The Decibel - What went wrong with the Liberals’ gun legislation

Episode Date: January 30, 2023

The Liberal government brought in Bill C-21 last May that would ban certain firearms. Amendments to the legislation have only confused the matter – some types of guns are banned in some of those amendments, but not in others – and the Liberals’ lack of communication is frustrating people on all sides of the issue.The Globe’s senior political reporter Marieke Walsh tells us why these changes have been made to the legislation, why the government has been so quiet on it, and how likely this legislation is to work in reducing gun violence.Questions? Comments? Ideas? Email us at [e-mail]

MPs are back in Parliament today after their winter break. And one of the major items on the agenda is gun control. The Liberals introduced Bill C-21 in May last year to ban certain firearms. But the bill has caused confusion and drawn fierce criticism from all sides. Today, The Globe's senior political reporter, Marika Walsh, is here. She'll tell us why this legislation is causing such problems for the liberals and if it can actually help reduce gun violence. I'm Maina Karaman-Wilms, and this is The Decibel from the Globe and Mail. Marika, it's great to see you again. Thank you so much

for being here. Thanks so much for having me on. So before we get into the new legislation, let's just kind of start with some scene setting here. What are the rules around guns in Canada right now? To legally own a gun in Canada, you need a firearms license. And so you need training. And then depending on what type of gun you own, there's different rules. So for example, there are unrestricted guns that you don't have to register with the police, like the SKS Siminov, which we'll hear about again later in this chat, I'm sure. And then there are restricted firearms and prohibited firearms. And restricted ones have rules around how you can use them and where you can use them, and prohibited are just ones that you cannot use.

On top of that, there are long lists of thousands of firearms that have been banned through regulations in Canada. Okay. And how many Canadians own a firearm, like own a gun? So it's interesting because we don't have very good statistics in Canada on this. We know that there are 2.2 million people in Canada with a firearms license. So that's like, what, five-ish percent of the population, five, six percent? You're asking me to do math here, Manica. I'll defer to you. But it's a sizable number. 2.2 million, it's a significant portion of the population. What we don't know is how many guns

each of them own, because only the guns that are restricted are registered. Let's actually just break down what the state of things in Canada, too. Like, what are the rates of gun violence here in Canada? So the gun crime rates in Canada are much less compared to the United States, where it is prolific. But it's also much more than, for example, countries in Europe. And when you look at the actual numbers, according to Statistics Canada in 2021, which is the year that we have the complete picture for, the most recent year that we have the most complete picture for, there were more than 8,000 victims of violent crime in which a firearm was present. That doesn't mean all of those people died, but that gives you a sense of just how many people are impacted by gun violence. Overall, in the last decade in Canada,

gun crime and homicides have been on the rise, but Stats Canada did track a decline from 2020 to 2021. And that was largely driven by a drop in Toronto, whereas in rural areas, there are still actually increases in the rates of violent crime related to or connected with firearms. And so there's a very complex picture that governments are dealing with where handguns are the biggest issue in urban centers. But in those rural areas, the crime is committed with long guns, with shotguns, with rifles. And so from a policy perspective, the liberals are trying to target both types of weapons. That's really interesting context. OK, so it sounds like we do have rules already around around guns that are out there. So why did the liberal government now decide to bring in this this new law around guns?

Well, it goes back to a long history of electoral politics in Canada. And when the liberals came to power in 2015, they promised stricter gun laws. For example, until the Liberals came to power, the gun used in the Polytechnique mass shooting in 1989 had not been banned in Canada. And the Liberals, while promising in elections stricter gun laws, did very little, if anything at all, in their first mandate to actually bring that in. And then in the next election, they again wedged the Conservatives on gun control policies because it plays to the liberal space in urban areas that are less familiar with gun culture and less familiar with guns in general compared to rural areas in Canada. And so they again promised stricter controls on assault-style weapons, but did not deliver what gun control advocates considered was necessary on handguns. And they also only brought

in the first round of restrictions that they brought in in May 2020 in the wake of the Portapique mass shooting in Nova Scotia. So it took them some time to bring it in. And it was done through regulations to ban more assault style rifles as the liberals describe them. There's no legal definition for assault style rifles. And so this is partly political and partly scientific. And the liberals are the ones who are trying to figure out how to clearly define assault style rifles as they see them to capture the guns that they want to ban.

Okay, so let's dive into this legislation then, Bill C-21. Marika, what exactly does it do? When the legislation was first brought in in May of last year, it was a revamped version of the legislation that had first been introduced before the 2021 election. And the original version of that bill focused on freezing the sale of handguns, on trying to crack down on the smuggling and the illegal trade of handguns across the border with the United States. And it also had things like red flag laws or red flag elements that would make it more difficult for somebody who was convicted of domestic violence, for example,

to own a firearm. And at the time that the liberals brought the bill in, in May of last year, there was this one little comment from Public Safety Minister Marco Mendicino that said more was coming, but he said at the time that they would be amending the bill at a later date to bring in a ban on assault-style weapons. Is that normal that a government would present a bill? No. So they would have amendments, but amendments to that extent? So people who have been studying or looking at why this change has happened, why the gun bill has gone from a political winner for the liberals to a political liability, have been suspicious or a bit cynical about the timing of when the gun bill was first brought in

in May 2022. Because it happened within days of the Uvalde, Texas mass shooting, where all these school kids were killed by a mass shooter in the United States. And the liberals have a tendency of bringing in gun laws and changes to gun laws after mass shootings, when the public is seized by this. So the bill was introduced in the spring and then this past fall. That's when they brought in those those changes that you're talking about, those amendments. So what what were the what were the changes? So those amendments came in two sections.

The first one is an incredibly long list of assault style weapons that the liberals say match their definition of assault-style weapons that should be prohibited in Canada. So that's a list that goes longer than 3,000 guns. It includes many guns. It's essentially a copy and paste of bans that have started in the 1990s. So they copied and pasted bans on guns that were done through regulation, essentially Canada's version of an executive order done by the White House, and put it into legislation because they want to make it more difficult for a future government,

i.e. for the next conservative government, whenever that happens, to be able to reverse it. When they created this list to go into the law, they added on more than 400 new firearms that they wanted to ban as well. And that list caught people by surprise because it includes what many people say are popular hunting rifles and shotguns. So there's that section of the amendment that has become very controversial.

That's the first section, but you mentioned there was a second section of the amendment as well. So the first section addresses guns that are currently in the Canadian market, that are currently in Canadian homes. And the second section is about dealing with future guns that are developed by gun manufacturers. And so it creates what the government calls an evergreen definition. It's essentially a forward-looking legal definition. And any gun that met that definition would be automatically banned and unable to be sold in the Canadian market. On top of it, because of how it was rolled out, there's a lot of confusion as to how they got there. And what we've learned in our reporting in the Globe and Mail is that the liberals have over time been changing their definition of assault style rifle and in doing so have captured many more weapons than they first said they would several years ago when they first brought in the bans through regulations. people are upset with this with this bill then because it is so sweeping and it sounds like there's actually even within this legislation there's different definitions of the types of guns that that would be banned like something that was not caught up in the original legislation is caught up in the amendment so are like are there even contradictions in there of what's

actually included it depends who you talk to the liberals say that these definitions complement each other is the word they're going with. But certainly other critics are saying they contradict each other. For example, the Simonov SKS that I mentioned off the top of our chat, it was not banned under the definition that the Liberals brought in through regulations a few years ago. And so it remained unrestricted in the Canadian market. And it is not banned through what the Liberals called their evergreen definition in this amendment. It doesn't meet the criteria of it. And yet it still appeared on this list of banned guns.

And it is very controversial in part because it is popular among Indigenous hunters. Okay. It also is a cheaper type of gun. And so that makes it more affordable, more accessible for people. The SKS does not have a sterling record in Canada. Yes, it is used for hunting, but it has also been used in violent crimes,

including the killing of two police officers last fall in Ontario. And so there is this challenge that the Liberals have in their attempts to ban assault-style weapons. They are also, by necessity, capturing some guns that are used in hunting and in hunting culture in Canada. And so MPs across the political spectrum, whether they are Liberals, Bloc, NDP, or Conservative have been hearing ad nauseum from constituents in rural ridings about this bill and the impact of this bill. They did it without a heads up to the

opposition parties who had been supporting the bill to that point. They did it without any press release, advisory, technical briefing, or explanation to journalists, which is very standard practice for when a bill is brought in. And they did it without any of the fanfare that the Liberals traditionally bring to major gun policy changes. We'll be back after this message. All right, let's get into some of the criticism of this bill because there is a lot of that. It's been criticized from all sides, including the NDP.

So this is a party that's usually fairly supportive of gun control. So what is the NDP's criticism against this bill? So the criticism comes in two parts. First, on the process side that the liberals brought in this amendment that was so substantive, so sweeping in how much it broadened what the bill was doing without the scrutiny of the committee review process, that it came at the end of that. And so they view that as an abuse of parliament in a sense, that it didn't follow the process, that it made it look like they were trying to sneak something in. And on top of that, you don't want to be catching your colleagues who are supporting your policies off guard. Yeah. Right. That seems counterintuitive. You as a minority government

need them on side to get your policies into law because you're aintuitive. You, as a minority government, need them on side to get your policies into law. Because you're a minority government, you can't do it alone. And so by catching the NDP and Bloc Québécois, who were both supporting this off guard, that was clearly a misstep in terms of managing House of Commons relations across the aisle. But moreover, the NDP and the Bloc are critical of the bill for the guns that it captures. They believe that it goes too far in the guns that it bans and that it targets too many of the guns used in hunting in Canada and that are used across rural Canada very commonly in a way that people in urban centers don't understand. And what about the criticism then coming from the conservatives? We've talked about the other parties, but how do the conservatives see this bill? So the conservatives believe that

the amendments should be pulled entirely and that it should be removed and that they should deal with the bill as it was introduced last May. It's also very political for the conservatives. They, in the 2021 election, for example, got into a lot of trouble by promising to reverse an earlier ban that the liberals had brought in on assault-style weapons. Now, the liberals' missteps in how they rolled out this amendment and this policy means that they have united this very broad spectrum of political parties in the opposition benches together, which, you know, it takes some effort to do that, to get the NDP and the Conservatives and the Bloc Québécois really on the same side in terms of criticizing the government

for their process and are now slowing down this bill and forcing more study. Yeah. Wow. On top of that, the Liberals are now contending with opposition from the Assembly of First Nations. Why is that? So the Assembly of First Nations in late last year voted to oppose the bill and saying that it threatened treaty rights because Indigenous people have very specific hunting and land use rights in Canada. And many of them are sustenance hunters. On the flip side, groups like Police du Souvien, which is the group that was born out of the Polytechnique mass shooting in 1989, still support this law, still support the amendments, still believe they are the right policy, but are very worried that the Liberals' missteps in the rollout has jeopardized

it. OK, so even gun control advocates are worried about the manner in which this process was done then, essentially. Yes, because they see the result of that, right? They see that they are now having this much slower process. Do we know, Marika, like why was the communication on this bill done the way that it was? One person I spoke with, A.J. Somerset, who's a former soldier, he's a hunter and he researches gun culture in North America. He said that the liberals underestimated their opponents and the liberals sort of had a blind spot to the debate they were reigniting by moving something from regulations to legislation.

Because when you ban a gun through regulations, you just do it around the cabinet table and it's done. Whereas if you bring that ban into legislation, you are opening up the debate that necessarily comes with the parliamentary process. When there is committee review, when witnesses are allowed to testify on the changes, it opens up sort of this box of debate that the liberals were not anticipating. Yeah. Of course, at the root of all of this is the desire here to decrease gun violence. And I guess I just I wonder, is there evidence that this type of legislation, that something like Bill C-21, would that actually help decrease gun violence? Certainly, we know that Australia and the U.K. have had significant drops in gun violence since

they brought in sweeping bans on guns. There is debate as to the impact that will have in Canada, given that we are beside the U.S., we have a leaky border and many of the guns used in crimes in Canada are illegally smuggled from the U.S. Right. So there's a few questions around its efficacy, depending on who you talk to. And there's a lot of debate around it. Before I let you go here, Marika, what do you think the road ahead looks like for the liberals on this bill? Like, does it look like this bill will actually make it and become law?

The liberals are determined that it will. When I spoke with Marco Mendicino at the cabinet retreat in Hamilton earlier last week, he said that they will not be removing those amendments and that they want this law passed and it's a priority for them and that he says he is going to do what it takes to get the NDP and the bloc back on side. The NDP, though, have said that as long as the AFN, the Assembly of First Nations, is opposing it because of concerns around treaty rights that they can't support it. So you see how big the hurdles are that the liberals need to overcome. The question is, can those MPs change the narrative enough on this bill

to ensure that their constituents no longer think it will have these sweeping negative effects on them that they currently believe it does. Polly Sussuvian believes that a lot of that has come from misinformation and disinformation that the liberals have not corrected in the last few months. And so they are urging the federal government and the liberals to quickly and clearly articulate what they're doing and explain it. But so far, we haven't seen very much of that from the liberals. And so it will depend on what the committee process looks like. And right now, the committee is still debating even how many sittings they should still have,

how many meetings they should still have on this. So we don't even know what their plan to review it will look like. Sounds like there's a long way to go then. It certainly does, yeah. Marika, it's always great to talk to you. Thank you so much for being here. Thanks, Manika. That's it for today.

I'm Manika Raman-Wilms. Our producers are Madeline White, Cheryl Sutherland, and Rachel Levy-McLaughlin. David Crosby edits the show. Kasia Mihailovic is our senior producer, and Angela Pichenza is our executive editor. Thanks so much for listening, and I'll talk to you tomorrow.