EVIDENCE

[Recorded by Electronic Apparatus]

Wednesday, May 3, 1995

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[English]

The Chair: I'd like to call the meeting to order. We are continuing our examination of Bill C-68, an act respecting firearms and other weapons.

We have with us tonight two individuals who are forensic experts with firearms who I understand have testified in court with respect to firearms and who are familiar with the procedures necessary for identifying firearms and so on. That's what we requested, colleagues, for these two gentlemen to appear before us tonight.

I can see that Mr. Nielsen has prepared a short brief, so we'll hear from Mr. Nielsen first and then I'll call on Mr. Veitch to add anything, if he wishes. Then we'll have questioning. I think it's mainly the questioning that many members want to do because they've been listening to other evidence and there are a lot of questions in their minds with respect to the forensic aspect of firearms.

Mr. Nielsen, if you wish, you could proceed with your opening statement. We have this brief, which has a lot of weapons mentioned in it.

Mr. Finn Nielsen (Forensic Expert, Province of Ontario): I apologize for my rather spartan brief, which I did not have a chance to prepare until noon hour on Monday.

The Chair: Perhaps both of you could start by outlining your experience in this area, exactly what you do and for whom.

Mr. Nielsen: I'm employed by the Ministry of the Solicitor General and Correctional Services for the Province of Ontario at the Centre of Forensic Sciences. I'm in charge of the firearms section.

I've been employed at the centre since January 1968 - 27 and a half years. I've been in charge of the section since 1981. In my section we handle all the crimes from misuse, if you will, of firearms in the province of Ontario, prepare reports on our findings, go to court and give evidence on them.

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Of course, given the size of the population we're dealing with, we deal with a great many different types of firearms, and also of course with a great many different occurrences involving them.

The Chair: Mr. Veitch, you can proceed.

Sergeant Grant Veitch (Firearms and Toolmark Examiner, Royal Canadian Mounted Police Forensic Laboratory, Regina): I'm a regular member of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. I've been so employed for the past 23 years. For the last 17 and a half years I've been employed in the forensic firearm identification section at the forensic lab in Regina, Saskatchewan.

The Chair: Do you do court work as well? Do you go to court on firearms questions?

Sgt Veitch: Yes. My work entails the forensic examination of firearms and other related firearms exhibits, preparing reports for investigators, and attending at court and giving opinion evidence on firearms-related matters.

The Chair: Thank you very much.

Mr. Nielsen, you can address us now with your opening remarks. Then we'll have some words from Mr. Veitch.

Mr. Nielsen: To briefly continue, my background has been one of interest in firearms all my life, ever since I was a teenager. I also served three years in the regular Canadian Armed Forces in an infantry battalion, and I presented arms a number of times outside of this building, many years ago. I didn't really expect I'd ever be inside here giving testimony one day. Also, I must admit I am a collector of firearms as well, and a shooter, and a reloader, so some people say I have the best job in the world. That's not always the case. Our job also involves going to crime scenes and post-mortems and so on, which is not always very pleasant.

The Chair: You left your brief with us. Would you explain it a bit for us?

Mr. Nielsen: Yes. I thought the reason I was here was to explain how Bill C-68, if it's passed, is going to affect our work. That was my understanding. The business of collecting has basically nothing to do with my being here. I feel it's my forensic ability.

The Chair: Yes, that's correct.

Mr. Nielsen: What I thought I would do is ask if you would turn to the second page. It's marked ``April 1995''. Those were the cases we received in the section during that month. They haven't all been completed yet, but the basic facts in them have been put down and you can see, somewhat briefly, the type of weapon used and the circumstances. If you would like, I can go through them one by one very quickly.

The Chair: You can start, and if it seems to be repetitive the members may dispense with it. In the questioning they might ask with respect to other.... You might start by explaining the number on the extreme left.

Mr. Nielsen: The number on the extreme left is our case number, which is assigned to the case when it's submitted to the laboratory. Please disregard the fact that it's not completely in order, because I had some difficulty getting these pages xeroxed at 8 o'clock this morning.

If I may start at the top, with case 1797, that just says ``Shooting'' and I don't have a detail for it, but I did remember that it was a .22 rifle, and it was a neighbour type of argument, with alcohol involved as well. I don't believe C-68 would do anything to change that. The present legislation would of course require that the rifle have a trigger lock on it if it were stored in a dwelling house. Whether it did or not, I don't know.

The next one is just one of the routine things we do. It's a technical examination of a cutaway pistol to determine what category it will fall into under the current legislation. In this particular case, the work that had been done on it made it not a firearm any more. In other words, you could transfer this cutaway pistol to anybody. You didn't need an FAC because it would never shoot again.

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The next one is one of the more common ones we have. It's a robbery. It's a Raven handgun. What that means is it's a .25-calibre, cheap semi-automatic pistol, which in all likelihood was smuggled into the country. To my knowledge, there are no reputable dealers who sell this kind of junk handgun - in this province, at any rate. That's exactly what they are, they're junk. They sell them in the States for in the neighbourhood of $30 to $40. They've made literally millions of them and we've seen a fair number of them in this country because of the large undefended border, of course. In fact, you can buy them cheaply in the States and sell them up here for up to ten times what you paid for them. In other words, the exchange rate doesn't really bother you too much because you're getting $400 for a $40 gun, even if it is U.S. $40.

Mr. Thompson (Wild Rose): Did you say $35?

Mr. Nielsen: That may vary to some extent, but they are all less than $100. Depending on which state you live in, it may be very easy to buy as many as you want or it may be somewhat difficult.

The next one is a death investigation. That's what we call them. We prefer to stay away from the word ``suicide''. Here we have a case where a mentally ill man shot himself with his father's rifle. He lived with his dad and he was on medication and took his own life.

I should point out that we don't do very many death investigations because there are, unfortunately, all too many of them with the various type of firearms and I don't have the staff or the time to investigate them unless there are some suspicious circumstances. Then we'll do them.

Ms Phinney (Hamilton Mountain): [Inaudible - Editor].

Mr. Nielsen: It was in the house with the father, but probably not.

The Chair: So far it's been under control, but if we all start interrupting too often it will get out of control. We've had two incidents. So let Mr. Nielsen and Sergeant Veitch finish their statements and I think we'll have lots of time to ask questions.

Mr. Nielsen: The next two cases, a theft and an unsafe storage, involved a gentleman who owned a large number of restricted weapons and he was really careless about how he stored them. What happened was he had young persons working around his house who were on probation, or parole, as part of an out-of-jail program and one of the kids stole one of his handguns and took it to school. It was fully loaded. What can I say? The whole charge of unsafe storage related to the rest of the guns that were lying around his house with no provisions for being locked up or anything. This is a fellow who should actually know better. It does still happen.

The next two weapons were just found guns. It does happen. People are walking along and there's one in the ditch. What we do is check our unsolved cases, although sometimes you wonder what the point is because they can't be traced anyway.

On the next one, you'll notice the asterisks. They indicate shots fired. ``After-hours'' refers to an after-hours club in Toronto. We have a large number of them. It appears it's the wont of many of the people who go there to fire their pistols off at the conclusion of the evening. At one time we did keep all the fired shell casings and projectiles from this type of occurrence but I had to stop doing that because it was literally running into the hundreds. Now we just keep and cross-reference the ones where there has been blood spilled.

In the next one a suspicious vehicle was stopped and they found two unregistered semi-automatic pistols in it.

The next one is only the second one I've had of this type: a prohibited weapon. This was a blow gun. The accused person had a warrant executed on his dwelling house and up on the wall there was a dartboard with some interesting-looking projectiles protruding from it. He willingly showed the police, and demonstrated his blow gun, at which point, of course, he was arrested for possession of a prohibited weapon. I believe he expressed some indignation at that. He was not aware that they are prohibited. Actually they are very dangerous. Some years ago, in the other case we had with them, a gentleman was puncturing tires on cars with one. So they're very powerful...for what it's worth.

The next one is a robbery. This is the kind of thing we have happen occasionally. The accused shot himself when he pulled the gun out of his pocket. That was his pants pocket. Obviously he stayed at the scene and was arrested. We've had people do it before with various sizes of calibres and various interesting results. Unfortunately, as far as I'm concerned, not enough of them are doing it.

The next one was just a seizure of a sawed-off shotgun. We get these all the time. Many times they've never been used but they're still around.

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In the next one, a Colt .45, the serial numbers have been removed from it and it wasn't involved in anything unsolved.

The next one is a weapon, an air pistol. I believe, if I may make reference to Bill C-68, there are going to be some changes as far as these items are concerned. We see them all the time, usually in robberies or threatening situations, because they very closely resemble the real thing. One make that comes to mind is Crosman. They've sold literally thousands of them and they do resemble a real revolver to a person who does not know any better. The other aspect of it is I don't believe you need a firearms acquisition certificate to purchase one, which as far as I'm concerned is wrong.

The next one was just a found .22 calibre rifle. Once again, we do find guns all the time. Nobody knows where they come from, but they're around.

Then we had our first homicide of the year in Toronto. That was a .380. There was drug involvement. A gentleman was shot in the head. Of course it's unsolved and the calibre of the pistol that he used here was a .380. Again, we're back to the cheap semi-automatic pistols coming across our borders in great numbers.

The next one is a weapon.... Here we've just got some rifles and basically we just have to say that they shoot. It's one of the really mundane cases where the police say they could do that. But usually a defence counsel then insists that we do it and prepare a report. So quite often that takes up a large part of our work.

The next one is a robbery. Again, it's a house invasion and they were carrying a .38 calibre revolver and I do believe they also had a couple of air pistols with them. Once again, the people were terrified and didn't know that the air pistols, while not harmless by any means, were less likely to kill them than the .38. Of course they behaved as though they were the real thing.

The next one is misuse of an unregistered nine millimetre Browning where a gentleman fired shots in the house. I believe it was alcohol involved in this one.

The next one is the second one I've seen of a .22 calibre Feather, which I believe was already prohibited a couple of years ago. That one turned up. Of course, there was no sale; nobody owned it, so we couldn't do too much with it. One aspect of the weapons being prohibited is of course that many of them are not turned in because the people have a certain monetary investment in them so they go out on the street in whatever way. I'm sure that's the case with this one. I also had one other Feather that was used in an attempted murder.

The next one, weapon 2105, is a blank pistol, which has been converted to 7.65 millimetre or .32 calibre. We see a fair number of these. I think it is just one gentleman in Toronto who's turning them all out, because the type of work that's done to them is very similar in all cases. But these blank pistols have been sold in the city of Toronto for in the neighbourhood of $80 to $90. What they do is make a new barrel for it, install that, and they are in business with the real thing. They usually come apart after a number of shots, but while they're working they'll work just like the real thing. We see them quite frequently.

The next one is a robbery. There were two guns involved here, a Lorcin .22 and a Smith and Wesson .38. Once again, in the Lorcin we're back to the cheap smuggled guns.

In the last one on the page, a .25 calibre Raven, it's the same thing again.

An hon. member: Was it smuggled?

Mr. Nielsen: Very likely. I can't think of any other source, because of all the people I know in my circle who collect handguns, I don't believe anyone owned one. I certainly don't own one myself. Personally, I wouldn't have one in the house. They're junk. But we see them.

This next one, on top of the second page...as you see, it says .45 Para Ordinance, stolen from a factory in Scarborough. I believe that's the only firearms factory we have in Canada except for Diemaco (1984) Inc., a firm in Kitchener that makes our military rifles. I would say that in the last four years we've had probably 30 or 40 firearms turn up that have been built from their parts. Of course, as the police, we have been in touch with the factory owner on several occasions trying to figure out where the leak is. I don't know if we've found it yet, because we keep getting them and goodness knows how many escape.

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The Chair: That's interesting, because we had the owner of that factory here yesterday and he said there were never any guns stolen, if I'm correct.

Mr. Nielsen: All right.

Mr. Wappel (Scarborough West): Mr. Chairman, on a point of order, I don't have a perfect memory but I believe what he said in his testimony was that there had never been a pistol stolen from a carrier by way of shipment. I believe that leaves plenty of room for stealing from the factory.

Mr. Nielsen: Maybe I should amend that. In many of these cases, the part that has been stolen is the frame or receiver and the parts of the Colt model 1911 semi-automatic pistol will fit that frame or receiver with no difficulty at all.

He's doing a tremendous business, not so much in this country, because of magazine capacity and because there's not the same interest in pistols in this country as south of the border, but he does have an outlet down there and it's a very popular pistol in the U.S.A. I don't know what else he says, but I do believe he's not a very happy camper as far as sales in Canada are concerned.

In the next one, I said the police shot a distraught man and they did. The nine millimetre I referred to was the gun the police used. The gentleman in question actually had a .308 calibre hunting rifle.

In the next one I describe the weapon as a pellet gun. In this case it's one that's known as a Marksman. It's a fairly cheap air pistol that closely resembles a Colt model 1911 semi-automatic pistol. Once again, they are relatively inexpensive and they are used in robberies constantly. Another aspect is that quite often it is very young people who are using them, because of the ease of availability.

Mr. Ramsay: Was that smuggled in as well?

Mr. Nielsen: No, it would have been purchased here.

As I said before, you don't need an FAC to purchase one. I do believe there may be an age limit, but the other gentleman may be more qualified than I am to talk about that.

The next is a .22 calibre Rohm revolver, a very cheap German revolver, which has been coming into North America since the early 1960s. In fact, that's the kind of revolver President Reagan was shot with, unsuccessfully only because of the type of junk it is.

The next one is a .22 calibre Jennings pistol, which is a semi-automatic pistol and once again was probably smuggled.

The Chair: Mr. Nielsen, what you seem to have here is all the types of guns from many sources that are turned in to your lab. Some are guns that were used in crimes, some are used in suicides, some are simply guns that are found, some are guns not stored properly. If I understand correctly, anything relating to a gun that might be used in court goes to your lab.

Mr. Nielsen: Not necessarily. In some cases, small departments will often have one of their officers go out and shoot the weapon in question, go to court and give evidence, which I have no objection to, because believe me, we have lots to do. Obviously we're not getting every one of them.

If it's something uncommon, then we would probably get it. But if you had a case, say, involving a 12-gauge shotgun, it might well be handled on a local level and we'd never see it.

The Chair: I see. This list that you've gone through now, the guns are not just ones used in crimes but they come from all sorts of sources.

Mr. Nielsen: These are specifically picked. These are the ones we got in the month of April.

The Chair: I don't think it's necessary to continue with the list. Members can question you on the rest of that list. Let's go to the next list, which is 1994 homicides in Ontario. These are just guns that were used in homicides.

Mr. Nielsen: That's right.

The Chair: Maybe you could explain that list a bit.

Mr. Nielsen: All right. Once again, obviously we had more homicides where things other than firearms were involved. In this list, we had one item that was used and that we hadn't had before, a hatchet. The reason we examined it was that a person used it to hit other objects. They asked us if we could say it was a hatchet that was used. That was a little different. I indicate in the list - I think there are four - the firearms that were registered to individuals who consequently used them in an offence. In this case, it was murder.

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I don't think I have to point out to you that is very uncommon. In fact, four is a very large number. I'm surprised. Normally you don't have more than maybe one or two a year.

Once again, I'm not counting suicides with handguns because we usually don't get them, if only for the reason that most of the time they're reasonably obvious and there's no point in doing the work.

The Chair: The members might want to question you on this.

You've got some tables too. Maybe you could go through the tables and then we'll go toMr. Veitch.

Mr. Nielsen: Yes. As you can see, Ontario is where the handguns were used most frequently. Of course most of the occurrences were in the larger urban areas, such as Toronto and Hamilton. The greater number of them are usually related either to drugs or to some of these after-hours clubs, that sort of thing.

There's nothing really unusual about them except in some cases the pistols are of much better quality than the cheap ones I referred to earlier. For instance, we have a nine millimetre semi-automatic. Usually they'll turn out to be Beretta or Browning nine millimetre large-capacity magazine handguns, which are very, very popular. I must admit I haven't seen one yet that's had the capacity reduced to ten rounds.

Ms Phinney: What did you say?

Mr. Nielsen: I haven't seen any of them where they've had the capacity of the magazine reduced to ten rounds, as per regulation.

Mr. Ramsay (Crowfoot): How many rounds do they carry?

Mr. Nielsen: They carry about fifteen or sixteen.

Mr. Ramsay: Are these registered or unregistered?

Mr. Nielsen: They're unregistered as a rule.

The Chair: Have you completed your remarks?

Mr. Nielsen: If there are any of the homicides you have particular interest in, I'll be happy to elaborate.

The Chair: They're pretty straightforward, but there will probably be questions on all of this.

Do you have any final remarks? Would you like to say how you think the bill will affect or not affect your work in the control of firearms and firearms incidents?

Mr. Nielsen: I don't think the bill will affect us at all.

The Chair: Do you mean in your work?

Mr. Nielsen: No, I don't think it will.

The Chair: I see. Okay.

Mr. Veitch, do you want to make some opening remarks?

Sgt Veitch: I have no formal submission like Mr. Nielsen's. All I'd like to say is that in our lab the offences are generally the same. They involve armed robberies, homicides, etc. They are much smaller in number than in the province of Ontario, simply because of the population base.

One thing I notice that is quite different is in Saskatchewan I would say 90% of our forensic investigations involve long arms - rifles and shotguns. The use of them in incidents is much more prevalent on the prairies than it appears to be in the province of Ontario. However, the reasons, the occurrences, the domestic situations and the different types of situations are quite similar.

The Chair: Do you have any views on how the bill will affect your work as a forensic expert with firearms?

Sgt Veitch: Because most of our examinations involve long arms, the proposed registration of long arms will make the control of them somewhat tighter, and possibly make people more cognizant of the storage of them. I don't know that it will directly affect planned homicides.

It may cause some reduction in guns being found that have been stored away for excessive periods of time and played with by children or something to that effect, if all the firearms, particularly long guns, have to be accounted for and their presence recorded.

The Chair: Okay. We'll proceed with questioning.

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We start with the Bloc Québécois.

[Translation]

Mr. Nunez, you have 10 minutes.

Mr. Nunez (Bourassa): I don't think I need ten minutes, since it's the first time I sit with this committee. I replace my colleague, Pierrette Venne, member for Saint-Hubert, who is in charge of this question.

You gave a very technical presentation. I'm not an expert, like you. However, I also see that your brief is only in English.

I'd like to ask one very general question. You say that you won't feel the effect of Bill C-68 in your work, but generally, could you tell us if you're against or for Bill C-68, and what your reasons are?

[English]

The Chair: I guess that question's addressed to both of you. It goes beyond.... He's asking whether you're for or against the bill. I know you're forensic experts, but if you wish to answer, you may.

Mr. Nielsen: I'll have to preface my answer with the statement that it's my own personal opinion, and does not reflect the opinion of my ministry or the Government of Ontario.

I do not believe the registration of long arms will cut down the misuse of them, for the simple reason that right now handguns are the most tightly controlled, and yet we see the frequency with which they occur despite all these controls. Why should it be any different with the long guns?

Right now, as far as the number we get, when do they become a problem? As far as I'm concerned, our problem is the cheap smuggled guns that cross the border in all these great quantities. The average hunting rifle and shotgun - sure, the odd time they'll be cut down by some bad guy - on the whole do not present a problem. We have a minimum of hunting accidents.

Sure, there are some suicides with them. That's inevitable as far as I can tell. It's an act of impulse, probably instantly regretted, but nevertheless, it does happen. And if a person doesn't use a firearm he may use something else, as witness that poor police chief in Quebec with the mortician.

The Chair: Mr. Veitch, do you wish to answer the question?

Sgt Veitch: I believe that registration or tighter controls put on long arms and the proposed long-term ban on certain types and calibres of firearm will in fact take a certain number of firearms out of the public domain.

The ones that will probably be disposed of by owners as opposed to registering them are the firearms that turn up in accidents because people forgot where they were or that they were around the house, or something like that. I believe it will help somewhat to reduce firearms-related offences and accidents.

[Translation]

Mr. Nunez: Mr. Nielsen, you raised the issue of smuggling. Is the problem quite serious in Ontario? Which dispositions pertain to smuggling? Is there also smuggling from Canada to the United States or is it only from the United States into Canada?

[English]

Mr. Nielsen: The smuggling of guns into Ontario occurs because it's a profit motive. We've had people who've been caught with literally hundreds of these cheap pistols and they've already been sold, even before they're delivered. They're that popular. We've had guns turn up, brand new, in the box, picked up in the street. We know they're not sold here. In fact, they've been traced to sources in Detroit and these places.

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I think it's a really serious problem. Unfortunately, it's like catching drug smugglers. What percentage do you get? But as far as the percentage involved in my work, I would say at least 15% of the total volume is that type of thing.

As for smuggling guns from here down to the U.S., I don't know what we have here that they could possibly want, really, except perhaps some of the weapons that were declared prohibited and they might find an illegal market south of the border. But that would be a very small quantity.

Mr. Ramsay: I would like to thank both our witnesses for their presentation and for coming here tonight.

We are looking at setting up a universal registration system. I'm hoping that the technical information you can provide us from your experiences will help members of the committee in our deliberations with regard to the registration system so that if the registration system becomes part of the law it does provide a credible tool in the hands of law enforcement agencies.

I understand, from the information I've received from six of the RCMP laboratories across the country, that they have their standard collection of 17,299 firearms and out of that group there are 3,690 rifles and 1,920 shotguns. From that standard collection, which I understand is pretty well one of a kind, approximately 20% of the rifles do not have serial numbers and 14.7% or 15% of the shotguns do not have serial numbers.

When we look at registering firearms and issuing a registration certificate a question comes to my mind, and that is, can you set up a reliable firearm registration system by having the identifying features of the firearm mailed in to the registrar, as has been proposed? Mr. Nielsen?

Mr. Nielsen: I would think that with a system like that, where you are relying on a person's honesty to put down the correct information on the form, or whatever it's going to be.... Right now, the way it stands, you have to produce - in this case - a pistol for your registrar so he or she can verify the serial number. Sending in a piece of paper saying you certify that this is serial number on your firearm.... Maybe I'm just being distrustful.

Mr. Ramsay: Is it possible to identify a firearm just using the serial number?

Mr. Nielsen: Yes and no. It would depend to some extent on the type of firearm you are dealing with and of course the extent of the serial number that's been put on it. Right now, I believe the requirement is that you have to have at least five digits on a firearm and if you have fewer than five digits, the RCMP, I believe it is, will be glad to add digits, should you want, to your serial number. You may or may not want to because in the cases of some weapons with say a three-digit number they may be so rare that you wouldn't need any more numbers and you would largely destroy the collectors' value of it.

Mr. Ramsay: Sergeant Veitch, I understand there's a list of seven or eight identifying features on a firearm that are used to register handguns at the present time, as well as the restricted or prohibited weapons. If that is correct, could you tell the committee what those features are?

Sgt Veitch: The present features that are required on registration of restricted weapons at this time consist of the make of the firearm, the model, the calibre, the barrel length and the number of shots that weapon contains or is capable of firing.

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Mr. Ramsay: I have here from my notes when I visited the lab the make, model, serial number, calibre, type, action, capacity and barrel length. Is that correct?

Sgt Veitch: Yes, that's correct. I failed to mention type and action.

Mr. Ramsay: In the Department of Justice report on the firearms registration system submitted by Mr. Terence Wade, on page XV, under the heading ``Training of Local Registrars'', it says ``...there is a clear need to improve training, particularly in identifying firearms''.

Would we experience any difficulty with firearm owners who really aren't particularly interested in the features of the firearms filling out a form and sending it in? Perhaps Mr. Nielsen could answer that. I'd like to hear from Sergeant Veitch as well.

Mr. Nielsen: Once again, the person could fill out the form and send it in, but he or she may not be all that familiar with what's required either. It may not be correctly filled out.

To go back to what you said earlier about the firearms not being serial numbered, there was no requirement for serial numbering in the United States until 1968, as far as long arms are concerned. Consequently you have literally millions of long arms out there that have never been numbered. And in this country, the Cooey factory in Cobourg, Ontario, produced firearms that were never serial numbered from 1917 up until the 1960s. It wasn't, I believe, until the factory was taken over by Winchester that serial numbering began, because they wanted to export them to the United States for sale. Since 1968 they have had to be numbered there. That is a huge problem.

Sgt Veitch: I believe the majority of firearms owners would not experience difficulty in filling out a form. Owners of long guns especially own them either for the purposes of hunting or collections, and the majority of them are very interested in and take pride in the knowledge they have of firearms.

I will also admit there are lots of firearms that haven't been looked at for many years, and people really do not know what they are. The problem in registering them, if they do contain a serial number, is one of quality control of the registration system. A person with the right literature from factories is able to determine quickly, on a mail-in type of application, whether the make, the model and the serial number are something that was in fact made, that they correspond to one another and that it is plausible information being presented.

Mr. Ramsay: When I was in the Edmonton lab I was shown a Russian-made firearm, and all it had on it was a serial number. There were two letters in Russian and three numbers, with no other identifying features. Can you register that firearm with no other identifying features? Now we've got that problem. I guess there are thousands of them in Canada. I would ask about the registration of the hundreds of thousands of firearms without serial numbers. In both of those cases, is PIN going to pose a problem?

Sgt Veitch: The way I understand the proposed system to work is that when a person mails in an application form for a firearm that does not contain a serial number, a unique serial number will be supplied by the registrar. It is my understanding that it is proposed that it will then be the responsibility of the owner to have that assigned serial number imprinted on or attached to the firearm. Those means will hopefully be covered in the regulations.

The firearms with characters from other alphabets - Russian, Soviet, and from many European countries - those unique features are being handled by the registrar in the present system on handguns or restricted weapons.

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As I understand it, the proposed system will be a computer-assisted, direct entry system. It's envisaged that all of these characters from other alphabets and languages can simply be selected from a menu within a computer-assisted program and that particular symbol or character becomes part of the registration and is displayed on firearms identification cards that are issued for each firearm.

Mr. Ramsay: Can you maintain the integrity of the registration system without having a firearms inspector inspect the firearm, as you do now with the handgun registration system? Can you maintain the integrity of that system without a hands-on inspection by a firearms identification officer as you do now with the handgun registration system?

Sgt Veitch: I believe the majority of them can be properly handled because of the cross-reference and checks that can be made based on serial numbers, makes and models and description of firearms. Somebody who's experienced in firearms would know certain models were only made by certain companies and that the serial number for a certain period of time consists of so many numbers and letters. That information is available for most firearms. With proper quality control, plus the proposed renewal - the sort of recertification that is being proposed for firearms - I believe there can be a fairly high level of integrity within that system.

Mr. Wappel: Good evening, gentlemen.

Mr. Nielsen, I wonder if I could ask you just a few questions about the report you've presented us with. I may just jump back and forth to Sergeant Veitch on a couple of questions like this first one.

You indicate that you receive between 800 and 900 cases annually involving firearms.

Mr. Nielsen: That's right, sir.

Mr. Wappel: Could you tell us approximately how many of those would involve firearms that would have no identification features at all?

Mr. Nielsen: A fair number of those cases do involve firearms submitted specifically for identification by a local registrar. We alluded to the expertise of local registrars earlier. I don't want to bad-mouth them; they're doing a very difficult job. Most of them are woefully ignorant of how to identify or to know what they're looking for. We get calls constantly - what's this, what's that, and so on - which is fine, but....

Mr. Wappel: What do you mean by ``what's this, what's that''? Do they not know the make or the model or the serial number?

Mr. Nielsen: They may know the serial number but they don't know who the manufacturer is. For instance, you get numerous European pistols with no identifying marks on them whatsoever, except the number. While I can look at it and say it's a Spanish Star, serial number so-and-so, they would have no idea. Without blowing my own horn, it wouldn't be really fair to expect them to, because it requires a great deal of expertise to be able to tell.

Mr. Wappel: Let me ask you specifically, as an expert in firearms, how many firearms do you see personally out of these 800 or 900 cases that you can't identify in some way, shape or form?

Mr. Nielsen: That I can't identify? The only ones I see are the homemade ones. I could say it's homemade, I don't know by whom or what. It's in firing condition.

Mr. Wappel: I guess I'm not being clear in my question. How many of them are, of their nature, without identifying features, as opposed to firearms that have had their identifying features removed?

Mr. Nielsen: Are you talking about long guns as well?

Mr. Wappel: I'm talking about the 800 or 900 cases annually that you were referring to in your letter.

Mr. Nielsen: Okay. Quite often we'll get firearms in that have been sawed off so the name and so on has been removed from the barrel. It's been cut off short. Only because we're familiar with it, we can still look at it and say yes, that's a sawed-off, single-shot Cooey model 39 rifle bearing no serial number. We get them submitted by registrars who say ``unknown .22'', which is fair, because they don't know.

.2020

Mr. Wappel: Sergeant Veitch, you say....

The Chair: I'd really like to have the answer to your question. I thought you were asking how many or what percentage of the total 800 to 1,000 could not be identified.

Mr. Wappel: That's what I thought I was asking.

The Chair: What we're trying to get a handle on is out of the total number you deal with each year - and I think Mr. Wappel's question is an important one - approximately how many could not be identified?

Mr. Nielsen: We've identified them all.

Ms Phinney: What percentage don't have registration numbers?

Mr. Wappel: Let me make it clearer. There are some people - presumably criminals - who will obliterate all identifying marks on a firearm.

Mr. Nielsen: It's an offence.

Mr. Wappel: Assuming the person hasn't actually physically altered the firearm, how many of the 800 or 900 would you come across that as of the instant of their manufacture have absolutely no identifying feature? Is that a clearer way of putting it?

Mr. Nielsen: Yes, that's a good way of putting it. I would say it's maybe 10% of some of the older guns we get in. For instance -

Mr. Wappel: Sir, would that be 10% of the 800 to 900 cases, or 10% of the two or three older guns you get?

Mr. Nielsen: No, I would say out of the 800 or 900, there are maybe 30 to 40.

Mr. Wappel: Let me turn to Sergeant Veitch. You said, if I remember your evidence correctly, that 90% of your examinations would involve long guns. Is that what you said?

Sgt Veitch: Yes, that's correct.

Mr. Wappel: How many of those long guns would have no identifying features in their pristine state?

Sgt Veitch: In a normal year we would see approximately 200 to 300 long arms. Of that, I would estimate 10 to 15 of them do not have a serial number affixed by the manufacturer. They're still identifiable as to make, model, calibre and everything else.

We probably see one or two firearms that may have no identifying marks on them whatsoever. By looking at what we refer to as proof-marks - marks that are put on by different countries at the time firearms are made - we may be able to say it was made in a particular European country. We may not be able to identify any more precisely than that. But again, that's only one or two out of all the ones we see in a year.

Mr. Wappel: So I guess it's fair to say the vast majority of the firearms both of you handle are readily identifiable in the vast majority of cases, either by make, model, serial number or other such distinguishing characteristics.

Mr. Nielsen: This is because of our experience.

Mr. Wappel: If you weren't experienced, would your answer change?

Mr. Nielsen: If I weren't experienced I don't think we'd have the same success ratio.

Mr. Wappel: That may be. My question is specific. I don't know why I'm not having luck in expressing it.

If you pick up a firearm, do most of them have either the make, model, or serial number affixed thereto, assuming they haven't been purposefully removed?

Mr. Nielsen: Sure.

Mr. Wappel: Thank you.

Now, could I ask you a couple of questions about your very interesting tables? I have a question in terms of my apparent confusion here. On the second page, we're talking about your April 1995 incidents. The second page has no number. The third page is labelled ``page 2''. Is that the same? In other words, are there three pages of the same thing?

Mr. Nielsen: No. They are three different pages. What happened is that these pages were initially typed on legal-size paper and they cut off the bottom of one of them to make it the right size.

Mr. Wappel: I see. So in fact the page beginning with the para-ordinance weapon could be labelled ``page 3'' for our purposes.

Mr. Nielsen: Yes, it could. As I said, I didn't have much time. I'm sorry.

Mr. Wappel: I'm not criticizing you. I'm just trying to understand.

.2025

The Chair: We appreciate what you've done. Thank you.

Mr. Wappel: I think I walked in here when you were talking about the after-hours pistol, so I apologize if I'm going to ask a couple of questions that I should have heard the answer to when I wasn't here, which is my fault.

You show a handgun that was recovered. It was a registered handgun. I take it that the registration in some way presumably affected the return to the rightful owner.

Mr. Nielsen: Yes, that's the one I was speaking about where the gentleman had stored the weapons unsafely. I indicated, in the first case of the theft, that was one of these kids he had working around the house who was on probation or whatever. He took it, loaded it, and brought it to school in his hockey bag. It was subsequently taken away from him at the school. The serial number was checked, and of course there was no secret, it was registered to this -

Mr. Wappel: Then that must have been unsafe storage too?

Mr. Nielsen: Yes, that's right. He was also charged with excess capacity magazines, but that's not your question.

Mr. Wappel: If that firearm had been properly stored, presumably that youth would not have been able to get it.

Mr. Nielsen: Absolutely. That's correct.

Mr. Wappel: The 1994 homicides that you've shown us are of course homicides where only firearms were used and they are only the ones that came to your attention.

Mr. Nielsen: Very much so. I don't show beatings, strangulations, drownings or whatever, no.

Mr. Wappel: For example, you couldn't help us as to how many homicides occurred in Ontario in 1994?

Mr. Nielsen: No, I couldn't.

Mr. Wappel: You couldn't help us in terms of how many of those homicides involved firearms?

Mr. Nielsen: The ones I showed you involved firearms.

Mr. Wappel: For all Ontario homicides?

Mr. Nielsen: To the best of my knowledge, unless there's been a really quick guilty plea, every firearm homicide would be submitted to us.

Mr. Wappel: I thought you said that there would be cases where the local authorities would look after it.

Mr. Nielsen: As I said, if there were a guilty plea we might not get anything. But the cases I was referring to were just simple possession or whatever where they wanted it proved that the weapon they'd seized was the firearm and they basically didn't want to bother us - which is okay with me, as I said earlier.

Mr. Wappel: Mr. Nielsen, I wonder if I might just quickly ask you about the four registered cases.

The Chair: There are murders from time to time where the person's been shot but they can't find the weapon.

Mr. Nielsen: In many of these after hours clubs that's the case.

The Chair: I though you would only get the cases where the weapon was turned in.

Mr. Nielsen: No, we get the cases we see where they say ``unsolved''. That means we usually wouldn't get the gun but we know a handgun was involved, or a certain type of gun.

The Chair: I see. From the wound, or if there's a cartridge or a bullet in the individual, you can tell it's a certain type of gun.

Mr. Nielsen: Absolutely. Then what we do is we have an unsolved file against which we cross-reference other guns that come in. We've had some good success doing that.

Mr. Thompson: I have a point of order. Tom asked about the handguns that were in unsafe storage and I heard a comment that he was also charged with excess capacity magazines. I just want to know if that's what he said.

Mr. Nielsen: That's what I said. He had magazines for a Thompson sub-machine-gun, which held 30 cartridges, and he had two Bren gun magazines that hold 30 cartridges and a couple of M16s as well that had not been blocked.

Mr. Thompson: Were these part of the registered gun?

Mr. Nielsen: The guns? Yes, they fitted registered, restricted guns.

Mr. Wappel: Mr. Nielsen, very quickly, on the homicides, concerning the four registered firearms, was the .357 revolver used by the registered owner?

Mr. Nielsen: Yes, it was.

Mr. Wappel: Was the .38 revolver - ``shot the person threatening him'' - used by the registered owner?

Mr. Nielsen: Yes, it was.

Mr. Wappel: Was the .32 S/A pistol used by the registered owner?

Mr. Nielsen: No, it was registered to the gun store and the kid who did the shooting had stolen it. That was a break-in.

Mr. Wappel: Was the nine millimetre - ``police officer killed, stolen pistol'' - the Vivi Leimonis murder?

Mr. Nielsen: No, that's Constable Baylis. Leimonis was shot with a sawed-off shotgun.

Mr. Wappel: Okay.

On chart 2 you say registered versus unregistered firearms. Could you tell me what the meaning of ``unregistered firearms'' is? Does that mean long guns?

Mr. Nielsen: No, I'm just talking about pistols or revolvers.

Mr. Wappel: Should it say registered versus unregistered, restricted or prohibited firearms?

Mr. Nielsen: Well, yes, if you will. That's right.

.2030

The Chair: Mr. Nunez, do you have any further questions?

[Translation]

Mr. Nunez: I would have a question for Mr. Veitch. You're not personally in favour of Bill C-68 which provides for the control and registration of firearms. There has been a lot of reservations about registration on a financial perspective. Do you have a general idea of the cost of registration? Would it be very expensive? Would it be easy?

[English]

Sgt Veitch: Certain figures have been put forward by the registrar and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, who are responsible for implementing the registration system. I'm not an accountant, and I do not deal with accounts or financial affairs whatsoever. I hesitate to hazard a comment one way or the other on the projected costs or figures.

[Translation]

Mr. Nunez: The registration system should be in place in a few years. Do you think it is soon enough?

[English]

Sgt Veitch: The way I understand the proposed legislation, at the present time there are five years to facilitate and implement the registration of long arms. It appears certain financial incentives will be included in the bill and the regulations to promote early registration in the first one or two years.

As with any new system, I believe there'll be some growing pains during the first period of time. However, I think with the new direct entry system being proposed and with computerized assistance for identification it can be accomplished within the five-year period.

The Chair: Mr. Bodnar, you have five minutes.

Mr. Bodnar (Saskatoon - Dundurn): I have a few questions.

Do you ever run into crossbows?

Mr. Nielsen: Yes, twice.

Mr. Bodnar: Do you, Mr. Veitch?

Sgt Veitch: Yes. We have had one turned in voluntarily since the new Orders in Council were enacted.

Mr. Bodnar: Okay. Was there any examination of crossbows related to an offence?

Sgt Veitch: No. We haven't had any since the change in legislation.

Mr. Bodnar: Have you, Mr. Nielsen?

Mr. Nielsen: We had two homicides with crossbows prior to the legislation.

Mr. Bodnar: Over what period of time was that?

Mr. Nielsen: I believe it was a period of four years.

Mr. Bodnar: How long have you been involved when there were only two crossbows?

Mr. Nielsen: If you are looking for the word ``problem'', I don't think it exists as far as crossbows are concerned, if you look at the number that have actually been used.

Mr. Bodnar: That's where I'm trying to get. There've been two homicides in the last, what, ten, twenty, thirty or forty years?

Mr. Nielsen: That's right.

Mr. Bodnar: Which is it - fifty, sixty, a hundred?

Mr. Nielsen: I believe it's in the last ten years.

Mr. Bodnar: I see. Okay.

Mr. Nielsen: There was one other thing about crossbows, if I may elaborate. This is somewhat anecdotal.

Mr. Bodnar: I don't want you to elaborate too much. I have five minutes.

About long arms in Saskatchewan, you've indicated they're prevalent in 90% of the cases you've done work on. Is that correct, Sergeant Veitch?

Sgt Veitch: Yes, that's a fair estimate.

Mr. Bodnar: That's higher than elsewhere. Can you say why, or do you know?

Sgt Veitch: I would say it's a much more rural community. A higher percentage of people live in the rural areas. It's very much a hunting province, in the northern part of the province. I would say per capita there are probably more hunters in the province of Saskatchewan.

.2035

Mr. Bodnar: Mr. Nielsen, you've indicated that with the registration of handguns the use of handguns in certain offences or crimes has gradually gone up over a period of time. How does this relate to the United States and the rate of increase in the use of handguns in the United States?

Mr. Nielsen: When I first commenced my employment at the Centre of Forensic Sciences we had a very low caseload. We had only about 300 cases a year. As the time passed, we had a large number of immigrants from various parts of the world, and all of a sudden we started getting an awful lot of handgun crime from that part of the population.

I'm stepping very carefully here, because I don't want to say the wrong thing.

Mr. Wappel: Not that you don't know what the wrong thing is.

Mr. Nielsen: I'm sure it'll be pointed out to me.

We have noticed an increase in handguns. It's been prevalent among certain subcultures, especially in Toronto.

Mr. Bodnar: But the increase in the United States has been greater, percentage-wise, per 100,000 population than it has been in Canada.

Mr. Nielsen: Sure, because they are not controlled as tightly.

Mr. Bodnar: Precisely. So the control of handguns in Canada does help prevent crime.

Mr. Nielsen: Because we have a federal system of controlling them, and in the States they don't.

Mr. Bodnar: What I'm saying is that the control of handguns in Canada does lower the crime rate when you compare it with the rate in the United States.

Mr. Nielsen: Yes, if you compare the crime rate with handguns.

Mr. Bodnar: Yes. And there is no reason to believe that the same will not be the case with long guns.

Mr. Nielsen: You're back to the number of long guns that are actually used in offences vis-à-vis your crossbows. Is it worth the trouble?

Mr. Bodnar: I believe we're comparing apples with oranges.

You've indicated two offences with crossbows. I believe one was Patricia Allen.

Mr. Nielsen: No, I wasn't counting that one. We didn't get that one.

Mr. Bodnar: How many are there in total?

Mr. Nielsen: That would be three.

Mr. Bodnar: What are the other two?

Mr. Nielsen: They were outside Toronto.

Mr. Bodnar: Do you remember the names, and when the occurrences...?

Mr. Nielsen: One was a lovers' spat where a man shot the new boyfriend. Another one involved a motorcycle gang.

Mr. Bodnar: I see. And were the crossbows pistol grip or large?

Mr. Nielsen: They were the large ones.

Mr. Bodnar: Thank you. I have no further questions.

The Chair: Mr. Ramsay, you have five minutes.

Mr. Ramsay: I'm a little bit frustrated. I'll try to work my way through this.

Mr. Nielsen, have you read the Terence Wade report on the handgun registration system, the review that he did in 1994?

Mr. Nielsen: No, sir.

Mr. Ramsay: You see, I'm having difficulty seeing through the mail-in registration system as a system that will provide the integrity our police forces need, particularly when I look at the handgun registration system and the difficulties Terence Wade found in that system. This is why I refer to page 15, where he states ``...there is a clear need to improve training, particularly in identifying firearms''.

The handguns are always brought in to a peace officer trained in firearms identification. If the mail-in system is suitable now, why wasn't it suitable yesterday? If it's going to be suitable for the new system dealing with long guns, why wasn't it suitable for the handguns?

We had the revenue people in here, and they explained how the system is going to work when the hunters from the United States come from the border. They indicated that to expedite the process at the border, they would send the information or the documentation down. The hunters could fill it out, and then they would be ready when they got to the border. They would hand it over and the process would begin. When I asked them what the next step was after the documentation was handed over, they said they would check the firearm against the information on the document. When I asked why they would do that, they said it was to maintain the integrity of the system.

.2040

If a registration card is issued just from the documentation that's sent in, and if a mistake has been made on the serial number, then a registration card is going to be issued for the wrong firearm. So I have some difficulty seeing the maintenance of the integrity of a mail-in registration system.

Would you comment on those concerns that I've raised, Mr. Nielsen?

Mr. Nielsen: I would agree with you. You're going to have a gigantic shemozzle as far as the proper identification of the weapon goes. One example would be bolt-action Mauser military rifles. They've been manufactured ever since 1871 up until 1945, when manufacture stopped abruptly. There are so many variations and factories and code numbers and so on, I don't believe you could ever have enough time to train the average registrar in determining exactly what he had.

Mr. Ramsay: This is not going to be going through the registrar. It's going to be mailed in by the owner, who is going to fill out a form.

Mr. Nielsen: That's even worse. I think you're looking at a gigantic problem.

Mr. Gallaway (Sarnia - Lambton): Mr. Nielsen, you just stated that you think there's going to be a gigantic problem in setting up a registry system.

Mr. Nielsen: I'm not saying that about the system. It's already in place, if you figure that handguns are being registered.

Mr. Gallaway: I'm talking about the system as envisioned by Bill C-68.

Mr. Nielsen: I must admit, I'm not sure what shape this mail-in form is going to take.

Mr. Gallaway: All right. I thought you had said, and I may have misunderstood you, that you see gigantic problems in this system.

Mr. Nielsen: I do.

Mr. Gallaway: All right. What are the problems, then?

Mr. Nielsen: The problems I see are in the case of an owner not being fully aware of what he has and sending in incorrect information, unwittingly perhaps.

Mr. Gallaway: You're here as a forensic expert.

Mr. Nielsen: Yes.

Mr. Gallaway: Are you an expert in registration systems, be it for cars, guns, or land in Ontario?

Mr. Nielsen: No. I would say I'm familiar with the registration system insofar as restricted weapons are concerned because I own a large number myself and I've been registering them ever since I was 18 years old.

Mr. Gallaway: So as a gun owner, you're aware of the present system, but you're not aware of the envisioned system, the system to come?

Mr. Nielsen: I don't know what it is, no.

Mr. Gallaway: Fine. Secondly, you're here as an expert, and I appreciate that you offered some personal opinions. You stated that suicides are inevitable. Are you an expert on suicides?

Mr. Nielsen: Well, I have done an awful lot of them.

Mr. Gallaway: You've done a lot of them. The fact is you have said that suicides are inevitable. Is that an expert opinion or is that anecdotal?

Mr. Nielsen: No, I'm afraid I stepped a little out of my field - or maybe a lot.

The Chair: Mr. Nielsen and Sergeant Veitch, we've called you here as forensic experts. If you think that the questions are out of your field, you have no obligation to answer them. You may answer them, but feel free to say so if you feel this is outside your expertise.

Mr. Nielsen: Had we been in a court setting I probably would have said it was outside my field.

Mr. Gallaway: I'm thinking of those people who are watching this evening and who realize that you are a forensic expert and may not appreciate that is your personal opinion. That has nothing to do with your field of expertise.

Mr. Nielsen: Oh, no. That's absolutely correct.

Mr. Gallaway: There's another part of this bill. There are parts of this bill other than the registry system. Are you familiar with those?

Mr. Nielsen: Yes.

Mr. Gallaway: Do you believe they have some effect? You've offered your personal opinion that you yourself subjectively believe it will not have any effect, or that it will have only a negligible effect. What about other parts of this?

Mr. Nielsen: For instance, there's a part in there about the handguns with a barrel length of less than 105 millimetres. Obviously, I would think what the person who was drafting it was trying to get at was these cheap handguns I referred to earlier. But a better way of having done that would have been to list the overall length of the firearm itself rather than concentrating on the barrel length.

As a result of this legislation, I have just sold a number of Luger pistols to Germany because they would be prohibited if I kept them. From that point of view, I certainly don't like it, and I don't think they hit the target when they introduced that 105 millimetres.

.2045

Mr. Gallaway: I have one final question. Are you a gun collector?

Mr. Nielsen: Yes, I am. I said I was.

The Chair: Before I go to Mr. Nunez again, I want to ask a supplementary on this.

If I understand correctly, you wouldn't be opposed to some ban on the Saturday night specials, the cheap, junky guns, but you think we've defined it in the wrong way.

Mr. Nielsen: That's right. I'm all in favour of a ban on those cheap guns. I just wish there were some way it would work.

The Chair: I notice there's a very low rate of crime with prohibited weapons in Canada. Most of them are either registered or are long guns. You were suggesting that if we do it, we do it on the length of the whole gun, rather than on the length of the barrel. We'd get these cheap guns in a better way.

Mr. Nielsen: That's right.

The Chair: That's important.

Mr. Nielsen: You will still catch a number of so-so guns, but I think it would be much better than what they've got now.

Mr. Wappel: What length would you suggest?

Mr. Nielsen: Off the top of my head, I would say five inches, but possibly less.

Mr. Wappel: And in millimetres?

Mr. Nielsen: How about ten centimetres? No, that might be too short.

The Chair: I'm going to ask the clerk to bring in a few of these, so we can look at these Saturday night specials. We've had all sorts of beautiful guns here that are collectors' items. I don't think we've seen any Saturday night specials. It might help us to see a couple of these.

Mr. Wappel: Our clerk has quite a collection.

[Translation]

The Chair: Mr. Nunez, for five minutes.

Mr. Nunez: Mr. Nielsen, if I understood you correctly, when answering a question from one of my colleagues, you said that the rate of crime with firearms, particularly with guns, went up with the arrival of immigrants.

As I am informed, criminal rate among immigrants is less than criminal rates among original Canadians.

It looks like there are more original Canadians than immigrants in jail. Naturally, when a crime is committed by an immigrant, there is much publicity. It is especially the case in Toronto.

Do you have data to prove what you're saying?

[English]

Mr. Nielsen: No, I don't. This was extremely short notice. For the record, I'm an immigrant myself. I'm afraid English is my second language.

I'm saying that when I first began my career at the laboratory, there were certain groups that were not a problem, because they weren't groups yet. They weren't here. I can go only by the cases we get and the information the police give us, the number of deaths. I've been through their autopsies and so on. That's led me to that conclusion.

[Translation]

Mr. Nunez: Mr. Veitch, the bill provides new offences in case of trafficking or smuggling firearms and other regulated arms. Do you think that we could control more easily with this bill the problem of smuggling and trafficking of firearms?

[English]

Sgt Veitch: I'm not aware of a large smuggling problem in the area of the country I'm from. It is more on a firearm individual basis.

My understanding of the bill as it refers to smuggling is that if a firearm becomes subject to registration the moment it reaches a border and remains part of the registration system until it leaves the country, the ability to control those items and account for them becomes much easier than the present system, involving business permits and licences and so on. I have to apologize, though, for not being totally familiar with the smuggling situation in Canada. It's a little beyond the area in which I work.

.2050

The Chair: Is that Regina?

Sgt Veitch: That's correct, the province of Saskatchewan, Mr. Chairman.

[Translation]

Mr. Nunez: Concerning firearms trafficking, do you know if the RCMP or other police forces have sufficient resources to deal with this problem which, probably, is also not too severe in your province?

[English]

Sgt Veitch: From a law enforcement point of view, you're always looking for more resources and more people to combat crime and enforce existing laws. Unfortunately, as with any department or group, you must work within your financial restraints and the law that is available to you at the time. I personally believe that this bill will assist in deterring smuggling and trafficking of firearms because they become much more accountable than what I understand they are under the present system.

Mr. Gagnon (Bonaventure - Îles-de-la-Madeleine): My line of questioning would be, given that we're going to go into some form of registration, what kind of form would you see for voluntary registration of firearms? Do you have any idea of how it could be conceived or what kind of form it could take? Could it be like an outline of some kind that is given to each gun owner in Canada? For those who wish to register guns, there might be a standardized way of filling in the information where necessary.

Mr. Nielsen: It's an extremely difficult problem, obviously. It's like income tax forms. You're going to get some done very well and others not. It will be the same way with these things. I really don't think there's an easy solution. The bottom line is it comes down to somebody who knows what they're doing identifying it accurately, and that's a big problem.

Mr. Gagnon: Being a good old country boy like Mr. Thompson, most of us have .22s, .410s, 12 gauges, .303s and .270s. What percentage of guns or rifles or firearms do they represent in Canada?

Mr. Nielsen: I would say more than half.

The Chair: We had the figures this morning.

Mr. Gagnon: So we assume that more than half of the guns are of this common nature and they would be easily identified, wouldn't they?

Mr. Nielsen: Yes, that's right. Once again, we're back to knowing what you're doing.

Mr. Gagnon: But anybody who has a Remington .270, for example, which I have.... I would probably have an idea if the form came to me; I think it could be brought to my attention if I were looking at that calibre of rifle, or any of the other of the common makes. Isn't there a sure way of identifying them?

Mr. Nielsen: The surest way is the sale number. In the case of your Remington, the .270 cartridge was introduced in the 1920s and at that time Remington made one model of bolt-action rifle in that calibre. Later on they went to the model 700X and so on. I wouldn't know what Remington you had, but I would know what the serial number is. That's the important thing, as on your car.

Mr. Gagnon: What percentage of guns would really represent a serious problem in registration?

Mr. Nielsen: All the military weapons. I'm talking about the simple bolt-action, early breech-loaders, all that sort of thing. That would present a problem. I notice there is a section in Bill C-68 about exempting weapons manufactured before 1898 and so on. If that were made a little broader it would ease the problem somewhat, but there would still be a big problem.

Mr. Gagnon: So can we assume that little more than half of Canada's so-called arsenal would be easily registered?

Mr. Nielsen: Yes, I would say so.

.2055

Mr. Nielsen: Yes, I would say so.

The Chair: Breech-loaders, according to the law, are considered antiques and not subject to registration.

Mr. Nielsen: I would suggest that depends on what breech-loader we are looking at.

The Chair: I see. In the law they say breech-loaders. Maybe it needs a closer definition.

Mr. Nielsen: There are an awful lot of them that would require registration even if they were made before 1898.

Mr. Gagnon: How many features on a gun, those that are not easily identified, would have to be registered?

Mr. Nielsen: First of all, the serial number accurately, which is always a big bug-bear with any of them. Any markings on the receiver might give you a hint, but you're still going to get an awful lot that you're not going to know until you physically look at them. That's the trouble.

Mr. Gagnon: But you did say that the ones that posed the greatest problems are the military types of firearm.

Mr. Nielsen: I would say so, yes, only because there are so many very unusual types. We're not talking about assault weapons or anything else. We're talking about 19th century single-shot rifles, that sort of thing. If you want to register a Martini-Henry, is it Mark 1, Mark 2, Mark 3 or Mark 4? Does it have a brass hinge pin or not? A lot of them weren't numbered, and people may not want numbers put on them because of the antique value.

Mr. Gagnon: What kind of calibres of rifles are we talking about when you're talking about shotguns in various homicides?

Mr. Nielsen: Twelve gauge is the most common.

Mr. Gagnon: What percentage?

Mr. Nielsen: I would say 90% of them.

Mr. Ramsay: You are an expert in firearms identification, are you? That's why your here.

Mr. Nielsen: I like to think I have a certain passing familiarity with it, yes.

Mr. Ramsay: I don't want to be asking any questions outside your line of expertise.

Would you be prepared to issue a registration certificate for a firearm bearing a serial number that you did not personally examine?

Mr. Nielsen: Certainly not, no.

Mr. Ramsay: Why not?

Mr. Nielsen: Because I have no guarantee that it's accurate. I'm just taking somebody's word for it, and that's not good enough.

Mr. Ramsay: Why?

Mr. Nielsen: Because who knows if that person has put it down right or not? I have no guarantee of that.

Mr. Ramsay: That's why I have asked you here tonight because of the difficulty I see in the mail-in registration system. Even though you feel the large numbers are easily identifiable, are you talking about easily identifiable by a firearms identification officer?

Mr. Nielsen: Yes, the sporting weapons are the ones you would have the least trouble with because they are normally marked extensively, be they Winchester, Remington or whatever, with model and calibre.

Mr. Ramsay: However, you would still be reluctant to issue a registration certificate for those easily identifiable firearms with a serial number that is clear, simply from a form that has been sent in by someone else.

Mr. Nielsen: I would, of course.

Mr. Ramsay: I have one other area that I'll quickly go through. It was raised by some of the forensic scientists that I talked to. Bill C-68 is going to ban handguns by way of calibre, particularly the .32 calibre. If I have a .32 and I'm charged for having it, within the charge that I did unlawfully have, to wit, a .32-calibre handgun, then the prosecution has to prove the calibre.

If you're in court and you're handed a .32, how do you identify it as being of that calibre?

Mr. Nielsen: Say you were handed a Walther PPK. They were made in three calibres: .22, .32 and .380. When you looked at it, it would probably be marked on the side, 7.65mm, which is a European designation for .32. You could also look at the bow and say that it looked like a .32. But I think the final judgment would be firing it with a .32-calibre cartridge.

Mr. Ramsay: I've been advised that there are quite a few .32s that do not fire a .32-calibre projectile. They fire closer to a .30 calibre, and you identify it by the projectile that is fired. Is that correct?

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Mr. Nielsen: That's correct. A lot of the calibre designations aren't strictly accurate. There's a .357. It's not really .357.

Mr. Ramsay: If you were in court on the witness stand and you were handed a .32-calibre handgun, what calibre would you call it?

Mr. Nielsen: I would probably say it's a .32 calibre. However, it's loaded with a projectile that's .30 in diameter.

Mr. Ramsay: What calibre would it be?

Mr. Nielsen: Strictly speaking, it would be a .30 calibre rather than a .32.

Mr. Ramsay: That's the problem that the forensic scientists that I've talked to have identified as a result of some of the court challenges this new bill will create.

Ms Torsney (Burlington): Could we have Mr. Veitch respond to those same questions?

Sgt Veitch: I agree with what has just previously been discussed here. I find the designation of .25 calibre and .32 calibre that is currently within the bill, from a technical point of view, to be very ambiguous. I would like to see, when the regulations are written pertaining to the bill, that specific calibres are either included or excluded from this larger family of firearms. I would like to see a list of inclusions and exclusions of the recognized names that the firearm industry uses. Not only would it make it much simpler from a technical point of view, but also the public and collectors would know exactly what the legislation meant.

Ms Torsney: The earlier question, though, was on serial numbers.

The Chair: Wait. I allowed one supplementary question. I'll put you down on the list and you can ask that.

Ms Torsney: But he asked a question of the witnesses and Mr. Veitch never responded on the seeing of serial numbers.

The Chair: Have you completed the answer to the question? Ms Torsney has asked you to answer the same questions that Mr. Nielsen had answered. Have you answered them?

Ms Torsney: He answered one of them, not the other one.

The Chair: If I allow this it's going to escalate and everybody's going to do it. We'll get out of control. I'll put you on the list and you can ask questions.

Mr. MacLellan (Cape Breton - The Sydneys): Sergeant Veitch, just to finish that, on the .25 and .32 calibre, you say that's not the designation you would like to see, that you would like to see it in another fashion, and perhaps something in the regulations. Would you want to see the specific firearms named, or exactly how would you like to see them designated? It has been stated by both of you that we try to exclude the Saturday night special. There has to be some clear-cut way of doing it.

Sgt Veitch: There are lists of recognized calibres of firearms that are recognized and standardized by the firearms industry. When you say .32 calibre, I immediately start thinking of .32 ACP, .32 Smith and Wesson, .32 Smith and Wesson short and long, also, in the Colt, short and long, Colt, police-positive. There are many .32-calibre designations and firearms of the same or very close bore dimensions.

Personally, from a technical point of view, I find the designation of .32 calibre to be very ambiguous. A person who's used to dealing technically with these calibres likes to know whether he's talking about the .32 ACP, or whatever, and just go through and simply, based on technical advice or whatever, have a complete list of calibres that is included within that large family of. 32 that the bill is hoping to address - and also, at the same time, the ones within that area that are excluded so that there is no confusion from a technical point of view or from the public's point of view.

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Mr. MacLellan: Mr. Chairman, I have a question for Sergeant Veitch, and then one forMr. Nielsen.

If we were to try to designate antique weapons, what would you say is an antique weapon? From the point of view of danger to the public, where would you draw the line? For instance, would you designate anything manufactured before 1896 as an antique weapon - black powder, rimfire, single shot?

Mr. Nielsen: This arbitrary date of 1898 means absolutely nothing. You mentioned danger to the public. You can be shot dead with a matchlock musket made in 1450 with absolutely no problem at all. We haven't had a matchlock shooting. We have had a couple of flintlocks, but they were modern replicas and they were hunting accidents.

The Chair: Very few people use those.

Mr. Nielsen: Let's say it takes a fair amount of training and expertise to use one well.

As for saying exactly what an antique is, that's a tough question. I don't think I could answer it right now.

Mr. MacLellan: Do you have a comment on that, sergeant?

Sgt Veitch: My definition of antique is what is presently in the code. It has a date. I agree with Mr. Nielsen that a date has no effect whatsoever on the lethality of a firearm. By that date or in that period of time, firearms came to be designed with cartridge ammunition, so that they were much easier to use by the common person. Therefore they became more common. I personally don't know why a particular date has been selected. I would want to do a fair amount of research to give you what I would consider a good definition of ``antique''.

Mr. MacLellan: Mr. Nielsen, you mentioned the identification capacity of officers. Do the peace officers in Ontario receive any instruction at all in the identification of firearms? Does the RCMP, Sergeant Veitch?

Mr. Nielsen: I believe they receive some, but I wouldn't want to comment on exactly how much. It's out of my field.

Mr. MacLellan: Do the RCMP officers in Regina receive any instruction in the identification of firearms?

Sgt Veitch: People are appointed as registrars to handle the paperwork and the inspections. A very large manual is published. The National Firearms Manual contains a large amount of instruction.

I would imagine that if this proposed registration system comes about, a certain amount of instruction will be required and needed.

I also understand that with the new proposed direct entry system there is going to be much more information available on computer, in regard to images, exact pictures of firearms to assist in identifying where the serial number should be, and roughly how many numbers should be in the serial number. This system is currently under development. In fact, I believe it's going through a trial period someplace here in eastern Canada at the present time.

Mr. MacLellan: How viable, realistic and effective is it to add a serial number to a firearm that doesn't have one now? Is it effective? Is it as effective as having the serial number on the firearm from the beginning, not from the point of view of affecting the value of an antique firearm but from the point of view of identification and it being able to stand a lot of wear and tear and perhaps tampering? Is it as effective as the original number on a firearm?

Sgt Veitch: If that number is put on by the method of stamping with a set of dyes, it becomes just as effective. It can still be obliterated or destroyed as are factory-impressed numbers. However, the chances and the probability of doing certain procedures and restoring that number are much better if the number's actually been stamped into the metal of the firearm. To me, that is the best way of imparting the number to a firearm.

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[Translation]

Mr. Nunez: My question is on the inspection powers, and I address it to Mr. Veitch. You are aware that the bill involves increased powers of inspection of any premises, except residential premises, unless with a warrant or with the owners' authorization. Are you in agreement with granting such inspection powers?

[English]

Sgt Veitch: By becoming a person who wishes to collect, store and maintain firearms, you have in a way given consent to that procedure of the law. I don't know whether it's something society is willing to take. I view all of this as a police officer and as a person involved in forensic science. To me, if the law says that to collect firearms or to keep firearms you must make your premises subject to inspection, then you have made that choice. It may be a very narrow or specific view in some people's minds, but that's my personal opinion.

[Translation]

Mr. Nunez: Then, in your view, there would be no need to restrict such inspections, speaking in a very wide sense?

[English]

Sgt Veitch: Again, I tend to view it as a police officer and as a person involved in the judicial system. That is more of a question for society and what we, as a society, will accept with regard to privacy, search and so on.

Mr. Nunez: That is your opinion.

Sgt Veitch: Yes. That's my opinion as a police officer and it's my whole nature. I think as a police person. I also think as a forensic scientist, and the two are intertwined. But my views are not generally those of Canadian society at large. It's up to Canadian society at large to make those kinds of decisions, I feel.

[Translation]

Mr. Nunez: Do you think that your superior officers within the RCMP share your view?

The Chair: We've already had the RCMP before the committee, including Mr. Veitch's superior officer, who is in charge of the whole system. They were here a few days ago, and I believe that Mr. Veitch cannot answer this question, because your colleagues already had the opportunity to ask it. We don't need an opinion on this subject, since we've already heard it.

[English]

Ms Phinney: I have a personal question that comes out of my ignorance of your job. I only know what I see on television and what I read in mysteries. If there's a crime and there's a gun on the floor there, is the police officer going to pick that up and put it in a bag - you see this in movies - and then give it directly to you people?

Sgt Veitch: No. There's much more that will take place in an investigation prior to that.

Ms Phinney: Before you receive the gun, more than that will be done?

Sgt Veitch: Yes. They simply don't pick it up. First of all, the scene would have to be photographed, examined and so on. The firearm, prior to our receiving it, would go to a fingerprint person to determine whether or not there were any fingerprints present on it.

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The person who did the initial examination at the scene would determine whether or not it was loaded, whether or not there were any other -

The Chair: DNA on it.

Sgt Veitch: Yes, possibly. Nowadays if there is blood from the victim on it, or blood from the accused or from several different people, there are many examinations that have to and should be done prior to the firearms examiner receiving it.

Ms Phinney: And when you receive it, is it your job to match up a bullet with the gun? What is your job?

Sgt Veitch: Yes. The forensic identification of firearms consists of matching fired components, those being cartridge cases, bullets, shot shells - anything that is expelled or discharged from a firearm - to that particular firearm, with a view to specifically identifying that weapon as having discharged the fired components found at that location or at locations throughout the province or country or whatever.

Ms Phinney: Before you receive that firearm, would the police doing their investigation have checked to see if it was registered before you got it? Or, is that your job?

Sgt Veitch: That is their job. Within the RCMP those kinds of checks are done by the investigating officer or department or group of people. On occasion no marks will be left on that firearm. An individual will have removed all markings or identification, particularly serial numbers. They will bring it to us at that point. We have certain techniques we use to attempt to tell them what the serial number or a portion of the serial number was. We give them as much information as we can to assist them in their investigation.

Ms Phinney: Would that be the same with you, Mr. Nielsen?

Mr. Nielsen: Basically, that's right. In keeping with the serial number business you will find many times that a complete serial number will be duplicated elsewhere, in a hidden place on a weapon. Once again we're back to knowing what to look for.

Ms Phinney: You mean that is not your job. The police will already have checked to see if there is a serial number. If there were, a computer system would have already put that through and found out who the owner was.

Mr. Nielsen: No. Let's say for the sake of argument that the serial number had been removed. Then the police officer who's handling it would not disassemble the weapon, or at least he shouldn't. That would be up to us.

Ms Phinney: You may get weapons that don't have any prior identification done by the police, because they wouldn't know whose it was.

Mr. Nielsen: That's correct.

Ms Phinney: If the gun had been registered, you may be able to find a number and trace it through the computer system.

Mr. Nielsen: That's correct. Serial numbers are actually fairly easy to remove. It's just a question of how much metal you remove and what method you use. We have found that people who have been incarcerated usually know how to remove the serial numbers very effectively, with no hope of us ever raising them because word does go around.

Ms Phinney: If it's not easily identifiable and the policeman can't put it into the computer, it's part of your job to try even further to identify it.

Mr. Nielsen: Sure, but we may not be able to.

Ms Phinney: But it would be your job to take it further.

Mr. Nielsen: That's right.

Mr. Ramsay: I have one quick question just to be fair to Sergeant Veitch.

Sergeant Veitch, I'm sorry I didn't allow you to respond to the question I asked Mr. Neilsen thad to do with his confidence in issuing a registration certificate from identifying features that had been mailed in on a form, bearing in mind that a serial number might be wrong, a 9 might be a 7, or whatever.

How would you feel about that? Would you be confident in issuing a registration certificate for a firearm without inspecting the firearm, using only the information from the form that was sent in?

Sgt Veitch: I'd have to say I'd be maybe a little bit more confident than Mr. Neilsen, provided that I had the reference literature to do the checks on the right serial number combination for the right make and model and that everything agreed based on information available from manufacturers and so on.

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Many businesses I deal with rely on me to present my correct credit card number. The majority of people are still law abiding and honest, and try to do the best they can. I think that's going to cover the majority of people in society.

I agree with you. There is nothing better than physically examining the item to make sure everything is correct and is as stated.

Mr. Ramsay: How can you register or issue a registration certificate for an item without having validated the item? How can you do that with confidence, particularly when it comes to a serial number where instead of a 9 it's a 7, and it's an honest mistake? How can you do that without validating the information?

Sgt Veitch: One of the checks that will probably occur is that if the information comes to me with the 7 on it, and two days later I get the same information with another 7, exactly the same serial number or something, I will know one of those two has made a mistake and it would require further correspondence, investigations, checks, or something. They shouldn't be the same.

Mr. Ramsay: But what if that doesn't happen? It's very unlikely out of the three million firearms that it would happen. It would have to be a stroke of unusual circumstances or coincidence for that to happen. Don't you believe that? Or, do those kinds of things happen every day?

Sgt Veitch: It's possible with the more modern firearms that come into the country in blocks. Yes, if you don't physically inspect it there can be mistakes. I will easily admit that.

Mr. Thompson: Sergeant Veitch, you said 90% of your examinations are of long guns.

Sgt Veitch: Yes.

Mr. Thompson: Do you have a breakdown of how many of those investigations are because of criminal use?

Sgt Veitch: The majority of them are, because that is the nature of our work.

Mr. Thompson: I'm not talking about suicides, losses, or thefts from pickups. I'm talking about criminal activity like homicides and robberies - those kinds of things.

Sgt Veitch: Well, stealing from a pickup truck is still a criminal activity.

Mr. Thompson: Yes. I understand that. It's a theft.

Sgt Veitch: If the firearm requires identification or restoring of a serial number we would still deal with it.

Mr. Thompson: Do you believe that universal registration of all the guns you've examined in criminal activity would have prevented those crimes?

Sgt Veitch: No, not all of them.

The Chair: In the document you gave us, Mr. Nielsen, on the page that deals with 1994 Ontario homicides, there are only three mentions of homicides in domestic disputes on that list.

There are two others that might be considered domestic disputes. The second one says ``personal dispute, mentally ill'' and another one says ``lovers' quarrel, he shot her''. Even if we include those two, are you telling us - by the way, I appreciate you came here on short notice - that there were only five homicides in all of Ontario in 1994 that involved domestic disputes with guns?

Mr. Nielsen: That's right.

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The Chair: Five domestic homicides with guns in all of Ontario. We must be doing something right. I thought it was much higher from figures I've seen.

I want to make sure I'm interpreting this table correctly.

Mr. Nielsen: If I may just interrupt you, we don't get a lot of murder-suicides, where the husband shoots wife of the wife shoots husband and they kill themselves

The Chair: I'm talking about a homicide that would end up in a first- or second-degree murder charge or a manslaughter.

Mr. Nielsen: That's right.

The Chair: You also get the cases where somebody is shot and killed, nobody's apprehended for the shooting and no weapon is found. The very fact the person has died from a bullet shot would end up in your case list.

Mr. Nielsen: Yes.

The Chair: Is that the same in Saskatchewan, Mr. Veitch?

Sgt Veitch: Yes. Even if the firearm is not found, certain firearm components are obtained from the body and sent to us so we can assist the investigators in telling them what to look for.

The Chair: When the minister and his officials were before us and were asked questions quite forcefully by Mr. Ramsay and others about this system of registration, they said they did not expect the mail-in system to be perfect but they thought on the whole it would be. However, they went into the alternatives. I want to ask you about the alternatives.

They said if they didn't have the mail-in system another alternative would be to ask everybody in Canada with long guns to bring them in. That would be one hell of a mess in your offices. There'd be millions of guns. People bringing in all their rifles and shotguns might cause a public security problem. There were risks with that alternative as well.

The third alternative was to have task forces go out to try to register every weapon by seeing the weapon. They dismissed that, too. They choose the mail-in system as the lesser of evils, the way I understood it, recognizing that no system is perfect and it would be the best one to use under the circumstances.

How do both of you think you would cope in your respective offices, or the registration offices you're familiar with in your provinces, if everybody in Ontario who had long guns were to bring them in? We wouldn't use the mail-in system. We'd tell them they had a period of time to bring every gun in to be identified for registration. You're familiar with this being done with handguns, but there are a hell of a lot more long guns.

Is their interpretation of the situation correct, that if everybody in the country brought in their guns, five million to six million long guns, hunting rifles and shotguns, this would be a risky business?

Considering the different alternatives, if you're committed to having a registration system, what do you think? You don't have to answer if you don't feel you can. But if you feel you can, I'd like you to give me your opinion on this. If we amended the bill and put in the alternative that everybody had to bring in their long guns to the registration offices for registration, would it cause an undue burden, a lot of havoc or security problems?

Sgt Veitch: For the present staff involved in the province of Saskatchewan doing that type of work, it would be a burden to the extent it would probably never be done. The only way to get it done would be to increase substantially manpower dedicated to that task. I hesitate to estimate how many more person-years would be needed to accomplish direct examinations.

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Mr. Nielsen: I agree. If you look at how many people have handguns registered to them, you can assume that all of them, I would say, have at least one long gun. They have a known number already.

It would just be chaos. It really would.

The Chair: The other night I went through the painful experience, as did millions of Canadians, of filling out an income tax return. From what I heard about the mail-in registration form, it's less onerous and complicated than the income tax return, and I had to do two, since I live in Quebec.

I want to go back to the question I just asked. I have just the homicide figures, with guns, for Ontario for 1992, 1991, 1990 and 1989. In Ontario in 1992 they list 54 homicides with guns; in 1991, 70; in 1990, 22; and in 1989, 48. On your list, there are 25 for 1994.

There seems to be quite a variation. I'm trying to figure it out. I don't blame you at all. I'm wondering why we got the variation.

Mr. Nielsen: I also want to explain to you, for instance, multiple murders and suicides. I've had a couple of quadruples, with four people killed, when the shooter kills himself or herself. That's five homicides, or at least four homicides.

The Chair: You wouldn't get those.

Mr. Nielsen: No. I did get one, but that was more or less a training exercise. The fellow used two different guns, and they were a little confused. Nothing came of it, of course.

The Chair: At any rate, this is not the principal purpose of our meeting here tonight. Our principal purpose is to deal with your expertise on forensic matters.

Ms Torsney (Burlington): My comment was more on what you had addressed earlier, leading on what Sergeant Veitch said. He believed in the integrity of most people, that these were law-abiding people, as most taxpayers are, and that we have an income tax system that's a hell of a lot more complicated, that has a form that is far more detailed, and that the system works. It works, by and large. There are some errors; there's some checking.

The Chair: Some crooks.

Ms Torsney: Of course there are. But a lot of them are caught. Certainly I read about them. We also all get income tax cheques back, in very short order, when we've overpaid.

I think the system can work and I'm pleased that after many years in the police force you still believe in the goodness of people in our country. It must be hard, against those odds.

That was my comment, that certainly it's a far more difficult system.

Mr. Ramsay: If information on a card is wrong and if a registration certificate is issued with the wrong information on it, then the individual has that registration certificate. If, carrying that firearm, he's checked by the police and he produces the registration certificate that doesn't match up, then unlike the tax system he is open for a criminal charge of being in possession of a firearm for which he does not have a registration certificate.

That's the difference, and that's why the integrity of the system must be beyond reproach. Otherwise, we are going to be issuing certificates to individuals who will be carrying them not realizing they are open for a criminal charge. Am I wrong in that?

I'd like both of you to respond to that.

Sgt Veitch: I agree with you. I don't recall within the bill whether or not all offences that occur as a result of paper or document transactions will be within the Criminal Code. If they're placed within the Criminal Code, then, yes, it will be a criminal offence. Maybe they will be placed within another form of regulatory device that is not as severe or as onerous as the Criminal Code.

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Mr. Ramsay: Under proposed sections 91 and 92, if you don't register your firearm you can be charged with an indictable offence. Under 91 you can be charged with a summary conviction offence. Under 92 you're charged with an indictable offence, punishable up to 10 years in prison. That's pretty serious.

Is this not justification and reason that the information must be verified before a registration certificate is issued?

Sgt Veitch: Yes. When we're dealing with subjects under the Criminal Code we must be as correct or precise as we possibly can be. We do not want wrongful prosecutions.

Mr. Ramsay: I go back to the verification of the information by the inspection of the firearm, that being the only way to verify it.

Sgt Veitch: Yes, that's the direct verification.

The Chair: I have a supplementary to it. If the same person referred to by Mr. Ramsay is stopped by the police and they check the registration and find out the make of the gun is correct, the calibre is correct and the model is correct on the registration information but he has made a mistake on the number - to use his example, he has a 7 instead of a 9 - do you think the police would lay a charge against the person?

I can see it if all the information is wrong. In the law it says the registration number isn't the only thing. It mentions these other matters - model, make, calibre, etc. If everything is correct except one digit, are you going to lay a charge?

Sgt Veitch: I think the best answer to that question is that discretion is a large part of police work and investigations.

The Chair: Good enough.

Mr. Bodnar: Mr. Chairman, could I get a last word in?

The Chair: Oh, God.

Mr. Bodnar: I have a 30-second comment in light of your supplementary.

The Chair: All right. Thirty seconds, counting slowly.

Mr. Bodnar: Thank you.

The proposed section requires that the false information be knowingly done, not accidentally or inadvertently. It is not a strict liability offence.

Thank you. That's my comment.

The Chair: That was 15 seconds. You were under.

I want to thank you both, because you both came on short notice. I dismiss you.

I want to bring a matter to the attention of the committee. I've received a large number of phone calls, notes and faxes from representatives of the Inuit Tapirisat of Canada who point out that we turned them down. They say they're a national aboriginal group. We've accepted the Assembly of First Nations and the Métis National Council.

We turned them down, I must admit, because we said we had the Northwest Territories. They claim they represent Inuit not only in the Northwest Territories but also in northern Quebec and Labrador; they're not just a Northwest Territories organization.

There is time in the schedule. In keeping with our guidelines, do you agree that we should? They'll complete the three. We'll have the Inuit, the Métis and the Indians.

Some hon. members: Agreed.

The Chair: This meeting stands adjourned.