered in Canada. Let’s contrast that with 2013, when there were only 509 murders. Now, 509 murders are still way too many, but just eight years later, the number of murders increased by more than 50%. And in 2021, one quarter of those murders were gang-related.

Shootings, always using illegal firearms, represent three quarters of all gang-related homicides. In Winnipeg, there were a record 53 homicides in 2022. Firearms were used in more than 30% of Winnipeg’s homicides, but knives were involved in about 28% of homicides.

Senator MacDonald: Ban knives too.

An Hon. Senator: Wow.

The Hon. the Speaker: Those opposed to the motion will please say, “nay.”