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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.