Front Burner - The fight to make handguns illegal in Canada

Episode Date: June 27, 2019

Today on Front Burner, we speak to Toronto Liberal MP Adam Vaughan, who says he disagrees with his party’s stance to rule against a handgun ban. Is the fight to ban handguns in Canada over?

In the Dragon's Den, a simple pitch can lead to a life-changing connection. Watch new episodes of Dragon's Den free on CBC Gem. Brought to you in part by National Angel Capital Organization, empowering Canada's entrepreneurs through angel investment and industry connections. This is a CBC Podcast. As I talk about it, I can feel and smell everything that I did back then. And he looks down at me, I'm looking up at him, and he says, that's my little girl. It's a 30-year-old homicide where we don't have anybody charged and convicted.

Felt like a murderer had gotten away with something. Tell me now, did you have anything to do with the murder? Someone Knows Something with David Ridgen, Season 5. Now available. Go to cbc.ca slash sks. Hello, I'm Jamie Poisson. So yesterday in Ottawa, there was a demonstration outside City Hall in support of a national handgun ban. It's hard to make out what's happening here, but someone who's in support of the ban is being drowned out by a bunch of people who are saying that legal gun owners in Canada aren't the problem. What happened in Ottawa is really emblematic of a highly charged debate that's taking place right across the country.

As councillors in cities like Ottawa, but also Vancouver, push for a handgun ban, and mayors of Montreal and Toronto demand the same. All of this is happening at a time when outbursts of gun violence in public spaces keep happening. At the beginning of this month in Ottawa's busy byword market, or at the Toronto Raptors' victory parade. Now, the thing is that the Liberals were considering a ban for many months, but now they aren't. Minister of Border Security and Organized Crime Bill Blair very recently took this off the table. This is a disappointment to one of his own colleagues, Liberal MP Adam Vaughan. I'm going to speak with Adam in a moment about why he thinks a handgun ban is necessary.

But first, my colleague J.P JP Tasker on how we got here, and for some context, what's been happening on the gun control front more broadly. This is FrontBurner. JP, thanks so much for joining us today. Hi. So let's talk about how this debate on banning handguns really got started. Yeah, well, we've long debated the role of firearms in Canadian society, and for good reason. I mean, depending on what data you're using, Canada has basically more guns per capita than just about any other country out there.

We're surpassed only by the likes of the United States and war-torn Yemen. That is really interesting for me to hear you say. That's something I hadn't thought about until right now. Yeah, we're usually in the top 10 worldwide in terms of per capita gun ownership. There's 2.2 million Canadians that are actually licensed to own firearms in this country. So there's literally millions of guns that are circulating all across this country. It's a huge urban-rural divide, though, of course, because a lot of those licensees are in some of the more rural parts of this country, and a lot of people's exposure in the cities to guns is through crime. And I know when we're talking about guns, we're not just talking about handguns.

But for the purpose of this conversation today, when did we really start talking about the possibility that a handgun ban could become a reality in Canada? that a handgun ban could become a reality in Canada. The Liberal government picked up the gun control mantle in the last election and there's been a really intense debate about this since last summer in particular because there was so much gun-related crimes in that city last year. There have been 96 homicides, more than 400 shootings, and more than 500 handgun seizures. I mean, if you remember, there was like 10 people shot in the first five days of July. Right, right. We're talking about the Danforth shooting. Danforth massacre, that was a whole other thing.

Faisal Hussein killed two people and injured 13 others in July. This woman grew up with Reese Fallon, the 18-year-old woman who was killed. She was my best friend for a really long time. And we used to sleep together all the time and she really didn't deserve this. Even places like smaller centers like Fredericton, New Brunswick, there was a mass shooting last August that killed four. Just sitting there on my floor

going, I can't believe this is going on in my city. It's a beautiful city. Constable Rob Costello's widow, Jackie McClain, here's some of what she shared. We had a couple of rules in our relationship. The first rule was no dying. He promised me that he was never going to die. He was the best person that I've ever known. So that really prompted the Liberals to go even further than what they had in the pipeline already,

which was Bill C-71. They want to go even further and study an outright handgun ban because of all that violence. Okay, and then now let's talk about those who believe that this bill just doesn't go far enough. And particularly, let's home in on this possibility of a handgun ban. You know, I know that this is something that the Liberal government was exploring over the last year. And so what's happened with that? Yeah, so gun control people feel like this is just too timid. And after that spate of violence in the last summer, they really want the government to act, to take action against handguns, which are used principally in gang-related crime. But, you know, all those mass shootings that we saw in this country prompted people to really ask the liberal government to take more action. So they shuffled the cabinet last summer and they put Bill Blair, Toronto's former top cop, in a new position. Now he's the Minister of Border Security and Organized Crime

Reduction. Bill Blair has always stepped up in public service. And they gave him the task of going out, fanning it across the country and holding cross-country consultation efforts, you know, asking people what they really thought about banning handguns. The only thing this all says is every time the liberals are in power, they come after us. Respectfully, I will say I consider gun ownership a right and rights are inalienable. It's only governments that choose to acknowledge them or not. Firearm ownership is a privilege. It's a privilege earned by each and every person in this room. It's a privilege earned because you obey the rules.

And really, the consultations failed to produce much of a consensus, I must say. The consultations showed there's really, there's no critical mass of Canadians calling for a national handgun ban. Okay. So there wasn't really anything concrete from that other than to say that those people who already believe there should be a handgun ban, you know, believe that strongly and the people on the other side vehemently oppose it. So it was really up to the government to spend some political capital and make a decision. But Bill Blair has said it's not really in the cards now to ban handguns

because there isn't that call for such an action, such dramatic action, because there are so many. There are thousands, tens of thousands of handguns that are out there in our country circulating around every day. My conclusion is that there are measures that we can and must take, yes, with handguns, to make it more difficult for people who would commit crimes to access them. And, you know, I've heard Bill Blair talk about this. He says that he doesn't believe that this would be the most effective measure in restricting the access that criminals have to handguns

because a lot of them are coming across the border from the United States. There are always challenges because we live next door to the largest handgun arsenal in the world, the United States, and people will meet the demand for those guns by smuggling them across the border. And so I believe that there are some very effective measures. And also that it would be very expensive. And we're talking about a buyback program, right? Yeah, absolutely. So let's take one example, New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern. She has a buyback program underway now in New Zealand. Now it doesn't deal with handguns. We're talking there about semi-automatic weapons. So like the AR-15. Exactly. Things that are

usually used in school shootings in the US or at this Moss Massacre in Christchurch. But, though, I think what's important now is that New Zealand public is galvanized. And I would hope that politicians are galvanized behind these changes. What she's done there is, because when you talk about a ban, you're talking about dispossession. You have to have a buyback scheme in place. And she is going to buy back 14,300 military style weapons, that's going to cost about 180 million Canadian dollars. If we were to do something similar in our country, again, not talking about handguns, but talking about assault style firearms, there's about 200,000

of those. So if we were to follow the New Zealand model and offer about 95% of the original purchase price, that would cost the Canadian government $2.6 billion just to do that. And Bill Blair has said, you know, this is simply too expensive, that there are better ways to spend federal funds in buying back these sort of weapons. And then you would have to buy back handguns that would increase the cost even more. Absolutely, yes. There's also a push here, right, for the ban of assault-style rifles, similar to what happened in New Zealand. There is absolutely and the Liberal government could revisit this issue again in the next campaign. But there are some weapons quite frankly in my opinion that are so dangerous

but there really is no place in a safe and civil society for them and and I think there are measures that we can take to make those guns just generally unacceptable and inaccessible. Gun control advocates are pushing for the government to go further. If it's not a handgun ban, if that's not going to work for people, if that's, you know, even though city councils have long demanded that, if that's not going to work, let's at least revisit the assault style issue and maybe empower municipalities to, you know, put their own laws on the books to really curb the number of handguns that we're seeing floating around. There may be some additional measures that would be appropriate to urban environments

that we're prepared to work with the cities and the provinces to explore how that could be achieved. So if I could just briefly summarize where we landed today, a handgun ban is not part of the Liberals' recent bill that further restricted gun access in Canada because this year-long project looked into it and it didn't come up with enough support for a ban. But there is, you think, a possibility that the Liberals could make an assault-style weapon ban a campaign issue. Do you think this fight for a handgun ban is actually over? Well, I expect some action, or at least the promise of action, as you said, in the federal election campaign. Things like strengthening the rules on safe and secure storage, giving authorities more power to suspend gun licenses, but also,

you know, taking action on straw purchases where firearms are legally purchased and then resold to criminals. That's what Bill Blair has telegraphed is coming. That's the new frontier. JP, thank you so much as always. Thanks for having me. We'll be back in a second. Discover what millions around the world already have. Audible has Canada's largest library of audiobooks, including exclusive content curated by and for Canadians. Experience books in a whole new way, where stories are brought to life by powerful performances from renowned actors and narrators.

With the free Audible app, you can listen anytime, anywhere, whether you're at home, in the car, or out on a jog. The first 30 days of the Audible membership are free, including a free book. Go to www.audible.ca slash cbc to learn more. Okay, so now on to Liberal MP Adam Vaughn, who's here with me now in studio. Adam, thank you so much for joining me today. No worries. So can you tell me why this issue of guns, handguns in particular has become so important to you? They're dangerous.

And the impact of handguns in particular in the riding that I represent in downtown Toronto, it has to be dealt with. The results are tragic. The trauma is real. The impact on communities that have experienced sustained levels of violence over the last decade, decade and a half, two decades, the impacts are human. And you cannot represent these writings. You cannot live in these neighborhoods. You cannot be friends with the families that have been impacted and not try to keep finding a way to make communities safer. Well, let's try to wade through some of it today.

You know, I was just talking with my colleague J.P. Tasker about how the Liberals have essentially taken a potential handgun ban off the table right now. And, you know, I know you were on the phone with Toronto Mayor John Tory a few days ago. I've chatted with him a couple of times this week about it. And what are you talking about? This was something that Mayor Tory had been a huge proponent of. I asked the question, you know, why do people in the city of Toronto need guns? The laws provide for them to have, I understand that there are law-abiding people who follow the rules and fill out the papers, but you have to ask yourself the question, you know, why do we need guns? Yeah, no, look, I think, you know, when it comes to handguns,

we have a real responsibility to protect people. But we also need a mandate to do it. It helps when you're moving legislation like this through the process to be able to say, we said we're going to do A, B, and C in the campaign, and now we are doing A, B, and C. And if people start to get cold feet or if the lobby, and trust me, the gun lobby in this country is alive and well. And I do want to talk about that in a moment. But when you get confronted by that, if you have a political mandate to do just what you say you're going to do, it gets done faster, it gets done better, and it gets done clearly. And, you know, to be fair,

this wasn't an election promise from the Liberals. Gun control was, but a handgun ban wasn't. We brought forth C-71, which is comprehensive reassessment of some of the lax rules that were put in place by Harper and the Conservatives. And did things that are just, you know, you'd think were normal, but weren't around background checks and a whole series of other things. Bill, C-71 will enhance background checks. Police will now have the power to look at an applicant's entire life history before allowing them to buy a firearm. Also, retailers will have to keep records of firearm sales for at least 20 years and make them accessible if police have obtained a warrant.

But we have more work to do. You cannot go through a summer in Toronto, and it's not just Toronto. Montreal, the mayor of Montreal is also calling for this. You can't go through a summer in Toronto, and it's not just Toronto. Montreal. Montreal, Surrey. The mayor of Montreal is also calling for this. You can't go through that process and not look to make communities safer. You wouldn't be doing your job as a member of parliament. I'm interested to hear from you essentially why you think a handgun ban would be effective to stop violence in Toronto.

I've been to more funerals in my riding for children than I have for funerals in my own family in my lifetime. And when you deal with the very real trauma and the real tragedy of these young lives that are being lost, what catches the headline is the little three by five picture of the victim. And maybe there's a shot of the neighborhood. little three by five picture of the victim. And maybe there's a shot of the neighborhood.

If you've worked in these communities for any length of period, what you come across is the fear and the trauma when the guns start going off. And I was sitting in the lobby of parliament when we heard about the shooting. Everyone was watching the Raptors parade. And you could literally hear the crack, crack, crack, and you can see the people moving. And you know instinctively what's going on because that's your hometown.

Okay, so everybody please remain calm. Just stay here. Stay together. Everybody there is trying to figure out what happened. I'm on the phone trying to find my kids who are down at the parade. And if the trauma of that, and there are people, I've talked to people who were there and who are still shaken by it. I was in Parliament Hill when the gunman came through the corridors and I was pushed into a security closet to be protected. Security guards moved cautiously after him as the gunman neared the rooms where MPs were having their Wednesday caucus meetings. One parliamentary guard was wounded in the foot and the gunman was shot dead.

When a balloon pops behind my back, I still jump. And certainly within the weeks afterwards, it was a scary, scary time. But the communities that had a sustained sort of environment of guns going off. You talk to families, talk to moms with little kids. Those kids are scared out of their minds day in, day out. This is a nightly occurrence in some neighborhoods. And that fear and that level of stress is not healthy. It's not healthy for the families. It's not healthy for the communities. And we have a responsibility as a country to make those kids more resilient, safer, and happier.

And I won't back down from that. And I'm with you. You know, I think everyone listening would probably agree with you. No, the trouble is they don't. I think a lot of people would agree with you that they would like to see a reduction in gun violence. So what I want to talk to you about is why you think a ban would be effective. So when we talk about a ban, I just want to be clear first. We're talking about banning the sale of handguns in this country and buying back the existing handguns.

Is that what you would like to see happen? There are lots of different ways to orchestrate the legislation. I don't think there's a rational reason to have a handgun. You may like shooting. You may enjoy target practice. You may love your collection, whatever you have. Those are all emotional arguments. They're not real arguments. And the reality is, is there are a lot of things we regulate out of existence. When Bill Blair says that he doesn't think that this would be the most effective policy option

because the majority of guns are coming across the border from the United States, does he have a point? Like a handgun ban here wouldn't necessarily... Well, first of all, the gun lobby has prevented us from tracking guns effectively. So they prevent us from tracking it, and then they question the statistics, but they won't let us gather better statistics. So yes, some of the guns and a majority of the guns are probably smuggled across the border. We live next to one of the largest arsenals and one of the society with one of the most

lax set of laws around owning and possessing and using handguns anywhere on the planet. And of course, we absorb the impacts of that. But we also have guns that are lost, guns that are stolen, guns that are misused, guns that fall into the hands of people with mental health issues. So the issue is that how do we stem the flow of guns onto the street? Border security? Sure. And we've invested heavily in that and we have to do more. But we also have a domestic market and that domestic market is also ending up in the headlines and is also responsible

for kids being put into boxes and buried in the ground in this country. Councillors Ralston King and Mathieu Fleury will introduce the motion. It's going to call on the federal government to ban the sale and possession of handguns here in the city of Ottawa. The clear fact is that the less guns that we have on our streets and in our cities, the less risk there is of homicide on our streets and in our city. Can you tell me how you think the gun lobby has prevented us from tracking this data? And I say this, maybe I'll give you a bit of a preamble here. But before I did this podcast, I worked at the Toronto Star.

I did an investigation on crime guns flowing from the United States to Canada. And one thing that frustrated me during this investigation was that there is no national figure, right? figure, right? Like there's no way to know how many crime guns recovered from police services across the country originate in Canada, and how many of them originate in the United States. But we were able to get some statistics from Ontario that were leaked to us. It was a nightmare to get these statistics. But you know, of 757 crime guns traced in Ontario in 2011. We're talking about 60% from the United States. And there was 20% that originated in Canada. What role has the gun lobby played in making us getting these numbers so difficult? This podcast will be sliced and diced by the Conservative Party within five minutes of it going out in the air.

Within five minutes of me getting to Parliament, they had a fundraising letter saying, here's some guy who wanted to ban the sale of ammunition in Toronto. And I have no problem campaigning on that record in Toronto, but in the rural parts of Canada, the 20% that don't support stronger gun control, and in particular around handguns, that group votes on that issue,

and they vote heavy and hard on that issue. 80% of us who favor restricting weapons in a more sophisticated way, we understand the complexity of the argument. We understand that it's investments in social services. We understand it's investment in education. We understand it's investments in housing and community development and youth employment. We understand it's a huge investment in mental health services. We understand it's also an investment in better exit strategies

in and out of the prison system. All of these things are part of a complex approach to dealing with handguns. When we vote, we vote across an array of that complexity, and we don't focus our vote on punishing those 20% and those MPs that favor more lax gun control. So the vote of good thinking people dissipates. The vote of one issue folks concentrates, and that vote concentrates in some rural ridings in a way that changes seats.

But how is that stopping us from getting proper data? I just don't understand why the RCMP, why it's not just legislated that the RCMP has to track this. The minute you say data, the gun registry comes back into play. And as soon as the gun registry comes back into play, everybody who's impacted by the strength of the gun lobby in this country gets scared and they back away from the issue. And you see it in all parties. I've seen it with the New Democrats, Liberals.

I've seen it in the Conservative Party. You see it everywhere. And so no one wants to be targeted by effectively the Canadian version of the NRA, but that's what's happening. My name is Blair Hagan. I am Executive Vice President, Canada's National Farm Association. I am in Vancouver, British Columbia. All this talk about gun bans, I think they took a look at numbers. I think they crunched the numbers. There's over 1.1 million restricted and prohibited firearms in Canada.

There's over 2.2 million licensed firearms owners right now. And I think they decided that if they were to take that type of action before the election, it would definitely become a major election issue, and I don't think they wanted to face that. Then the numbers that we do have, I mean, these numbers that I have from 2011 do show that the majority of guns are coming across the border. And if this is going to be a very expensive program, and you've talked about the complexity of this issue. Expensive? To buy back the handguns.

The damage? But if we're talking about priorities, right, with policies. My priority is making sure the kids in my riding grow up. And if you want to put a price on that and debate the cost of that, I'll do it. But my question is, if it's going to cost a billion dollars to buy back handguns, would that be better in neighborhood programs or at the border? As we sit here and debate that issue of what's the cost and what's the best mechanism, more guns are being sold in this country. And as more guns are being sold in this country, solving the problem gets more expensive.

And so, yeah, I mean, the approach we take has to be smart and has to be cost effective. We have to invest resources that are hard to come by in any level of government. We have to invest them as strategically as possible, but to suggest that the domestic source, 20% of the guns, one out of five guns comes from a legal Canadian gun owner and somehow ends up in the hands of a criminal.

And we shouldn't do anything about that because the other 80% should be the priority. I'm sorry. You know, when, when, when, when the yellow tape goes up around a neighborhood and when bullet holes are left pockmarked in community centers, no one's sitting there going, I wonder if that was an imported gun or a Canadian gun. What they're saying is, why haven't you done anything to get rid of that gun? Are you disappointed with the decision to take the handgun ban off the table right now? Yeah. From your own party?

The point we reached was let's go to the electorate, get a mandate and to act on this. And I'm prepared to do that. And I'm prepared to hold my caucus and my government and my prime minister and my ministers accountable to that through caucus and through parliament and through my advocacy. I'm not shy about that. caucus and through parliament and through my advocacy. I'm not shy about that. But the reality is, if that's what they want, then let's have a conversation in this election about what we're going to do about handgun violence, because it's out of control in too many parts of this country. Do you think that your party in the upcoming election might seriously propose a ban of assault rifles?

I think what you'll see is, I don't want to prejudge the... Yeah, not you, but you know, Bill Blair and the prime minister, de facto, because they really have left a handgun ban off the table. Well, I think the Prime Minister and Bill Blair, they've been very clear about making this a platform issue, and they're looking for a mandate to act in this area.

So I think that, I won't prejudge the platform, but for everything I understand, and from the advocacy a lot of us have been doing in caucus, you will see a very defined and a very, I hope, effective proposition put in front of Canadians. And we'll be looking for a mandate to act on that mandate. And do you think that that will... I mean, I'm not going to prejudge what it is. So if I ask you the question again, if you think that it would include an assault rifle ban, you would say? I think you're going to see clear and definitive positions taken. You know, I think Canadians have a right to know what we're contemplating, and I'll wait for the platform to be released, just like you.

It's gone into that final stage of being written and costed and all those good things. Adam Vaughan, thank you so much for this conversation. I really appreciate it. Always. Thank you. So off the top of the show, I mentioned that pro-encounter gun ban rally in Ottawa. Well, there was also a motion put to the city council on Wednesday. It would have called on Mayor Jim Watson to lobby Ottawa for a handgun ban

and for police to offer a voluntary buyback. Council decided to punt the matter over to Ottawa's Police Services Board. That's all for today. I'm Jamie Poisson. Thanks so much for listening to FrontBurner. and the Arab Spring is raging. A lesbian activist in Syria starts a blog. She names it Gay Girl in Damascus. Am I crazy? Maybe. As her profile grows, so does the danger. The object of the email was,

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