[English]

EVIDENCE

[Recorded by Electronic Apparatus]

Tuesday, May 16, 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. Before I hear from the witnesses, I have a small item of business. If there's no debate, we can deal with it right away. If you wish to debate it and prolong the discussion, then we won't deal with it right away, because I don't want to keep our witnesses waiting.

On Thursday we had scheduled members of Parliament to appear before the committee. We had set aside the entire day for members of Parliament. It now seems that we only have enough to last throughout the morning, maybe until 12:30 p.m., at the most 1 p.m. So the afternoon is free.

You will recall that last week we agreed that the minister should come on Friday at 9 a.m. and that he be followed by his officials, a continuation of the meeting with all sorts of officials that we had last Friday. It's now suggested, since we have Thursday afternoon free, that we put the officials at 3:30 p.m. on Thursday and throughout the afternoon, a full afternoon meeting, and that we hear the minister on Friday morning. Then after the minister's finished you'd be free to go back to your ridings. I've consulted with some of the members, and they seem to be in agreement with that. Is there agreement to that?

Some hon. members: Hear, hear!

The Chair: So that's agreed to.

This morning I'm pleased to have with us three groups on a panel. All of them are victims groups, representing victims of crime.

First we have Canadians Against Violence Everywhere Advocating its Termination, otherwise known as CAVEAT, represented by its president, Priscilla de Villiers, and Carole Walzak, one of its directors.

We also have Victims of Violence, represented by its vice-president, Robert McNamara, and Mark Hogben, one of its members.

From Concordia University in Montreal, we have Charles Bertrand, the interim rector and vice-chancellor.

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I want to advise the committee, along with members of the media, that the witness groups this morning will be the 59th, 60th and 61st witness groups we will have heard on this bill. That doesn't mean 61 meetings; we often hear two or three witness groups together. But since April 24 when we started our hearings, with the minister in attendance, Concordia University will be the 61st group. I believe, having done this for a number of years, this is a very productive committee.

We will now hear these groups in the order in which they're on the notice. As you know, we ask you to limit your opening remarks to approximately 15 minutes. Since there are three groups, I hope you will do that. If you can read your brief in the 15 minutes, that's fine. If you can't, we'd ask you to read parts of it, or highlight it, with the understanding that the whole brief is in the hands of the committee members and can be attached to the record, if necessary, if you can't read it through.

I give the floor to Mrs. de Villiers.

Ms Priscilla de Villiers (President, Canadians Against Violence Everywhere Advocating its Termination): Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman and members of the committee, for hearing us.

I will ask Carole Walzak to read portions of our brief, after which we will both be available for questioning.

Ms Carole Walzak (Director, Canadians Against Violence Everywhere Advocating its Termination): CAVEAT is a national grassroots charitable organization that gives a voice to victims of violence and to the public. Our mission is to contribute to the creation and maintenance of a safe, just and peaceful society.

Not all members of CAVEAT are primary or secondary victims. The majority of our members are members of the public who are deeply concerned about the escalating violence in our society, whether in the media, at home or on the streets.

In 1991, three months after the brutal death of her daughter Nina, Priscilla de Villiers appeared before the Senate committee to make a statement about Bill C-17. We knew few details of the entire Yeo story at the time, but we were convinced that a process of certification of the class and number of guns would be beneficial. We still believe five people might be alive today had such a system been in place.

Nina de Villiers was murdered by Jonathon Yeo, a farmer who was devoted to his children but who was a psychotic man with an eleven-year history of violence against women. In his bail hearing on a sexual assault charge, an assault in which he used a knife and a gun, no attempt was made to remove his gun even though he obviously was a dangerous man.

His defence lawyer stated at the hearing that Yeo would be attending Clarke Institute for psychiatric assessment. Bound by the laws of confidentiality, however, neither the psychiatrist nor Yeo's lawyer shared the resulting information with the courts. He was released on bail and attempted to cross the border into the United States carrying a legally owned .22-calibre rifle. It was legally carried because there were no arms restrictions made in his bail hearing.

This rifle, which was implicated in the sexual assault on a Hamilton woman, was the same weapon used to execute Nina. It was implicated in the sexual assault and death of Karen Marquis of New Brunswick and used in the suicide of Jonathon Yeo himself.

The serious circumstances of this case were addressed in an extensive inquest into Mr. Yeo's death. The inquest ultimately produced 137 recommendations to improve public safety in many areas. Had effective firearms restrictions been in place at the time, three lives would have been saved.

At the same time, in Hamilton another family was suffering an equally tragic loss. The Edwards family was involved in the trial of George Lovie, who was accused of murdering Arnold and Donna Edwards.

Lovie possessed an FAC, but the file had been misplaced by number and by name. He subsequently stalked Michelle, and in the process killed her parents with his legally owned firearm. Fortunately, Michelle escaped the ordeal with her life.

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There can be no clear example of how effective firearm registration would have prevented these senseless, tragic deaths.

CAVEAT's presentation today is based on research conducted by a group of people who share a common interest in promoting public safety, through a comprehensive firearms act which will only help to reach this goal.

Bill C-68 must include a registration and firearms certification if we are to address both the problems of criminal use of firearms and the unnecessary accidental and suicidal deaths and injuries associated with many types of weapons.

There are three mechanisms in which availability of guns increase violence. Guns instigate violence. Guns facilitate violence. Guns intensify violence. It must be recognized that guns are designed to kill. The fact that guns may be used for sporting, collecting or other pursuits cannot deny their inherent dangerousness. Any system of firearms control must take this basic fact into account.

We are deeply disturbed that all the debate over firearms legislation has centered almost exclusively on the inconvenience and the threat to perceived civil rights of legal gun owners. We have heard little, if any, acknowledgement that incalculable human suffering has resulted from the use of firearms, whether criminal, accidental or self-inflicted. Fatalities and traumatic injuries are listed as statistics with no attempt to assess the enormous loss to our society, our communities, and our families. It is time that we shift the focus of the debate from the rights of gun owners to the rights of the public to safety. In particular, domestic violence against women and children with legally owned firearms must be acknowledged.

We recognize that gun owners are expressing deeply held convictions and fears that:

The registration of all firearms and the prohibition of certain firearms as proposed by the government in Canada will impose an intolerable burden on trappers, hunters and other law-abiding citizens; the controls on firearms, ammunition, and lawful firearms owners as proposed in C-68 are an assault on our traditional liberties and freedoms which are at the heart of our history and culture.

That quote is from the B.C. Trappers' Association annual general meeting.

We appreciate the depth of feeling among gun owners that is embodied in this statement, but we cannot ignore the terrible toll that firearms, both legal and illegal, exact on our society.

We are deeply concerned, too, at the misinformation that is widely apparent in many statements made by the more vocal proponents of gun ownership. We are not asking for a total ban on all firearms, as is so often suggested. Rather, in the names of all victims of violence, many of whom remain unnamed, unknown and unacknowledged, we are pleading for support of the very people who understand the issues and who themselves are being tarred by the irresponsible use of firearms.

In this context, I would like to address the very important and contentious issue of registration. Registration of every gun legitimizes the privilege of ownership and is necessary as a measure of responsibility. Registration also provides law enforcement agencies with vital tools in assessing risk and controlling the unlawful acquisition and use of firearms.

Bill C-68 is the first step in establishing a process: comprehensive firearms control, which will be but one albeit essential facet of a systematic violence prevention strategy.

In order to begin the process, we must first define legal ownership if we are to establish a clear definition of illegal possession of firearms. The certification of each legally owned weapon gives one an inventory of weapons currently in Canada. From this, one can begin to determine the magnitude of the problem of illegal firearms.

CAVEAT supports the proposed Bill C-68, although we feel that the timeframe of five years allowed for compliance is overextended. The urgency of addressing the protection of the public must be paramount. Each preventable death is unconscionable. CAVEAT has serious reservations about accommodating any gun owner who threatens anarchy and civil disobedience, for as our principles state, failure of the system is unacceptable, unthinkable, as failure means anarchy, armed citizens, vigilantism, etc.

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We are outraged that American citizens are attempting to interfere with our politics. It is our wish that our government consider their proposed legislation without concern about the threats of retaliation from the American gun lobby. It is our belief that comprehensive stricter gun control measures play a pivotal role in combating the rising violence in our society.

A rational firearms policy that is consistent and strictly enforced will send an explicit message to all Canadians and to the world that we will not tolerate the irresponsible and criminal use and the importation of firearms under any condition. The unacceptable human suffering that is being visited on every level of our society can no longer be ignored. This must be the focus of all discussion in the debate on firearms control.

On a purely intellectual level, the evidence is overwhelming that this is a tragedy of epic proportion that affects us all. The escalating number of senseless, fatal attacks on innocent, vulnerable members of our society must be urgently addressed with the full backing of all levels of government. Thank you.

The Chair: Thank you very much, Ms Walzak.

Now I turn to Victims of Violence. I call on Robert McNamara to present the brief on behalf of that organization.

Mr. Robert McNamara (Vice-President, Victims of Violence): Thank you, Mr. Chairman. My name is Robert McNamara and I am the national vice-president of Victims of Violence. With me today is Mark Hogben, a victim representative of Victims of Violence. I would like to begin.

Victims of Violence is a national organization founded in 1984 by parents and families of murder victims. The organization is not government-funded, nor is it part of any united appeal for funds. All funds to operate the organization come from the community by way of coin collections or through the sale of T-shirts and other products. Victims of Violence provides direct support and assistance to families of murder victims, missing children and other victims of violent crime.

It is the goal of Victims of Violence to see an end to all violent crimes against innocent people. It is also the goal of the organization to provide education and to seek legislative reforms that will provide better protection of society. Affirmative community responses of support to date provides assurances that these goals are attainable.

I joined Victims of Violence in the fall of 1988, shortly after a law-abiding citizen put three bullets into the chest of my brother, Patrick McNamara. The man who killed my brother wasn't a criminal or a gang member, but an average Canadian citizen who enjoyed hunting. Patrick didn't die in a convenience store in Toronto or on the streets of Vancouver. He died in the foothills town of Canmore, Alberta, in Mr. Thompson's riding of Wild Rose.

Since my brother's murder, I've taken a keen interest in the gun control debate as I would not wish the pain and suffering my family has gone through on anyone. I feel very strongly the justice system must consider the rights of victims and must impose strict penalties for gun-related crimes. I also believe that anything we can do to prevent crime and violence must be explored.

You have heard there are 1,400 Canadians who lose their lives to guns each year, intentionally or unintentionally; another 1,000 are injured; thousands more are victimized in robberies. Many Canadians live in fear of people they know with guns. It is all too easy to brush off these statistics; to debate whether 180 murders with guns each year are enough to worry about; to dismiss suicides, even of the teenagers, as inevitable. Suicides with guns almost always succeed compared to suicides committed by other means.

Gun control is not the complete solution to violence and crime, but it is part of it. We need justice reform and we need to address the root cause of violence as well. You have heard over and over that guns don't kill, that criminals will always get guns, and that disarming citizens means that only criminals will get guns, etc. But the reality is that most Canadians are killed with legally owned guns and not in random acts of violence.

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Not only are stolen guns a problem, but occasionally law-abiding citizens succumb to pressure or lose their tempers. Common sense and considerable evidence by experts tells us that access to guns increases the chance that an argument will escalate into a murder.

You have protests from farmers and hunters who have objected to the inconvenience of having to go out of their way to register their weapons. You have heard from the gun collectors who believe it is their God-given right to own an AK-47. Hunting guides warn us that we shouldn't upset the Americans who visit Canada to kill our wildlife, or they may boycott us. The local Conservative candidate here in Ottawa and her friends from the National Firearms Association have compared the legislation to that of Hitler's Nazi Germany. When you consider the shouting gun owners complaining about the inconvenience and the irritation, I hope you will also consider the victims.

We are not opposed to gun ownership. But I know firsthand the cost of allowing guns to fall into the wrong hands at the wrong time. The proposals of the bill are moderate and represent only a minor inconvenience to the vast majority of gun owners. Surely the potential reduction in death and injury is worth it.

On the topic of registration, in Canada it is a privilege, not a right, to own a firearm. My brother Patrick did have rights. Section 7 of the charter says everyone has the right to life, liberty and the security of the person. Gun owners only have a privilege, the same as anyone who drives a car. With that privilege comes responsibility and accountability. Responsible gun owners respect the law of the land and realize how potentially lethal firearms can be.

There cannot be effective gun control without information about who owns what guns. Just as registration of cars makes for safer highways and streets in our country, registration will identify gun owners, attach each gun to its lawful owner, and track the movement of all guns. Without information on who owns the millions of guns now in private hands, it is extremely difficult for the police to trace stolen weapons used in crime and all but impossible to enforce prohibition orders.

Registration of all firearms is essential to enable Canada to control its borders, to track the criminal misuse of firearms, and to help police in dealing with crimes ranging from domestic violence to robberies. Registration will promote safer storage of guns by owners. They will know that the guns can be traced to them. Safe storage reduces impulsive use and theft. Currently, over 3,000 guns are reported stolen every year in Canada.

One of the fears the gun lobby keeps promoting on the local radio here in Ottawa is that hackers will break into the system, steal the list of who owns what and systematically start stealing guns across Canada. If this is possible, I would like to meet these hackers. I could use a little help with fixing a speeding ticket in the police computer, my income tax could use a little juggling, and my bank account can use a few extra dollars in it, thank you. So much for that argument.

In order for the system to work, there has to be full compliance. The Chicken Littles of the world have to get the message that the sky is not falling. No one is going to take away their rifles and shotguns. The only way to do that is to have strong sanctions for failure to comply. The system is already in place for those who may unintentionally fail to comply. Law-abiding Canadian citizens will want to do their best in helping promote public safety. It should remain a criminal offence not to register your firearm.

The cost of the gun control: The cost of the lack of suitable gun controls on the families of victims in the community is absolutely appalling. To hear Kim Forbes, a young mother from Sudbury, describe the body of her son Matthew, after he was killed, is absolutely sickening. This was after a young offender had pointed and pulled the trigger of a shotgun at him at close range. The shotgun and other weapons were only locked together with a dog chain in a bedroom.

Listen to Walter Filpas, a Montreal police officer, describe how he is a miracle of modern medicine. Walter had a 9mm handgun put to his temple and the trigger pulled. Luckily for him, the gun failed to do this time what it was designed to do.

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The residents of Ottawa were shocked and grieved when Nicholas Battersby was gunned down in a random drive-by shooting. The alleged killers had no problem buying ammunition despite being under age. They would have had a harder time buying cigarettes at the local corner store.

Suzanne Edwards' daughter was one of 14 young women cut down during the Montreal massacre on December 6, 1989, by a man with a legally acquired military assault weapon. The memory is still fresh in the minds of Canadians.

Leslie McNamara, my niece, failed kindergarten due to the trauma and the nightmares surrounding her father's murder.

There is the family of Patricia Allen, a local lawyer, killed by her husband with a crossbow, the bolt being as deadly as any bullet but without the requirements needed to purchase a firearm.

An 8-year-old boy was shot in the face with a 44 Magnum and died. His stepfather, who is an instructor at a gun club, was helping to brace him so he could fire the gun.

Sherri Lee Guy, 20, was shot in the stomach and shoulder with a shotgun on April 28, 1995. Sherri Lee is survived by her 3-month-old son Brandon. Her estranged common-law husband was charged with first-degree murder after he was released from hospital. He had been recuperating from a self-inflicted gunshot wound to his face.

Some people will ask, but are these really costs? You can't put dollar figures on people's pain and suffering. The following figures show the dollar cost to victims that we can put on:

1) The Ontario Psychological Association's guide to fees and billing practices for murder victims' families recommends $165 per hour.

2) Robert Brown and Son Stonecarving of Nepean, the makers of the memorial to slain police officers here on Parliament Hill, inform me that the average family will spend about $2,500 on a headstone. That includes the stone, foundation, inscription, PST, GST, and in Ontario something called a heritage tax of $100. I don't know what that is.

3) Hulse, Playfair and McGarry, a local funeral home, have prices as low as $1,650 for a direct disposition, which includes an unlined particle board casket and refrigeration for up to 48 hours. It does not include embalming. The regular traditional funeral, however, is much more.

4) There's a large variance in burial plots, but my family was lucky to get one for $1,000.

The cost to the family members of murder victims can easily run up to and surpass the $10,000 mark. The cost to gun owners to register their rifles and shotguns for a one-time price of $10 seems to victims to be a small price to pay.

On to our recommendations:

(1) Consider a preamble to the new amendments to the Criminal Code concerning mandatory minimum sentences, the preamble stressing society's denunciation of crimes involving firearms and that it is only the bare minimum from which to build a sentence.

(2) The period for registration be shortened from the present January 1, 2003, to January 1, 2001, to coincide with the firearms possession certificate.

(3) Grant full peace officer status for customs inspectors or establish a new national border patrol.

(4) Increase penalties for violation of prohibition orders. The prohibition order is issued because of concern that the individual is a risk to society. It should be an indictable offence only and carry a mandatory jail sentence. Therefore, omit paragraph stating summary conviction.

(5) Alternative measures as laid out in Bill C-41, when enacted, will not apply to Bill C-68.

(6) Clauses regarding aggravated sexual assault, kidnapping, hostage taking, robbery, extortion be changed to reflect the serious trauma inflicted upon victims by imitation firearms, from ``where a firearm is used in the commission of the offence'' to ``carries, uses or threatens to use a weapon or imitation of a weapon''.

(7) Duration of prohibition orders for young offenders be extended from a maximum of two years to a maximum of ``life''. The sentencing judge should be quite capable of making an informed decision.

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While stiff sentences for gun-related offences are essential, they are after the fact. We need to prevent as well as react to the problem. Reducing access to guns reduces impulsive acts of violence.

Despite highly publicized incidents of random violence, most Canadian murder victims are killed by family members and acquaintances, not by strangers. Most Canadian murder victims are murdered during the course of an argument or dispute, not during a crime such as robbery or sexual assault.

The gun lobby would have us believe that a gun in the home makes the home a safer place. The facts are that a gun in the home is 43 times more likely to kill a member of the household than to kill an intruder; a home with a gun is three times more likely to be the scene of a homicide and five times more likely to be the scene of a suicide; over 40% of the women killed by their husbands each year are shot.

Easy access to guns makes it more likely that an assault will become a murder. Given the relative ease and speed of a pull of the trigger, it is much easier to kill someone with a gun than other means requiring close contact.

People without guns injure. People with guns kill.

Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. Mark Hogben would just like a couple of minutes to say a few words.

Mr. Mark Hogben (Member, Victims of Violence): Thank you. My father was one of the professors who was killed at Concordia on August 24, 1992. I'm one of eleven children who lost their fathers. I'm one of the eldest; there was a 2-year-old, a 4-year-old, an 8-year-old and a 10-year-old.

I'm here not because I want to be; as a matter of fact, I don't particularly like being here at all. When gun lobbyists are on TV, I change the channel. This is not a pleasurable experience for me, because as I sit here, the images of when my father was first killed, my mother, and all the things that went through my head when it first happened come through again and again, which I thought I had forgotten about. There are no memberships to clubs for victims. There are no parties, no Friday night gatherings, saying that we're all victims of violence.

We wonder why the lobby groups don't reflect the polls, which say that Canadians want gun control. But with these lobby groups, you see all this money and all these people defending their right to hold guns. It's not fun for us to be here, let alone all the people who were killed. They can't be here.

We come here and we're proud that this law is coming forward. We're very happy but we keep it in the back of our minds.

My father was killed by a legally acquired handgun, by a man who was a professor who didn't go in circles where he could have got one illegally. As a matter of fact, he had to go to quite a lot of trouble to get one legally. If these laws were in place, I'm positive my father's death could have been prevented, or at least the deaths of the other professors.

It hurts me just as much to look at an 8-year-old and a 2-year-old who lost their father because I lost my father at 23. You can't put a price on the time I spent with him from 8 to 23.

I find it difficult, when we talk about registration fees.... Guns are far more lethal than cars but we register cars. Then again, I'm not an expert; I'm not going to go into details. I'm not the person with the knowledge. All I am is a person with a loss reflecting that loss.

I'm proud of the steps that these laws are taking and I hope they are strengthened, not weakened, because the price in blood outweighs the minimal cost of these laws being in place. Thank you.

The Chair: Thank you very much.

I would now like to call on Mr. Bertrand from Concordia University.

Mr. Charles L. Bertrand (Interim Rector and Vice-Chancellor, Concordia University): Thank you, Mr. Chairman and hon. members, for permitting me to speak to you this morning.

I am here in part as a representative of Concordia University. As you may be aware, the university circulated a petition in late 1992 and early 1993 calling for the banning of civilian ownership of handguns. Over 200,000 Canadian citizens signed the petition, which was deposited with Parliament. A number of organizations - about 200 - have sent in supporting letters, which I will deposit with the clerk this morning, in support of the university. Just yesterday I received another copy of the signed petition - so they continue to come in to the university.

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I'm also here, however, as one of the persons in the university who experienced firsthand the horror of 15 minutes on August 24, 1992. It was on that day that Valery Fabrikant murdered four of my colleagues and wounded another. Please note carefully that he did all that dreadful damage in only 15 minutes. I, at the time as vice-rector of services in charge of security, spent the afternoon in the Hall Building assisting the police command.

When Fabrikant was finally captured, the detective sergeant asked me to accompany him to the ninth floor to identify two bodies. I went up to the ninth floor and did indeed identify the body of my friend and colleague Michael Hogben. I am not a police officer and nothing in my training prepared me for such a ghastly task. I was so upset. Believe me, a brutally murdered corpse is an appalling sight, especially when it is the corpse of a friend. The detective and I then deplored the equally violent death of another friend, Matthew Douglass.

For the next three weeks I cried every time someone spoke to me about the killings. I still have not recovered from the gruesome events of that day, which changed my life and that of many others forever.

It is absolutely certain that Fabrikant could not have killed four people and wounded another without a gun. Such a murderous spree would have been impossible with any other weapon. There were a large number of people on the ninth floor that day, and they would have been able to subdue him; but you can do nothing to a person with a gun.

So the life of an entire university and the personal lives of a large number of people were permanently altered because citizens of Canada are allowed to own and carry handguns. In our country there is absolutely no reason for any civilian to own a handgun. Handguns have only one purpose: to take human life.

I applaud Minister Rock for his political courage to table a gun control bill, and I recognize that the political situation makes it difficult to place an absolute ban on the ownership of handguns. At the same time, however, it is apparent to me that all the arguments against registration that I have heard strengthen the argument for an outright ban. With an outright ban there need not be a bureaucracy to register handguns; no one needs to complain about the necessity of travelling to register the guns, etc; and more importantly, Canadian society will be much safer.

Yes, some criminals will always find guns, but with an outright ban of handguns we will reduce the supply available.

We must have registration of all guns, and then we must make it a serious criminal offence to be found with a gun that is not registered. We already register our automobiles, and they have a variety of purposes. Surely Canadians can register weapons that have only one purpose - to kill.

I certainly wish to speak out as strongly as possible against any idea of treating some provinces or territories differently in law. The law must apply equally to all Canadians. It will be meaningless and completely ineffective if it does not.

I will be close by reminding you again that over 70% of the Canadian people favour gun control. Please continue to have the political courage to fulfil the wish of the majority and the political courage to ignore the false arguments of the very vocal minority. Thank you very much.

The Chair: Thank you, Mr. Bertrand.

We will now have our usual rounds of questioning.

[Translation]

I will start with Mr. de Savoye. You have 10 minutes.

Mr. de Savoye (Portneuf): Thank you Mr. Chairman. Good morning Ms de Villiers, Mr. McNamara, Mr. Bertrand, Mr. Hogben and Ms Walzak. You talked to us about your experiences. As you are surely aware, I have heard many presentations since we have been studying this legislation. We have met with people who talked to us about their customs and their rights, and their collections, their museums, their hunting, their shooting practices. We have also met those whose mandate it is to ensure public security and to step in when there is a family crisis or commission of a crime.

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[Translation]

Today, you bring us the point of view of people who have suffered the consequences of firearms-related violence. For me, it is obvious that firearms significantly and unfortunately increase the risk of violence with firearms. However, the law is not always sufficient, it also needs to be applied.

I might have some questions on that topic to address to Ms de Villiers, but if others wish to answer as well, they can do so afterwards. Do you think that the current laws are being applied? What would be necessary for Bill C-68 to be correctly applied?

Ms de Villiers, you mentioned in your presentation - I think it is recommendation no 2 - that the health services should be in charge of taking away the firearm of a person psychologically distressed. I'd like you to explain further that recommendation. What can you tell us, Ms de Villiers.

[English]

Ms de Villiers: The first question about the courts and the enforcement is of extreme concern. It became quite obvious to us, right from the inquest into the death of Jonathon Yeo, when we saw that the justice of the peace and the crown attorney gave no thought whatsoever to putting a gun restriction on a bail order for a man who had used two weapons in an eight-hour assault on a stranger. There was no process; there was absolutely no thought whatsoever of the danger of letting this man continue to carry a gun.

In addition, there has been grave concern expressed over the last three years, since I started this, about the fact that the courts uphold the current, existing legislation extremely erratically, at random, and at will. In fact, this is one of the areas that we called an additional subcommittee to look at after our safety net conference, which we held in Hamilton, a national interdisciplinary conference. Because we didn't have any money left and we didn't have much time, it was an Ontario gathering of crown attorneys, legal advisers, chiefs of police, police on the ground, etc., people who are dealing daily with the problems of the enforcement of the legislation.

There was unanimous agreement expressed that the law was not being upheld, that there were severe problems with the training of crown attorneys to understand it, and problems for police officers in enforcing it, and that in fact there was very often a great reluctance on the part of the bench to consider that in sentencing. There is also a misunderstanding in that judges tend to roll it all over into substantive sentences instead of imposing individual sentences for carrying a weapon. We need that individual, singular sentencing to give a message that this in itself is a crime when used in the commission of a crime.

It was unanimously said that the extraordinarily complicated quality of 60 years of legislation had led to this situation, and we urged the ministers federally, provincially, and territorially to start to address this immediately. We passed on these recommendations to all of the provinces, territories, and the federal government to take to the table at their meeting on January 28, 1995.

At that same meeting, it was unanimously confirmed that we need a clear, simple, comprehensive, standard firearms bill that can, in fact, be applied without too much misunderstanding. In fact, in addition to that it was suggested that the whole act needs to be reworded. So that is the first thing.

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The second point I think I'd like to make right here is that we are tending to focus on very specific areas of the legislation, but legislation is only as good as the paper it's written on if it's not enforced. This is a multi-faceted problem that has to be addressed by every member of our society, and the fact that we are focusing all of our discussions just on legitimate gun owners is one tiny piece of society that has to work together towards this. It's absolutely essential that the courts uphold the law, and it is easily upheld.

Then we get to the psychiatric situation, which is your second question. It's of enormous concern to me that a man who the Clarke Institute determined as a ticking time bomb, highly dangerous to women, very likely to reoffend, with an 11-year history of contacts with psychiatric institutions in Hamilton and district, southern Ontario, was released with not even one word to his family doctor about his condition; and she, a young woman in a lonely country practice, was given his care...but in addition to the fact that he had committed an assault with a weapon.

This is an enormous problem certainly in Ontario under our mental health act. It's all to do with privacy and confidentiality. This was certainly present in the Concordia shootings. There was concern about the man's state of mind, as I understand it, prior to the shooting, and there is no mechanism for this.

We highly recommend that a mechanism of reporting be immediately instituted so that this can be put onto the appropriate CPIC entries in order to act as a warning signal, a flag, if there is an attempt to acquire weapons at that stage, or possibly to quarantine the weapons for awhile.

This applies to suicide within the home. We believe every gun owner should have the responsibility of asking or removing the weapons from the home if there is a disturbance, particularly where children are involved. I think the most tragic victims I deal with - if there is a grading system and I don't know if there is - are families who have had a suicide within the home, because the entire life of every single person is destroyed. It is such a personal issue.

As I mentioned here, this is not a unique situation. My husband, who is a neurosurgeon, will lose his licence if he does not report the occurrence of seizures or loss of vision to the Ontario Ministry of Transport. Very often this is a terrible thing to do because it involves somebody's livelihood. But in the interests of public safety this is law; in fact, large cases have been fought and won on this.

In addition, I would like to say that we have to make it mandatory that all medical personnel report occurrences of gunshot wounds, even if they are merely flesh wounds, so that one begins to get an idea where the problems are and possibly if there could be some intervention.

So thank you very much for that question. I would just like to reiterate that it's for every one of us in each of our spheres to do our part to contribute to the whole. I think that is one of the most critical areas we have to pursue and, I might add, one of the most difficult. I would appreciate it if the committee would look at the psychiatric component very carefully. Thank you.

Mr. McNamara: Mr. Chairman, I'd like to answer that question too. In the research around the application of section 85 of the Criminal Code of Canada working document by the Department of Justice, I'd just like to point out that in the province of Quebec, of the charges laid under section 85, approximately two-thirds are typically stayed, withdrawn or dismissed.

Talking with crowns at Priscilla's safety net conference, which Ms Meredith attended, the problem they have is imitation weapons. Unless they catch the offender red-handed with the gun on his person, he always comes back and says ``Well, it was an imitation, it was a fake, it was my son's toy gun''. We'd like to stress, particularly with robbery, kidnapping, hostage taking, that we make it no doubt, whether it's imitation, real or not, that there are going to be severe sanctions against the offender who commits these crimes. The law-abiding gun owners out there are saying stop picking on us. I think this is the part of the bill where the government can show it's going to go after the criminals, and whether they have guns or fake guns they are going to do four years minimum time.

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Mr. Ramsay (Crowfoot): I would like to thank the members of the panel for their presentation. As victims of crime, you have presented a deeply moving and troubling situation to us. Everyone on this committee and I think everyone across Canada wants to move toward a safer society. There are some serious questions as to whether or not this bill will move us in that direction.

I would just like to begin by dealing with the question of Mr. Yeo. If he had an 11-year history of violence, surely the police were aware of that.

Ms de Villiers: No, this is one of the dreadful situations that had to do with psychiatric; that's why I'm stressing it. During the inquest, Yeo's 11-year history was disclosed for the first time to anybody, including his wife. She had some inkling and had quite naturally ignored quite a lot of it. But nobody had an idea of the extent of his activities.

What he did was really a picture of violence against women, quite frankly. Each young woman who had survived took the stand. One who had seen what had happened to her mother in the courts had decided she would never ever go through that. She had never disclosed what had happened until that day, eleven years later.

Mr. Ramsay: Did the police have no idea of his history?

Ms de Villiers: The police went to charges a number of times, but he played the psychiatric system. He acted like a B-grade movie actor and possibly was in fact disturbed. They immediately took him straight to the nearest forensic psychiatric emergency unit, but because of our mental health laws he in no way qualified as in need of...they were unable to do anything with him, and he was released.

Mr. Ramsay: Did he own a firearm?

Ms de Villiers: He owned a firearm. It was a 1972 Cooey and he'd had it before FACs. That gun was before us for five months in the court. It was a rusting old weapon and looked like a piece from a stage set of Treasure Island.

He had been trained extremely carefully from the time he was 11 in the sea cadets and in the Argyle and Sutherland Highlanders in the use of weapons. His fellow mates were terrified of him - and we had five or six of them on the stand - because of his violent outbursts of uncontrollable rage, which would stop like that and then he'd be happy again. Yet he was meticulously trained for seven years in the use of weapons. I have to say that meticulous training allowed him to execute my daughter and Karen Marquis with meticulous precision.

Mr. Ramsay: The point I would like to make is that there are existing laws that would have allowed the police to obtain the authority to seize any weapon he had. Was no action along those lines taken?

Ms de Villiers: No, there wasn't. This was one of the very disturbing facets. This is why I'm so keen on a clearly understood bill. The testimony on the stand...I mean every single system of justice failed; you have to understand that. The only system that did not fail was Corrections, and Yeo hadn't got to Corrections yet. So I'm a bit cynical about it.

But the fact is that over and over again for four and a half months we heard testimony about the rights of the individual to privacy, whether it's psychiatric, his own home or search and seizure, which led to the situation where they didn't dare do it because of what would happen to them by the defence in the court. Secondly, they had no idea how many weapons he had. Thirdly, they didn't know if he owned the gun because it was pre-FACs. They knew he had used a gun but they didn't know whose.

Mr. Ramsay: Thank you very much.

Ms de Villiers: Registration would have made a difference.

Mr. Ramsay: I would like to address a question or two to Mr. Bertrand. You are of the opinion that all handguns should be banned.

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Mr. Bertrand: Yes, sir.

Mr. Ramsay: Of course you're obviously aware that if that were to happen, our World Cup handgun competitors would be non-existent.

But I'd like to ask you about the 58% of handguns that are going to be banned under Bill C-68 because they pose a danger, according to the justice minister, and yet those handguns are going to be left in society. They're going to be left in the hands of their owners. How do you feel about that?

Mr. Bertrand: I would prefer it if we could work out a system whereby they would give them up and turn them in. That would make me feel more comfortable. But at least the law as it's written will let us know where those are and who has them, and I think that's equally important.

Mr. Ramsay: Inasmuch as there are more shootings occurring with long guns than with handguns, would you also promote the idea of eliminating all long guns from society as well as handguns?

Mr. Bertrand: Not at this time. I think that at this time there are still certain people in Canada who need for their livelihood the use of long guns, as you put it, and I think it might be premature to ask for an outright ban on those.

But registration worked in once sense. When I wrote to the Sûreté du Québec and asked that Mr. Fabrikant not be given a permit to carry the gun, they reacted positively to that because I said that we in the university were concerned about him and his behavior. I had to phrase it very carefully because I'm not a psychiatrist.

The problem was that then his wife went and obtained two more handguns legally and registered them. From my point of view, an outright ban would have prevented her from doing that as well. So that's why I believe handguns should be banned.

With all due respect to our world class pistol team, we could put more money into our national basketball team and so forth and maybe win some gold medals in other sports.

Mr. Ramsay: Are you proposing perhaps an incremental prohibition of long guns in that those who may not require them for food gathering and so on would be excluded, but those who could not provide authorities with evidence or proof that they in fact needed their firearm would be prohibited from owning them?

Mr. Bertrand: No, not at this time. I would just be very pleased to have a law passed requiring all long guns to be registered.

Mr. Hogben: I'd like to answer this question because it's related to the death of my father. My father was killed by a legally acquired handgun.

I was born in Alberta and my father showed me how to shoot a .22. I can understand the use of rifles and things like that, but handguns are specifically used to kill people. I will probably legally acquire a rifle, register it, and target shoot with my son, but I think with handguns it's a different story. I think if you speak to each one of us, it will be a different story.

But if we talk about this law, yes, I'm surprised that you're skeptical about this law, because this law has tremendous benefits in this area, especially in the death of my father. There may be other angles. We could look at Mr. Yeo, or we could look at each death and say, hey, this death could have been prevented, not this death.

Obviously this law is a tremendous benefit to all of us. It may not have prevented my father's death, because he was the first person killed - maybe Mr. Fabrikant could have had a knife - but it may have prevented the death of the other three professors.

Mr. McNamara: I think what's important here, too, is that they're not taking away all the handguns. What they're looking at is taking away the Saturday night specials, the ones that are manufactured to kill other human beings; there's no place in society for that. When we start talking about our Olympic shooting teams and other Olympic teams, maybe it's up to this committee to put in provisions so that competitive shooters at that level will not lose their weapons. But we see no reason to have the little snub-nosed .22 that some young offender in Toronto might possess.

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Ms Phinney (Hamilton Mountain): Thank you all for coming. I know it's difficult, but your being here shows you realize how important it is for Canadians to hear your point of view. I think you both mentioned that the other side has had a lot of money and help to get their point of view across. I think it's important you're here so all Canadians can hear you.

I'd like to talk a little bit about something you both mentioned; it's a concern of both groups. That's the border control - what we're doing at the border and whether or not we are doing enough at the border. You both mentioned you'd like the border control strengthened. Maybe you could both comment on this.

I think you both also mentioned the possibility of having a national border control, a special border control set up separately from what's there now. Could you give us your comments on what's there now, what's happening or not happening, and what you would like to see there.

Ms de Villiers: The border first came to our attention when Jonathon Yeo left the Clarke Institute and tried to go to the United States carrying this same gun, ammunition, their release note saying that he was out on violence [Inaudible] and a suicide note.

The immigration officer on the U.S. side, an extremely impressive man, spent two hours on a busy Friday night trying to interest two police forces, Customs and Immigration Canada in at least ``separating him from his weapon''. Yeo was very disturbed. He was behaving in an extremely erratic manner. The immigration officer on the U.S. side could not believe that he should in fact have a weapon and ammunition side by side with him in his car.

Neither the police forces nor Customs and Immigration felt they had any right to take a weapon away from a Canadian citizen who had not actually left the border. Incidentally, both Customs and Immigration a year later, according to their lawyer in the inquest, did not know the same border. They had both thought there were different border lines in Canada, and a year later had still not been informed where the border actually was. I thought this might be quite interesting for you to know. As far as I know, this hasn't been remedied.

The fact is that his right as a Canadian citizen to carry a gun under all those circumstances far superseded the right of my daughter, Karen Marquis, and anybody else to walk the streets. Ninety minutes after he was turned back, Nina disappeared. In court, we could not believe it when the immigration officer said he'd ordered customs officers to hide in the customs house for their own safety. When asked about the safety of Canada, he said he couldn't answer that.

But it soon became apparent, in my subsequent connections with immigration and now revenue, that we have no border protection. The customs officers are only peace officers under the Customs Act. Unless we take out the words ``under the Customs Act'', they may not, in any way, impose the Criminal Code. They cannot even take keys away form a drunk driver. Many is the night they watch as some drunk drives off and they know that is a potential disaster. They have made this a campaign for several years.

It's very long, but I took it to the Senate Committee on Banking, Trade and Commerce, because ironically our borders are now protected by banking, trade and commerce. I've included part of my submission in the back of your brief.

What we asked there was, please, if you do not intend to give customs officers peace officer status or immigration officers the right, then establish some protection at the border. In Canada, we don't care whether it's police officers, quite frankly. Put somebody there to help enforce it, because the night Yeo was there with a gun, the immigration officer said he hid and his fellow officers hid because this was a disturbed man carrying a gun. Who can blame them? This happens daily. That's the first thing. This has been the subject of the Yeo inquest. I've included the recommendations from that.

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We also took a lot of time looking at this in the Senate committee, and I've included the six or seven recommendations there, which we fully endorse, on the need for border protection.

The last, very disturbing situation has just come to mind. I wrote to the customs union and said, please tell me, are you blocking weapons at the border? They now tell me that 450,000 pieces of mail come across the border. Only about 30% passes through their hands. By customs regulation, they are only allowed to examine parcels over 30 grams. We don't even have mules any more. They mail gun parts in parcels weighing under 30 grams, and all the Canadian side has to supply is the handle. This is a very serious problem.

What on earth is the use of a law if we do not deal with our borders? I have asked you, and I'd reiterate this. The revenue and immigration ministers and the Solicitor General have as big a role to play in the implementation of this bill, which we endorse, as any other citizen and the justice minister. I would urge you to call the ministers before this committee.

There is an interdisciplinary, inter-ministerial committee that meets regularly. I have asked for and am getting updates, but I have no idea, quite honestly, what the status is. I would beg you to make it quite plain that the enforcement of a law is absolutely critical. If those ministries do not play their part, it will make a mockery of all we are trying to do and you can bet your boots that more victims will die.

We are renting guns by the hour in Toronto. You don't even have to buy one. The guns they are renting are these do-it-yourself guns that come across the border. I would say please, from CAVEAT's point of view, this border situation is still of extreme concern.

Mr. McNamara: One of the things I'd like to point out is that I was talking with a customs agent. I said, what do you do if somebody comes to the border, you see a gun in the back, and you think this person might be dangerous? He said he couldn't do anything about it or he would get reprimanded. I asked if he was serious.

If you look in the back of the brief I presented, I've copied an internal memo from Revenue Canada, Customs and Excise. The subject was officers taking unnecessary risks. I'll be quite brief and read it into the record:

It has recently been brought to my attention that customs officers in the performance of their duties have knowingly and willingly put themselves at risk. One such incident took place

- and it's blacked out here -

and involved the pursuit and physical detention of a traveller known to be violent and usually armed. Although the results of the officer's actions were positive, such action is extremely dangerous and poses a serious health and safety risk. In addition, it is contrary to departmental policy, which prohibits the use of physical force to prevent a person who has not been detained or arrested from leaving the customs area. Therefore, I would ask you to ensure that all inspectors are aware of our policy and understand the seriousness and consequences of such actions.

They stopped a bad guy and got in trouble. We need peace officers at our borders who are actually tied in to CPIC, too. I've been informed that our customs officers don't even have the privilege of using the police information computer.

Ms de Villiers: Could I just correct that, because what horrified me two years ago was that in fact the Americans had been accessing CPIC for ten years by that time. Our customs officers were not allowed to, and I thought this was just outrageous. However, I believe there are two ports now that have CPIC. I would encourage you to ask the minister exactly what the status is there, too.

In closing, I also have to say the Senate committee has undertaken to call the Minister of Revenue back this month sometime to account for what he's done to deal with this problem in the last year. I would urge you to do the same. Thank you.

Ms Phinney: I think the other question you both made comment on - and I was a little surprised - was the non-compliance of registration. I think you both said you would like the criminal offence to be left there for first-time non-compliance. Would you each like to make a short comment about that.

Mr. McNamara: I think the system is already in place for non-compliance. If somebody accidentally doesn't register their weapon - I've heard the stories about the grandmother who forgot she had the .22 in the attic. Mr. Ramsay used to be an RCMP officer, I understand. I don't think Mr. Ramsay would be bashing in doors and arresting grandmothers over an old .22. I think it's preposterous to even start thinking something like that.

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If it accidentally happens and they're charged, they go to court and the story is told. When I grew up and you did something wrong, you told it to the judge. The judge listened, and if you made an honest mistake, the case was dismissed and you went home.

But those who are willfully going to do this are the people who are going to be hiding their guns. The people I'm extremely concerned about are the people who are going to be stockpiling weapons, which is happening in the States with assault weapons because they're planning to ban some of the assault weapons in the States. I think there has to be strong sanctions to prevent people from stockpiling here and from willfully not registering.

Ms de Villiers: I totally agree. There are enough provisions now in our Criminal Code to deal with non-compliance, at the discretion of the courts or the police. I've included a legal opinion at the back, referenced by a professor of law in Saskatchewan who is satisfied that the criminal justice system itself already addresses this problem.

On the question of stockpiling, I think this is a natural segue into that because this is one way where you could plead that it was inadvertent. I have grave concerns about the fact that we have not defined a collector. That leaves huge loopholes. There was one under Bill C-17. I don't think it captures the full essence.

As an example, I've included the discussion paper on what a collection is by the federal government, the Canadian Cultural Property Export Review Board. It draws a difference between collections and assemblages, which would be stockpiling. I do think that should be addressed.

The other thing is that I would like to make a plea for an amnesty situation. Carole Walzak has an anecdote in here about an inadvertent discovery of a weapon. As a law-abiding citizen, you don't want it, but you don't know how to get rid of it. We've addressed that as well.

[Translation]

Mr. de Savoye: Mr. Bertrand, you recalled earlier, with some emotion, the events which took place at Concordia University. Could you tell us how, in your opinion, bill C-68 could have stopped this horrendous situation and, if it could not, what is lacking for this legislation to become more effective and impede such events to take place again? I'd like to have your opinion on this.

Mr. Bertrand: Please allow me to answer in English. It's easier for me.

Mr. de Savoye: Please do.

[English]

The Vice-Chair (Mrs. Barnes): There is a vote, and I'm trying to find out how long the bell is. I anticipate we'll be sitting through this and certain members will leave. I would like to have sufficient numbers stay here so we can continue the meeting, but I will clarify. I don't mean to interrupt and I won't take it off your time. Go ahead.

Mr. Bertrand: As the bill stands, as Mark Hogben said, I'm not sure there's any reason to believe it necessarily would have prevented Fabrikant from doing what he did. Of course, that is why I am advocating a ban on all civilian ownership of handguns, because that would have made it almost impossible for Mr. Fabrikant to have found handguns to commit such a deed. I'm not sure the law as it stands would prevent that.

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On the other hand, it would probably have helped us a great deal if we could have had something in the law like Ms de Villiers was talking about, where we could have strengthened the possibility of the Sûreté or the police force in charge to refuse requests for weapons from people for whom institutions such as universities have expressed a concern.

Unfortunately, what I learned out of that situation is that if someone determined to do something like this is not worrying about consequences to himself or herself, it is probably impossible for us to draft a law to would stop it from happening.

Mr. de Savoye: Would a medical reporting system have been of any help?

Mr. Bertrand: Yes, absolutely. I fully support having some sort of system like Ms de Villiers was talking about. We did make some representations, but we were caught in the situation where, until he really did something, there was very little the police or others could do.

[Translation]

Mr. de Savoye: Thank you, Mr. Bertrand.

Mrs. de Villiers, a bit earlier, you briefly talked about collections. In your brief, I think it's recommendation number 10, you said that a collection is not a motley assemblage of accumulated guns, that it has to fulfil a number of criteria. Could you give us more details on your vision of that?

[English]

Ms de Villiers: I'm looking at this, and it's an odd leap. I was an artist in my previous life, so I've actually applied it to what an art collection is. In fact, it's not that great a leap, because as an artist I quite understand and in fact have seen reference to the fact of the artistic merit of a gun collection. Since guns were first made and developed back in China, silversmiths and so on have made them into works of art. There are great collections of guns that are considered works of art. That is how I got to this.

I think there has to be a clearly understood number of criteria that must be fulfilled if a group of guns is to be considered a collection. It is touched upon in Bill C-17's definition, which is that there must be some rationale for collecting it. Either it's a type of manufacture or a period of guns. Either there's a history or some sort of aesthetic value that can in fact rationalize why this person is collecting these guns. I suggest that a motley collection of accumulated guns would be an assemblage and should be considered as such.

I think we're going to have to look to one clear definition that would capture this idea of a rationale behind having a large number of guns. We have just had a case in Toronto of 300 guns found in a house. It was suggested that was a collection. It wasn't.

The Vice-Chair (Mrs. Barnes): Thank you. I did give you extra time to allow for the explanations and the interruption. I want to clarify that there is a vote, and we will sit through the vote as long as there is a quorum here so we can hear the maximum amount of testimony.

Ms Torsney, you have five minutes.

Ms Torsney (Burlington): First, let me say to all three groups who are here that I really appreciated your briefs. It's certainly been an interesting challenge over the last couple of weeks, as we've heard from everybody kicking our bill and saying that we have no right to do this.

We've heard certain motions for delaying the hearings, suspending the hearings, we've had requests to delay the implementation of this bill, and we've had attorneys general wanting exemptions from this bill for their provinces. I appreciate your comments and the recommendations all of you have made in your reports.

Mr. McNamara, you've addressed some of the comments we've heard over the last couple of weeks. To CAVEAT, your recommendations numbered 3, 9, and 10 were particularly interesting. All of them were of interest, but I want to draw attention to the one about parole officers. We'll certainly look into that.

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It's also interesting to note that when I was in a meeting in Kamloops there was certainly discussion about the collectors. There were about 450 gun owners, and only about seven, at the most, had actually had their collections or any of their storage checked. It would seem that it was in fact the collectors who at least had their guns checked. But again, at least one of them was put out that his Uzi had been changed in designation and he wasn't able to keep it, which prompted 150 people who wished they could have Uzis to put up their hands. For what, I'm not sure.

Earlier, we heard from the emergency physicians who said they were no longer willing to be part of an experiment in our nation, and we had to move quickly towards this.

I wonder what you say to the attorneys general across the country. Three or four have said we can't proceed as it is now and they want exemptions, they want delays. What do you say to them? What should we be saying to them?

Mr. McNamara: I think the attorneys general of the provinces should be listening to the people of their provinces. There are polls after polls after polls, even in Mr. Thompson's riding in Alberta, where my brother was murdered. The citizens of Alberta are calling for tougher gun control legislation. I don't know what the problem is. I always thought that if the majority of Canadians decided upon an issue, that's the way it went.

It now seems to me there is a small vocal minority of gun lobbyists and enthusiasts who are trying to take over this country. I'm very afraid this country could be, for example, like the United States, where the National Rifle Association starts dictating what's going on in their country.

Canadians voted you members in. All Canadians got to vote. I think you should be listening to the majority of Canadians and doing what the majority of Canadians want.

Ms de Villiers: I'd like to answer. There are two attorneys general you are speaking about. One is a minister from Saskatchewan, and I debated him on Morningside on CBC about four or five months ago. I listened to all his statements. There was one that quite frankly was really the last straw for me, in that there was such complete lack of understanding of human loss, of the harm it has done. As a representative of his people and somebody who's there to uphold justice...this really finished me. That was an anecdote that I've since had to repeat about ten times, about his Uncle Hughie or whoever, who's owned a gun for sixty years, and can you imagine what an inconvenience it is to him to have to go and fill out forms.

All I could say to him was, ``Let me tell you about inconvenience. The death of your child at the hands of a man wielding a gun is an inconvenience, and do you know how many forms I've had to fill out?''

Mr. McNamara: Ditto.

Ms de Villiers: The tragic thing is that he's repeated that story ten times since then.

Mr. Evans of Alberta at one point said he'd lost his guns, he didn't know where they were, his wife had told him where they were, and he certainly wasn't going to ``go through the rigmarole'' of registering them. Once again, in the face of what we have to face - children being killed by children, the dreadful killings by children of other children and families in Alberta - this just made the whole thing so distasteful. And to allow someone who purports to be representing the people of a province as big as many countries to suggest that there should be different rules for those provinces, quite honestly, appalls me.

Ms Torsney: Ms de Villiers, we had the justice minister from Manitoba come here. She's also the minister responsible for the status of women. She claimed that the election on April 25, 1995, was a decisive vote against gun control, that consultation had taken place with the voters at their doors and that was all that was necessary. She hadn't in fact met with any victims groups, any groups like CAVEAT, or any women's groups in her province on this specific issue. However, she managed to suggest that our minister had failed in his consultation with over 100 groups across the country, and certainly with a lot of members of Parliament.

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What do you say to Madame Beaudry?

Ms de Villiers: What do you think I'd say to Madame Beaudry? The fact is that we have worldwide testimony, certainly from the western world, of a growing and escalating problem of violence, much of it with weapons in this era. We have the problem of the East Bloc dumping their weapons on the market. We have a glut of weapons being dumped on us from the south. We have one woman dying every six days. Shall I name five of them in a month? I can.

To show such complete disdain, such complete lack of interest, in more than 50% of the problem speaks volumes about exactly why we cannot make exceptions in provinces. That is exactly the reason it has to be a federal standard system - no ifs, ands, buts or maybes. Thank you.

Mr. Hogben: I'd also like to answer your question.

I consider them morally and politically weak. It's far too easy when you're with a bunch of people and everyone is saying do it, go on and jump, or go on and smoke or drink. It's far too easy to say, wow, I hear all these voice telling me to drink, so I'm going to drink. It's much more difficult to say that there's a quiet voice in the back of my head saying, no, this is wrong.

We're the quiet voice. We don't have loud voices. We don't have big budgets. Before the MPs walk in here, we're not going to be at everybody's door saying, enforce our rights, we're victims. It's not going to happen. As I said, just all of us being here is a tremendous step, and it's not easy.

I consider them weak. I consider them weak politicians. There are different types of politicians. There are ones who seek to promote the interests of the people they represent, and there are the politicians who listen to the people who say, hey, go on and do this. I consider them weak.

The Chair: Mr. Bertrand, do you want to add something?

Mr. Bertrand: One short statement, if I might, Mr. Chairman.

You asked how to answer that. To me, the very simple answer is this. This is the federal Parliament and it must pass laws that treat all Canadians equally, period.

Ms Meredith (Surrey - White Rock - South Langley): I'd like to thank you all for coming out this morning.

In looking at your briefs, one thing I am pleased to see is your recognition that firearms and replicas must be treated the same. Your concern is my concern. Unless the courts have a very clear message that it doesn't matter whether or not it can fire a projectile x number of meters per second, the trauma is the same.... This legislation concerns me because they haven't recognized that. I fear that cases will still be dropped or plea-bargained down because there isn't an understanding that they have to be treated the same. I'd like to compliment you on identifying that.

The question I'd like to ask you is, do you feel the sentences that should be applied through this legislation are going to be serious or strong enough to make any difference? I want to separate them. You have the ten most serious crimes, where it's a four-year minimum sentence. Then you have the less serious crimes, where a summary conviction is also allowed. A summary conviction can be a fine or one day. Do you feel this bill deals strongly enough with the criminal use of firearms in our society?

Mr. McNamara: No, but I think that's just part of the legislation. Of course everybody wants stricter penalties for the criminals. Criminals will have to start paying for their actions. A bank clerk with an imitation or real weapon pointed at her doesn't know. The trauma is just the same.

I do believe that stiffer penalties or sanctions could be a deterrent. Also, the problem with that is that it's after the fact in a lot of these cases. For example, my brother was murdered and the person was charged with manslaughter. I figure he should have had a longer sentence, but the reality of it is that I would rather have my brother alive.

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What this bill does is help on the prevention side of the argument. I'd rather have my brother than tougher sentences for the criminals.

Ms de Villiers: On the replica situation, this is extremely important. I've spent more time than I ever thought I would with police officers in the last few years, and one officer, who's an extremely experienced man, was white and sweating when he said to me, ``I nearly killed a child tonight.'' He had been parked at a stoplight and a young 16-year-old was driving a car. All he saw was a gun being brandished at him.

Ironically, he had the head of the police services board as his passenger. It was his night to drive around and see what happens. He just said, ``Hit the floor,'' and a hefty, large man was dragged down on the floor. He then thought, is this real or not? He had to go with his gut instinct that in fact it was replica. It was pointed straight at him, and he didn't draw his gun and he didn't fire.

That has stuck in my mind ever since. There is nothing good or bad, but thinking makes it so. That is exactly it. If it purports to be a firearm, for all intents and purposes it is a firearm, and that has to be understood.

Concerning sentencing, quite frankly we are having so little success in having the current sentencing provisions enforced that I think this is an academic question. What we want in the system is that the sentencing, whether it's four years or whatever, is actually being applied - applied uniformly, applied up front and applied separately. That is the message we have to give, and we are having a great deal of difficulty persuading our courts to do this.

The second part of this is that a paper was written by the Canadian Bar Association, I think, recently on application of sentences. It was noted that the minimums are always given. The suggestion was that we should move the maximum down to the minimum. My point is that we should raise the minimum. But if we start off with four, let's try to have that. I don't really have a quarrel with that if in fact it's applied, and I think that's the underlying concern.

Ms Meredith: But this is not a consecutive sentence. This is an event, a crime with a minimum. But there isn't an additional penalty for using a gun.

Ms de Villiers: No.

Mr. McNamara: But we don't believe in concurrent sentences, to start off with, and -

Ms Meredith: But this is what this bill does, and that's my concern. Here was an opportunity for the government to do something serious about the criminal use of firearms, and I'm concerned that they missed the boat.

Ms de Villiers: I missed that, sorry. I definitely would have asked for consecutive sentencing, certainly.

Mr. Wappel (Scarborough West): Ladies and gentlemen, welcome. I have five minutes.

Of course, no one can be unmoved by the testimony you bring. Every time CAVEAT, Victims of Violence, etc., come before the committee and we hear the tragic personal cases, it is impossible not to be moved. So I don't want you to misunderstand the nature of my questions, which will be direct and short but should not be interpreted as lacking in compassion or feeling.

Mr. Bertrand, the weapon used to kill the professors was a registered handgun, correct?

Mr. Bertrand: Yes, sir.

Mr. Wappel: Registration, therefore, did not prevent that tragedy?

Mr. Bertrand: That's correct.

Mr. Wappel: Therefore, you call for a complete ban of all handguns in Canada?

Mr. Bertrand: That's correct as well.

Mr. Wappel: We will soon have a registration system for long guns in Canada. We know that the registration for long guns in Canada will not prevent all murders using long guns. Will you then call for a complete ban on all long guns in Canada?

Mr. Bertrand: Actually, Mr. Ramsay asked me that question earlier.

Mr. Wappel: Well, the way I asked it is the way I would like you to answer it.

Mr. Bertrand: It would have been much more difficult for Mr. Fabrikant to try to bring long guns into the university without people noticing them. At the moment, I would not -

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Mr. Wappel: Mr. Lépine did, did he not?

Mr. Bertrand: Mr. Lépine did, yes. I think we're more aware all the time about these things in public institutions such as universities. We were aware of Fabrikant to a certain extent, but you're not allowed to stop and search someone, as you know.

For the moment I think just moving to registering long guns is an important step and will help make Canada a safer place, and that of course is the bottom line as far as I'm concerned.

Mr. Wappel: You've used qualifiers such as ``for the moment'' and ``for the time being''. My question is very specific. After registration of all long guns, as soon as there is a tragedy, as inevitably there will be, will you call for the complete ban of long guns in Canada?

Mr. Bertrand: I can't answer that because it's a hypothetical question. I would have to be in the circumstance to know how I would react. Right now I would say no.

Mr. McNamara: Mr. Wappel, may I answer that on behalf of Victims of Violence?

Victims of Violence supports our law-abiding citizens who hunt for sustenance. If this committee would ever think of banning shotguns and hunting weapons, Victims of Violence would band with the gun lobby to prevent that. It's part of our heritage; it's part of our culture. Long weapons in many cases are necessary.

Mr. Wappel: Can I turn to CAVEAT?

Of course these four cases speak for themselves, but I'm not quite sure - and perhaps I'm missing the point - why they are contained in your brief. I gather they're examples used in favour of the need for registration.

Ms de Villiers: Yes. Certainly the Lovie case was a textbook case of where a comprehensive registration system would definitely have saved two lives. The fact is the police searched twice to see if in fact he had an FAC, and because the name and number were misfiled by a clerk, they did not notice it, so he went and bought a gun and used that gun to kill.

Mr. Wappel: But he did have an FAC and there was a screw-up in the system.

Ms de Villiers: Precisely.

Mr. Wappel: So that could also occur when we register all long guns.

Ms de Villiers: It could occur, but hopefully we're not going to be having manual searching by a voluntary clerk down at the police station. Hopefully we're going to have a slightly better system with CPIC.

Mr. Hogben: I work in computers - I'm a programmer - and I can understand these mistakes happening. The great thing about this new registration package is that once we start having global registration, mistakes like this are going to disappear as bugs in the system because we'll be tackling a much bigger fish. So, yes, it can happen in this new system, but it will be far less likely.

Mr. Wappel: How would registration have prevented Gavin Mandin from killing his family?

Ms de Villiers: I can't go into that. That's a question of a young offender. I am not in Alberta. Colette is a member of CAVEAT. I don't know how much I can disclose of the situation within the family.

The fact is he was a young offender who killed four members of his family with his own gun, and that's about all I can say.

Mr. Wappel: In the case of Mr. Simmonds, involving a .22-calibre pistol equipped with a silencer, was it a registered weapon or an illegally acquired weapon?

Ms de Villiers: That is a handgun.

Mr. Wappel: Was it registered or was it illegal?

Ms de Villiers: It was obviously illegal, as he was a drug dealer. That was drug currency. This is why we're supporting the handgun provisions.

Mr. Wappel: Yes, but the registration system would not have prevented that terrible loss because it was an illegal weapon.

Ms de Villiers: He managed to obtain an illegal weapon, yes.

Mr. Wappel: Thank you.

Ms de Villiers: Could I just say one thing, Mr. Wappel?

My rationale for this, again, is not that we are trying to tie down every single gun. That is absolutely not the question.

The problem is it's beginning a process. We've never tackled the process in its entirety, and in order to start a process, you have to define what is legal. That's all I feel about that side of it.

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Once you've done that - and this is where we go back to Schlender with his handgun - you can then start tackling exactly what is happening without inconveniencing legal gun owners. Where is it? It's at the border that the illegal guns are coming in. But we have to start the process.

I'm not in any way suggesting this is a panacea for all ills. It will save some lives, but overall it's part of this process.

Mr. Wappel: Thank you.

The Chair: Before I go to Mr. Langlois, I think I should bring a clarification to the question asked by Mr. Wappel.

Mr. Bertrand, if I recall correctly, Fabrikant got the handgun he used to do his killings on the pretext that he did join a shooting club.

Mr. Bertrand: Yes, sir.

The Chair: On the other hand, it was found later that he never attended the shooting club or participated in competitions.

The reason the government has now put in paragraph 110(e), which allows the government to regulate shooting clubs, is to have them report whether those who joined the shooting club to practise competitive shooting do in fact shoot. We understand that the very proficient shooting clubs check on their members, and if they're not going there to do competitive shooting, then they report them to the authorities and the registration is cancelled. But that wasn't in the law.

In the case of Fabrikant, I think he got the registration and the handgun, hadn't done any competitive shooting and then used the handgun for this crime.

With this new law, they would require reporting. The handgun clubs or the shooting clubs would have to report to the authorities if they had members who were on pretext competitive shooters and who weren't really. They would then lose their permits and their registration for those guns.

Am I not correct that he did get that handgun on the pretext of being in a shooting club and he never really practised?

Mr. Bertrand: Yes, sir, and in fact when I wrote to the Sûreté it was to prevent him from carrying it. He said his reason was to carry it to his gun club, but he had never gone there. That's correct.

The Chair: We've had some witnesses who've attacked the suggestion that we should put in place regulations for the handgun clubs.

That's the very reason we want to have regulations for the handgun clubs. To be fair to them, the better ones now are doing it anyway. But the one Fabrikant belonged to didn't do it, and therefore there was no move to have his permit and registration cancelled, even though he never competed.

Mr. Bertrand: Absolutely not. I fully support that part of the law.

[Translation]

Mr. Langlois (Bellechasse): Yesterday we had the Canadian Criminal Justice Association before us and although they support Bill C-68, they had very serious concerns about the minimum sentence provisions. I would like to know your views on this. Are you in favour of minimum sentences for crimes committed with a firearm or would you rather say that this should be a factor considered by the judge in sentencing but without any obligation to hand down a minimum sentence.

[English]

Mr. McNamara: With the preamble to these minimum mandatories, I believe it's something we can build on. If we just throw out the four years as the minimum, that's what it's going to be. Everybody for manslaughter, bang, it's going to be four years.

As to the numbers, you can have four; you can have eight; you can have six. There are numbers thrown around everywhere.

The concern, as I said earlier, is that this bill in particular go towards prevention of deaths. From a victim's point of view, with the suffering we and our families have gone through, the number one priority is prevention. Issues and sentencing can be addressed in other forums.

To get right down to it here, let's talk about the number one crime: murder in the first degree. If you want to start getting tough, abolish section 745 of the Criminal Code for people who kill somebody with a handgun.

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That's just one area. It's part of it, but we like the prevention aspect more.

The Chair: Mrs. de Villiers, same question.

Ms de Villiers: I'm not sure if you were in the room, but I did discuss this to a certain extent when Ms Meredith asked the question.

The concern is that we need to have an identifiable crime, which is carrying a weapon or a handgun in the commission of a crime. I think that is the identifiable crime. We need to realize this is not something that is just rolled up in a substantive offence, which is what the courts are doing, if in fact it's being applied at all. They'll say three years.

If you actually tackle them, they'll say one for the gun and two for the crime. But in fact this is not giving the message that the carrying of this handgun is in fact the crime within itself. It should not be plea bargained; it carries its own penalties.

This is where the number really is of no account as far as I'm concerned. What is important is that it is a separate and distinct idea and that it gives a separate and distinct message. That is our stance.

[Translation]

Mr. Langlois: For those of you who have been parents or relatives of victims, have you generally felt pushed aside in the legal process? Have the Crown Attorneys been cooperative, have they shown sympathy and understanding towards you? Do you have any positive or negative comments to make with the way the criminal justice system deals with parents or relatives of victims?

[English]

Mr. McNamara: That's why I'm now with Victims of Violence. The only people who actually were of any assistance to me were the police officers. They were the ones who saw my brother's body. They saw the pain and anguish our family was going through. They were the people who gave most of the support.

They directed me to Sharon and Gary Rosenfeldt, whose son was killed by Clifford Olson, and to Victims of Violence. We are an organization of victims helping victims. If it weren't for them, I think the pain and suffering would have been much larger.

Ms de Villiers: In our case, I had to come face to face particularly with the reality of violence against women, which we've been hearing about so often that it's become part of folklore.

The police were extraordinarily supportive in every way. It took about three weeks before everything was sorted out. My daughter's body was only identified after about eleven days. They were extraordinarily supportive.

The minute that ended, the doors clanged shut and nobody whatsoever within any system of justice spoke to us at all. We had to read comments about our child's death in the newspaper. In fact the journalists phoned us and said: ``Do you know what the Attorney General has just said?'', and we'd go and get a newspaper.

The fact that there were three unexplained deaths and an attempted abduction and not a single soul would even comment on this was beyond belief. We were only told that Jonathon Yeo was actually the killer a year later, when the DNA tests were completed. Those DNA tests and that inquest would never been held if it hadn't been for the citizens of this country joining us in a petition.

What I discovered in the inquest was eight young women on the stand, each one of them saying why she had no success in bringing Jonathon Yeo to the attention of the justice authorities. There were eight of them, with different scenarios in each case: the courts, the police, a psychiatrist or whatever.

So I would suggest the criminal justice system was completely hostile to victims when we started this. You were made to feel like a pariah within your own country. There was no information; there was no assistance. This is changing rapidly, but not rapidly enough.

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In large part this is what we in CAVEAT do for victims. People contact us from across the country and ask what they can do and who they can speak to because they need help. Then we get on the phones and phone whoever we know to get assistance for people across the country.

So in a line, to this day victims are still completely outside the system. There are cracks. There is goodwill showing in certain areas, but I would say it's not nearly being addressed yet.

Mr. Gallaway (Sarnia - Lambton): Welcome, ladies and gentlemen.

These hearings have been marked by what I refer to as maxims. People come in and say ``If you do the crime, you serve the time.'' We've heard ``About 0.4% of gun owners are the problem; why bother the rest of us?'' We've also heard from a number of experts on both sides of the fence, and some experts who may or may not be experts but are, I would suggest, perhaps on occasion posing as experts.

One of the astounding statistics contained in a brief brought to this committee dealt with the right to self-defence. There is ostensibly a study that suggests there are tens of thousands of Canadians every year who have to get out their firearm, their gun or their weapon to fend off other people. I'm not talking about those who live in remote parts of this country who have to deal with nature; I'm talking about other Canadians.

I find it somewhat suspect. I don't know of anyone who's been in these circumstances, but assuming there are 23,000 or 32,000 or whatever that number is, what do you say to that?

Ms de Villiers: We have made a very strong statement about that.

I come from South Africa. There was extremely strict registration and classification of guns and immediate confiscation and a lifetime ban if you did not store your weapon properly or if it was stolen from you, unless you could really explain the circumstances. Guns were in the home. I can tell you that while they were very strictly controlled, I think there were fewer incidents It's hard for me to say; we didn't have very correct answers.

I can tell you one thing: the escalation of violence is apparent if there are guns in the home. By 1975 there was a turning point and violence had escalated to such an extent that people going in to steal made no attempt at secrecy. They would throw something through the plate glass windows and come in. In fact it was usually shoot first and steal later.

So when you're dealing with the question of self-defence, we are unequivocally against it.

It's been suggested in one of the reports I read that women arm themselves against rape. This is quite the most dreadful thing I've heard. The rapes that are being dealt with or that will be dealt with soon - the Scarborough rapes Mr. Bernardo is accused of and all those rapes - took place with the woman being taken from behind.

If you are carrying a weapon and it's known that you're carrying a weapon, the police advice in South Africa was unless you're prepared to shoot first, shoot immediately, have the skill and ask questions later, the likelihood is that you will be killed with your own weapon and that you'll be killed immediately.

Force begets force. More force creates greater force. I would suggest if there's one thing we need and that CAVEAT stands for totally, it's a system of justice that has enough credibility that citizens who are not trained, who are not able and who might act inappropriately are not arming themselves. We've seen this in so many tragic cases in the States.

We need to depend on our system to protect us. It's prevention at every level. I would take the strongest stand against the suggestion that we should arm ourselves for self-defence. In fact, if we have to, it will be an indication that justice in Canada is over, quite frankly.

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Mr. McNamara: Speaking of that survey, I was on a talk show and somebody from the Responsible Firearms Owners - they're all responsible and they're all law-abiding, so I get confused sometimes - brought out some ridiculous figure on self-defence. I sat there and thought about it. That would mean everybody's out in their backyard looking for prowlers with guns.

I believe it was written by somebody named Mauser from a university on the west coast. So I asked a friend of mine about it and it turns out he's not a gun expert. He's a marketing expert, and he's done projects for the National Rifle Association. I guess he's marketing that guns are good. With all this misinformation out there, his being a prime example, I think he's doing a good job and the National Rifle Association should give him a bonus.

The Chair: Excuse me. Mr. Mauser was before this committee just a night or so ago and we all had a chance to listen to him and cross-examine him. I don't think we should comment further on his testimony.

Mr. Thompson (Wild Rose): I thank all of you for coming today. It's good to see you again.

I appreciate the opportunity to work with your groups, as I have in the past in Hamilton. I hope that will continue, because our goals and objectives are certainly the same. How we get there is going to be a tough battle, but we have to get there. We all will certainly agree on that.

I admire you all for your testimonies this morning. I realize it's difficult. A few years back I had an eighteen-year-old nephew who put a 12-gauge in his mouth and blew the top of his head off. I know a little bit about what you feel like.

This legislation renewed all those things in my mind. As I try to mill through this, I apply it to those days, trying to find something in here that might have made a difference. I've been unable to do so.

I won't comment any further on that, except to say there was absolutely no reason for it to happen that we could identify whatsoever, but it happened. So I do have some inkling of what it feels like.

I also want to comment about my riding. Robert's from there. I'm having a difficult time tying my riding's feelings into the national polls. I did a householder, and I think if you come over and look at the questions, you will see they're not biased at all. I received 2,446 responses; 78% were against this legislation, 22% in favour.

I also have over 4,000 letters now, which are open for examination in my riding office because some people questioned whether it was true. I say please, come and examine the mail. Of the over 4,000 people who wrote, less than 10% support the bill. Over 90% are against this bill.

I also have tabled several petitions against this bill on behalf of constituents. No one has come forward asking me to table support for this bill.

So when we talk about the polls, I'm really having a difficult time trying to tie these in with the national figures I'm hearing.

Would you like to comment on that?

Mr. McNamara: Yes, I would like to.

My brother was killed in Canmore and my brother had a lot of friends in Canmore. Some own guns; some don't own guns. When the ones who don't own guns think about gun control legislation, they think ``It doesn't concern me. I don't own a gun, so I'm not going to have to register it. I don't want to ever own a gun.'' They won't write you a letter.

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There's a lot of Canadians like that. The ones who will, particularly in Alberta, are the groups that are organized. When you go to a gun club on a Thursday night, there are fifty gun club members who sit around and say ``What are we going to do about it?'' They get organized. They've done a fine job. They've written every member of Parliament many letters.

The people who don't go to gun clubs are just watching the hockey game, wondering how their team is doing. They have no concern about it. You might be getting an unfair set of numbers by just who has written in.

Mr. Hogben: You said the polls you get don't reflect favour for this bill and you say the letters you get don't favour this bill.

I haven't sent any letters, and I would not have come here if I hadn't been asked. To tell you the truth, when these people called me - I have one of those IDs on my phone - I didn't answer the first time. I didn't answer the second time. In the end I had this compulsion, out of duty to my father, to answer. I answered and they asked if I could come to Ottawa. I said I'd call them back. Then I thought about it and said yes.

So you aren't going to hear from people like me. I was dragged here. I wouldn't send a letter. You're not going to hear from all those gravestones either. They're not going to write you letters. People don't poll gravestones.

I'm a little frustrated that we don't have such a loud voice. I've said that earlier today and I seem to be repeating myself. I hope that can give you a different perspective on victims as opposed gun owners.

Mr. Thompson: Most people who know me will recognize that I have always said the first and most important thing is victims. I have always said that; I will continue to believe that.

Ms de Villiers: The reason CAVEAT came into being was exactly what we're talking about. When my daughter died, of course there was national coverage because we didn't know where she'd gone. It was summer and we'd already had two other girls disappearing. We got huge media.

The reason CAVEAT came into being at all was we got boxes and boxes of letters, literally - and I can show you - from people saying ``I'm dreadfully sorry about what's happened to your child, but I'm so frightened. I don't know what to do. How can I do something about it?''

This is the bulk of our calls. This is the bulk of faxes, letters and personal approaches on the streets and in supermarkets.

The trouble is that gun control is such a specific area. If you asked me to appear before a committee now and talk about my feelings on the test flights over the north, although I grew up in an aviation family, I would never dare to go and make myself heard because I don't understand the issues.

This is why you have this huge, silent majority. This is why we find ourselves having to try to give people a way to speak so that it's not intimidating. There is a great reluctance to speak on this sort of thing.

This is not a level playing field. I'm out in the community and across the country all the time. In the phone-ins as well, the overwhelming response is we have to do something about the violence - this from gun owners as well. The problem is it's the process and the actual law that is totally intimidating. That's why I feel we can't actually look at polls terribly carefully.

Mr. Thompson: I realize the border problems. I spent some time at a couple of the border crossings and literally saw cars and trucks blow the line without being checked. You wonder what in the world is going on. We really have to do something about that. They talk about the Saturday night specials. There are thousands and thousands of them coming in, I've been told.

The cost of registration is $85 million. Over five years, with $85 million, you could hire about 850 people dedicated to fighting those very aspects of the problem: illegal guns, border patrols, stockpiling and all of this stuff. You could hire 850 people with that kind of money. Our priority is protection.

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If you were in a position to spend $85 million, would you hire people to take that on, or would you stick with registration?

Mr. McNamara: Mr. Thompson, I'd like to address that.

As far as I know, that $85 million is cost-recoverable from the people who actually own the guns, so you have gun owners paying for their own system. I don't want to help pay for their system. It will be the gun owners.

Eighty-five million dollars is a lot of money. I'd like to see police helicopters in Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver. That would be a Christmas present to me. But making the gun owners pay for the registration of their own weapons isn't a burden on the taxpayers of Canada.

Mr. Hogben: It's just like car registration. If you don't own a car, you don't pay car registration. Once you do get a car, you could run someone over; therefore there are certain things you have to learn. I'd like to see the same authority enforced with guns, such as great classes to learn and great storage laws. I'd like to see all this in place, as we do it for cars.

Mrs. Barnes (London West): I thank you, panel, for coming today and sharing with us your thoughts. They are very valuable to us. This committee has a difficult job, and it's not one taken lightly by anybody around this table from any party.

A lot of people are looking to us to come up with the absolute best way or the thing that will fix something once and for all. It's more realistic to look at this bill as part of an overall movement in crime prevention and community safety, and as another tool in a broad range of tools that will be used, such as health vehicles and criminal justice vehicles.

If we do that, we have better expectations of outcome. This is not an instant gratification bill; this is not an instant proof. In fact, very few things are instant in this world and it will take time, not only to implement, but to evaluate. The most important thing is that we head in the right direction.

One of the things that helps us go in the right direction is dealing with facts. What has surprised me throughout this hearing and the year leading up to these hearings is the number of misperceptions that are widely and honestly held by members of a cross-section of the community, from somebody who's never seen a gun to a person in a gun club who uses guns all the time and safely stores and safely handles their guns.

People are very concerned about random violence. Yet we know for a fact that murder victims in Canada usually are killed by family members and acquaintances. They're not random violences. They are not killed by strangers. You're sitting here and your loved ones were killed by strangers, but that's not the norm.

The norm is what was uncovered by the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police. It's in your CAVEAT brief. I'm going to highlight that and I'm going to ask one question at the end. I really want to bring these facts out because I think they're part of the misconceptions people have. You've highlighted them and encapsulated them in one paragraph, so I'm going to read it.

This is from May 3, 1995, from the preliminary results of a Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police study of 9,000 firearms recovered in ten communities across Canada. It's the largest research study of its kind ever conducted, and it revealed that almost half - 47% - of the recovered firearms used in crimes are rifles and shotguns, not handguns. The vast majority of these at one time were legally owned.

I get letters every day, I can tell you, that say legally owned firearms are not the problem. Well, the vast majority of the ones recovered were legally owned at one time.

Approximately 21% of the firearms that were recovered in crime were restricted weapons, handguns and military weapons, and almost 40% of these had been at one time legally owned and were registered.

Again, bringing it to family violence, specifically with women as the victims, 40% of women killed by their husbands are shot, and in 78% of the cases the guns, again, are legally owned. If somebody could tell us the magic moment in time when that legal owner becomes a criminal, I think we'd all be very happy. Unfortunately I don't think we can ever get at that, certainly not with a piece of legislation.

The final point is that the other 60% of the restricted weapons could not be traced, and the indications are that many of them were smuggled. I think we've dealt with that.

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I want to point out that this shoots all types of holes, if I can use that analogy, in what people think and honestly held beliefs about handguns and long arms in Canada.

My question is going to revolve around this request on more than one occasion and this feeling that somehow this committee should back down, that we should have a decriminalization method for that innocent first-time offender. Let's get rid of the argument of the innocent and forgetful, because in my mind criminal law has always included mens rea thoughts before you can be convicted. I think we have absolute mechanisms for dealing with those situations.

I'm concerned about the person who might conceive, if we decriminalize this, especially on a first offence, that it's somehow less serious, that it doesn't mean them, that they are above this law, that this shouldn't be in a Criminal Code book because they don't like the idea of being fingerprinted or being categorized, that somehow this would be a lesser crime if it's the will of Parliament to put through this.

What do you say to these people? Help us see what we're going to say?

Ms de Villiers: I think the important thing here is your suggestion that we've all had random shootings in high profile. The tragedy is that we have to use our loved ones' deaths in order to speak for all the people who have died in the home. That's the point. We're the faces of all those people who for privacy reasons, for the sake of a family, etc., cannot come forward publicly and talk about domestic violence and domestic abuses in their families. With children it is cloaked in secrecy anyway. This is the awful fact.

I worry about this point every day. Behind us are all these nameless, unacknowledged people I've talked about earlier. That's the first thing.

Second, it is very seldom somebody is killed in the home without there having been prior warning. That is why I've talked about the necessity for the police to be given the opportunity to seize, for a quarantine period, weapons in cases of domestic abuse...or if in fact the gun owner should be responsible.

Mrs. Fabrikant's responsibility was not to get a gun because she would be held responsible because her husband was acting in a possibly psychiatrically disturbed manner. That's the first thing.

So when you actually use your weapon, there is no way this can be declared anything but an extraordinarily violent act. And as you say, usually, even if it's in an act of passion, there's been a long road up to this. It's very seldom that somebody is killed within a domestic setting, particularly, in an isolated fashion.

I believe it should be one charge, that there should be no watering down of the crime. We cannot decide that because it happened in the home, or it's domestic violence, that in fact there was no predication of this. I feel that particularly in the case of violence against women this has to be very strictly upheld.

We have three cases on the books now, identical - 30 stab wounds, 32 and 31. One person got off on self-defence, one person got eight years and one got four, yet they stabbed their wives 32 times. In one case the person tried to decapitate the wife, and then pleaded that this was an aberrant moment. We cannot allow that.

Mr. McNamara: I would like to answer that too, about the decriminalizing. I think what we have to do here - and you mentioned it as a problem too - is the misinformation that's out there.

I'm not an expert on weapons at all. All I can do is give you an opinion. I've sat through a lot of these hearings and I've heard a lot of different opinions. For example, I heard a country, up-the-valley general practitioner shoot down The New England Journal of Medicine, and even I know that's a prestigious magazine. So all he's doing is offering you opinions.

One of the things I've done since the beginning of this is to look for the experts in the field. The experts in the field...if you want to talk about sanctions and the criminal, you go to the top dog, and that's the chief and the chiefs of police.

Vince Westwick, who was before you with the Canadian chiefs of police, said, no, there's absolutely no reason to decriminalize this; the courts can handle situations where, as we said earlier, Granny forgot to bring down the family .22 to get it registered.

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So I look at the experts, and the chiefs of police being the experts, I agree with them. Let's not decriminalize it.

[Translation]

Mr. Langlois: For a number of years, two decades almost, we have seen an increase if not an emergence, of a new type of crime, senseless crimes. Mrs. Barnes was mentioning random shootings, where the finality of the crime is just to destroy without any other gratification, if you allow me to use that term.

I would put vandalism in that type of crime. One can park one's car, to go and see a hockey game and come back and find that the windshield is smashed.

Of course, it's much more serious when human life is at stake. Where I was brought up, I was told that human life was priceless and should be protected at all cost.

It's been quite a shock when I heard that people who work at minimum wage to pay for their studies, were getting killed because there was $50 in the cash register. We learned through the police investigation that somebody had decided that night to ``do a corner store'' or ``do a gas station'', just for the kick of it. All that to get $50. This forces you to shed some illusions.

Have you had the occasion to analyze the motivation of people who commit that type of senseless crime, whatever its exact nature?

I will give you one last example that happened in Quebec, not too long ago. In Notre-Dame-des-Laurentides, some young people suddenly decided to kill somebody, just anybody. They first decided to call a taxi. The driver got to the wrong address and they could not get him. They then found another victim, a man who delivered pizza, and they killed him. These young people had only one thing in mind ``kill someone, whoever that would be''.

From your experience, from the studies you have made and the people you have met, what would you say is at the root of this delinquent and senseless behaviour?

[English]

Mr. McNamara: I think that's the magic pill. If anybody could just write down one simple statement, this is what causes gratuitous violence, a lot of the evils in this world would be banished. But when I think of gratuitous violence that just happened around here, like the taxi murder in Quebec, I think of Nicholas Battersby, a young engineer from Britain. All he was doing was walking down Elgin Street, and three punks drove by and shot him, for no reason whatsoever. The rifle was stolen.

The part that sticks out in my mind - and it's in my brief - is that these young offenders just went and bought bullets. They didn't need ID, they didn't need to show that they actually owned a rifle; they just went in and for, I believe, $2 and something bought a bunch of bullets, and Nicholas Battersby was killed.

I believe in part of the legislation...I'm not saying Nicholas Battersby might not have died, because it's very hard to say something in the past may not have happened. I don't even want to think about my own brother's murder, saying that if this had been in place maybe he would be alive. It has happened, it's in the past. Let's just change it so that it doesn't happen in the future, and maybe if age restrictions are put on ammunition, some of this gratuitous violence such as the death of Nicholas Battersby may not happen. We won't hear about that, and that's the part of about Bill C-68.... You're not going to have members of panel next time on any topic who will say ``I wasn't killed''. Life will go on for everybody. The prevention part of it is hard to see, and I think that's the difficulty with Bill C-68.

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Ms de Villiers: You've hit on another area where another section of society has to start doing their job to enforce this bill, and I think that is the glorification and the heroism associated with violence in all our entertainment. The dreadful part is that anyone who carries a gun is shown as being superior. A judge said this to a young offender recently: ``Without a gun you're a little boy. With a gun you're a strong man''.

The problem is that there has become an overwhelming need for people to start experiencing their feelings. They're actually addressing it in Nintendo and Sega with virtual reality. We'll soon be able to actually feel the sensations of killing. I think this is extraordinarily important. But the fact is that when this legislation comes in we have to make it more difficult to access those weapons, because overwhelmingly the research shows that it is far easier to experience what it feels like to kill with a gun than it is to go in close and have hand-to-hand contact with a knife, for example, particularly for youth.

We've had a number of these thrill killings recently in our area as well. When they experience this urge, it is in fact made so much simpler by the ready access of weapons and ammunition. And then you're at arm's length from the actual deed, and that's a whole other study that's been done.

[Translation]

The Chair: Your time is up.

[English]

The chair has a few questions.

We've had groups appear before this committee who have said that registration doesn't work, that we've had registration of handguns since 1934 and we still have crimes with handguns, and therefore it doesn't work. But if we look at the statistics, we find that in Canada 53% of the crimes committed with guns are with long guns, ordinary rifles and shotguns, whereas only 17% of the crimes committed with guns are with handguns. If we compare that with the United States where there is virtually no control on handguns, in the United States two-thirds of the crimes committed with guns are with handguns.

So in Canada the great percentage of crimes committed with guns are with long guns, which have not been strictly controlled. We have only 17% of crimes committed with handguns, whereas in the United States it's exactly the opposite; and it's not very far away.

In Europe, where they have strict control, including registration, on handguns and on long guns, they have very low rates of crimes committed with guns. But they still have some crimes.

The thing is this. Sure, there's still 17% of our crimes committed with handguns. In other words, it isn't eliminated entirely; there are still crimes with handguns. But does that mean it doesn't work? I think the question has to be asked that if we didn't have that strict control since 1934 on handguns, which also includes permits to carry and permits to transport, it may not be 17%, it may be 35% or 50%.

We have strong controls now and laws against drinking and driving. We have breathalyzer tests. If you don't take the breathalyzer, it's a serious offence. If you are caught drinking and driving, you can lose your licence. But we still have people who go down the road as drunk as a skunk and break the law. Could you argue then with these people who come before us and say therefore the law doesn't work, the breathalyzer doesn't work, the strict penalty doesn't work, because we still have people who drink and drive?

I'd like your response to that, because it seems to me that if we didn't have those laws, we'd have much higher rates of drinking and driving and much higher rates of injury and death by drunken drivers. If we didn't have the strict controls with respect to handguns in Canada, yes, we would still have crimes with handguns, but it would be one hell of a lot worse.

You're out there in the field and you've reported some pretty horrible incidents this morning. How would you respond to these people who come to us time after time and say it doesn't work because we still have crimes with handguns?

Maybe Mr. McNamara could respond.

Mr. McNamara: When I look at this bill, I think this bill isn't going to solve all of Canada's problems. All this bill is is part of what needs to be done to address crime in Canada. It's one small part, but it's an important part.

To look at registration of handguns and say that it hasn't stopped all of the crime in Canada...well, let's look at the other example of what happens when you don't register guns, and you just have to look south of the border. The statistics on victims of violence that I look at, where people give me something like 84%...I don't look at that. I look at the body count. I look at the dead people. I look at the mothers and fathers, the brothers and sisters out there who are killed, who are buried, and who are cold in the grave.

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If you look at the numbers in the United States and you look at the numbers in Canada and put the ratio to population, Canada is a lot better off. As a Canadian, as a father with a one-year-old daughter, I want my daughter to grow up in Canada in a safe environment where she doesn't have to be afraid that the young person in the mall is carrying a handgun and where she doesn't have to worry about a lot of the social problems in this country. I think Bill C-68 is a good step in that direction.

The Chair: Mr. Bertrand.

Mr. Bertrand: Thank you. In a way, it's part of the question Mr. Gallaway asked earlier.

In my opinion, two guns more than double the chance for violence. So if it's 17%, we can make it even lower with Bill C-68 and by improving our system. Certainly, there's no question in my mind that it would be much higher if we didn't have registration. As Robert just said, look at the United States.

It reminds me a little bit of the controversy we had when in Quebec we insisted that seatbelts be mandatory. Everybody was saying ``I'm a free person, and why do I have to do this?'' Well, the proof's in the pudding. We have far fewer injuries in automobile accidents because of the compulsory use of seatbelts, and now everybody's pretty much used to it. They'll get used to registration. It won't become a big issue once the law's passed and people are forced - because I do think we have to keep the criminalization in - to obey the law.

Mr. Ramsay: I point out that in your statistics, depending on how many long guns there are in Canada, whether we accept the 6 million or the 20 million figure, the proportion of handguns to long guns must be put into the equation.

Mr. McNamara: Well, that's part of the problem. We don't know how many long guns there are.

Mr. Ramsay: Well, the problem is...and I've heard that our chairman rightfully put forward these figures. We must also realize that there are 1.2 million handguns or restricted weapons registered under the handgun registration system. But if we take into consideration that there are anywhere from 5 million to 20 million - and as you say, we don't know, it might exceed that - then we see that perhaps the reason why there are so many more incidents using long guns is that they're more accessible. So we get back to the accessibility factor.

Now, a statement was made by Mr. Neil Jessop, who is with the Canadian Police Association - and I flagged the statement - that this bill is empty without assurance against smuggling. So, yes, we can ban all the handguns and we can ban all the long guns, too, except for special cases where people require them for acceptable reasons. But if we do not deal with the smuggling situation, then we're still going to be in trouble, because the individual who has the intent to murder, who is full of hate or anger or fear, will be able to access firearms. There's just no question about that, unless we're able to deal with the smuggling problem.

I'd like to get on to another point and ask you a question. We have had witnesses come before this committee unable to make the linkage between the safe society that we're all seeking and this bill. We've had the attorneys general of Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta, who are opposed to the bill because they cannot see the linkage. We've had the justice ministers from the Northwest Territories and Yukon also opposed to the bill because they do not see the linkage in that this bill will bring us closer to the safer society that the proponents claim it will.

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I would ask whether you have had an opportunity to consult with any of the premiers, provincial attorneys general or justice ministers of the territories about this bill and bring forward your concerns to them?

Ms de Villiers: No, I've had none afforded to me whatsoever.

Mr. McNamara: The case with victims again, as we were saying earlier with Priscilla, is that a lot of times attorneys general of provinces don't have the time of day for victims. That's why we're here.

Mr. Ramsay: Have you asked to see them?

Mr. McNamara: Not those two in particular, because to me, this was a national bill and this had to deal with the federal laws in our country. I live in Ottawa, so I thought I would go to Minister Rock. He was more than gracious and gave us ample time to present our views to him. I didn't go province to province, because first of all, I can't afford to and I wouldn't have the time. But I think with a national law you go to the person who is in charge of it, and that was the Minister of Justice.

I would like to address the issue of Neal Jessop and smuggling. I think that comes back down to registration again. If we don't know what's in our own country, how can we tell what's coming in and what's coming out when it comes to long arms? We have to find out first what we have, and the next step, I believe, might be the smuggling. But let's find out what we have in our country first of all.

Ms de Villiers: I misled you, sorry. We haven't personally spoken to them, but as I alluded to earlier, we had communicated this to every single attorney general, solicitor general, and premier of all the provinces, the territories and the federal government and asked them to put it on their agenda to speak about the section of resolutions which pertain to the administration of laws to do with firearms under the current legislation that's in place. We've had a number of letters in return, but I haven't personally spoken to them.

One was extremely encouraging, which we will be pursuing, and that was from British Columbia, where in fact our concerns about the lack of understanding and training within the courts and crowns and so on was going to be put on to the annual conference agenda. I've had a number like that.

That was in relation to the problems we found under the administration of the old bill. I haven't addressed this bill yet.

Mr. Ramsay: Thank you. I point out for Mr. McNamara's interest that it is the provinces that are responsible for the administration of this bill. They are responsible for the administration of the Criminal Code, so it will be their responsibility to administer it. When they were here, they indicated that no one had convinced them of the linkage between the enactment of this bill and the safer society that we want. That's the point I was making.

Mr. McNamara: The point I was making is that we are in the House of Commons in the Parliament of Canada, which represents all Canadians, and we're talking to a broad spectrum of politicians from all across Canada. We're not just talking with Alberta and Saskatchewan. As we said earlier, the majority of the citizens of those provinces want this bill passed, and as a national bill, I think this is the forum in which it should be addressed. It passes here. Did you ask them if they would actually enforce it?

The Chair: Yes, we did ask those questions.

Mr. Gallaway: Mrs. de Villiers, you raised the issue of the border, as did Mr. Ramsay. I live on the border also. I'm able to see quite clearly the United States from my home. I live in southern Ontario, and it's the third busiest border crossing in Canada. There are people in my part of the world who maintain that this bill is meaningless because if I really want a gun I can go to the States and get one.

I look across the river at a city of 100,000 people in Michigan. I read in the daily paper of Port Huron, Michigan, that last year there were nine children brandishing guns in their schools. There were actually a couple killed, a couple wounded, in grade 6, with their dad's or perhaps mother's revolver in their backpack because they had a spat in the school yard. So I put that against that type of background.

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What other measures would you suggest at the border? I've visited with the customs people on several occasions at Sarnia, and they have a room chock-full of weapons that they dispose of on an intermittent basis.

But what other suggestions can you make in terms of greater vigilance at the border? I'm not talking about shipments but about the person who has a gun shoved under the seat of his car or wherever one hides a gun. What are you aware of that can be done?

Ms de Villiers: The first thing I'd like to say is that it's not just in the States that you have guns in the schools. Recently they were even talking about putting metal detectors in schools in Toronto, and there are police in the schools. So this is a Canadian problem, please, right now, and that's why we feel so urgent about the whole thing.

The border is very interesting. I've been told many times during my foray into the border situation that we have to be very careful of our tourist industry. In fact, I believe some of the mayors of the towns along the border work actively against any sort of greater restriction on people coming into Canada because it will give people a disgust of crossing the border. In fact, that is documented, and I can probably find the references.

I think this is the point: when you try to get into the United States, which in fact is the most violent western country in the world, you have no idea what you face. They have guns as long as this and very fierce examinations, etc., and there is a clear certainty of enforcement of a penalty should you break the law.

In fact, there was a problem when we were still on our landed immigrant visas, and I was quite petrified of the woman who said that our visas weren't correct. It was a clerical error, and we were sent back forthwith and, quite honestly, we thought we'd be banned for life from going anywhere. We were sort of stateless people for a day.

So there is a very strict enforcement on that side. The irony is that we have this very long undefended border, and we're a relatively peaceful society and we say come in, come in. This is extremely well documented. That's the first thing.

I think we have to have clear penalties, a clear idea of what will happen to you if in fact you're caught carrying a weapon, and that must be applied. This is where the administration comes in, quite correctly, and on which I ran up against Kim Campbell and Howard Hampton in the Yeo inquest. I asked Mr. Hampton why Yeo was allowed to do what he did, and he said, ``Don't ask me; I just administer the laws''. I phoned Kim Campbell and was told, ``Don't ask me; I just make them''. So this is an extremely serious situation.

This is the point: if we have clear restrictions and if we do have allowance for far more vigilant random searches, and if something is found it is definitely dealt with, I think we can give a message that it's not worth it to somebody who is just going to run the gamut. I know any number of people who go back and forth all the time and know the percentage of chance of being caught is minimum and that if they are caught it will result in a warning. I think that's where the bill could come in, and the enforcement of the law. More than that, I don't know.

I think we have to have more vigilance, I think we have to have more officers, and we have to have more quick access. I believe the Americans can access their central technology within seven seconds. The plate number is run, and they get it back. If someone has any outstanding warrants, etc., that's who they target.

I personally have known very few people who've said that this is now going that way. The objective, first of all, is enforcement. I haven't thought of any other ingenious ways, but I will.

[Translation]

The Chair: Mr. Langlois, do you have other questions?

Mr. Langlois: I would like to come back on a subject I raised during the first round of questions when I asked you if you had had cooperation with the criminal system, with the Crown attorneys in particular. You have paid quite a compliment to our police forces when you mentioned that it was mostly the police who had been the first to help you and who had given you the information and the support that you needed and that after, it was often through the papers that you had learned what was happening with the judicial proceedings.

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Would you say the lack of communication between the judicial system and yourself is due to a lack of resources in the administration of justice or to a lack of sensitivity from the people who make it work? In other words, is it because of a lack of personnel that we do not contact the victims or people close to them or is it because the people are not aware of the problem?

[English]

Ms de Villiers: Quite frankly, it's because the victim has absolutely no place in the justice system. This was told to me quite brutally the day after my daughter died, that the minute the police investigation of which you are part is over, you then are expected to bow out and go home and hide in a corner. In fact, I've had that fact made brutally plain to me particularly by the Defence Bar of Canada, which bitterly resents any suggestion that a victim should (a) have any input, (b) have any representation, or (c) even be told when a change of venue is taking place. That is national.

For some years - I don't know how many - the victim has been systematically excluded from having any role in the system. We are told that the Crown represents the state interests and may not represent the victims per se, yet you have nobody to even describe the process. Many people do not understand the language. They don't understand what in fact the charge is.

Now, we have stood up and made very vociferous representations on this issue right across Canada. There are little pockets certainly in southern Ontario where victims are now being considered in some courts. In those cases there is beginning to be a lack of resources. They have only three victims' assistance programs in Ontario, for example. So people come to us.

However, there is still an enormous lack of empathy, a lack of concern, and almost a hostile attitude toward the victim in the process. I think the old notion of the victim being excluded from the process, and the offender, has gone so far that we find ourselves shut out, and I would say unequivocally that happens right across Canada.

Mr. Bertrand: In the days immediately following Fabrikant's murdering of what at the time we thought were two and what later turned out to be four, the police were as helpful as they could be.

You asked about le manque de ressources, and indeed that was one of their problems. They didn't have the people to come back to the university, because here we're talking about personal victims and then victims because they happened to be in the situation at the time. The real difficulty was that none of us knew enough about the system, and no one on the police side seemed to have the time to sit down and explain things.

What we ended up doing at the university was setting up, if you will, our own help group, with outside help brought in, to try to help everyone understand what their responsibilities, roles, and so forth were.

So in answer to your question, I think it's really in a sense a combination of both. They don't have the people to do it, and it's no fault of theirs, in a sense. They assume you know these things, but of course we were completely unprepared for what happens after. So I think that making them more aware would be an important aspect of it as well.

The Chair: Mrs. de Villiers, while we recognize the awful experience that victims and victims groups have had with the criminal justice system, I want to assure you that in this committee we've made it a virtual rule that on every bill we call as witnesses the victims groups, as we have this morning. We did it for the Young Offenders Act, killer card games, and Bill C-41. So I assure you that in this committee - and this has unanimous support - we will hear from victims groups on every criminal justice item that comes before us.

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Mrs. Barnes: My second intervention today is not so much to question you as to respond to something on page 114 of the CAVEAT brief. You bring up the very good point of amnesties. In this paragraph you're talking about the timeframe for conformity with the law if Bill C-68 is enacted. You very rightly say that some people may decide they no longer want or need a firearm and that they must be reassured that amnesty provisions will be in place so that they would not be charged for something as they turn in their weapon, if that's their choice.

I just wanted to reassure you that on page 97 of Bill C-68 we do have in proposed subsection 117.14(1) a provision that ``the Governor in Council may, by order, declare for any purpose'', and it goes on and on. Basically, the provision is allowing for the set-up of amnesty periods. Very specifically, on the next page it mentions that any person during an amnesty period would not be guilty of any offence under this part. This is in part III of the Criminal Code. It's very similar to the current Criminal Code provisions.

I just want to thank you for bringing that point out, because I think it's a concern to people and one that might sink in after the fact. Other people have mentioned amnesty periods, actually encouraging exchanges. We had some mention of it in the testimony last night. I did want to clarify that and see if you wanted to add any further comments on amnesty provisions.

Ms de Villiers: The amnesty is very important, but the more important thing is education. Carole had a little anecdote in here about when she was speaking and how a woman said she had one but didn't know how to get rid of it. I try to really stress the importance of an enormous education process in plain language that has to accompany the legal process for people to know and to have access to this in non-legal language. It's all very well to read section whatever, but we must be able to have access to that information.

A large amount of the alarm, I have found, about this proposed legislation, as about other legislation, is just not hearing about it and reading snippets in the press that have been selected out of context and might give a totally false idea. So I'd like to emphasize the education component.

Mr. McNamara: I just agree with the education part of this bill, and getting the message out to gun owners that nobody's taking their guns and that guns kill. There are victims. We have buried people. I think that's one of the messages we'd like to get across to you before we leave here.

As the member from the Bloc was stressing, there are victim issues. They are important. But what's very important now for victims across Canada is this bill, because this bill will prevent deaths. We don't need any more people in our organization. Frankly, we wish we didn't exist. This will help prevent situations like this, and we fully support it.

Frankly, I haven't heard too much from the Bloc Québécois, but I really hope you support this bill.

The Chair: So far they have. You may not hear about them, but they have.

Mr. McNamara: We get mixed messages, and I just wanted to get across that people die because of this.

Mr. Thompson: The first principle of our group has always been and will remain that the victims' rights must outweigh those of the criminal. I want to make sure everybody understands that we want to build that into everything we do - victims first. That's so important.

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When we look at legislation, we want to make sure it is a good piece of work and that it's not something that's going to fail us. We try to pick out the areas, based on what people tell us, that we should be concerned about.

Ms de Villiers, even though Mr. McNamara referred to this in his paper I'm going to ask you about it, because I've talked to him before. I have consulted now with about four different legal minds, because I wanted to make absolutely certain I was correct. There is no doubt in all these legal minds that under the Orders in Council as set out in this legislation sometime in the future a small group or an individual would have complete power and authority to confiscate all guns. It's here. I'd be pleased to walk through it with you. I can't do it in five minutes. I tried it last night, and it didn't work.

What I wanted to say to you is that in my riding and outside of it I have met with various groups of people from Holland, Czechoslovakia, and the Ukraine, to name a few, who have picked up on this. They also were victims at one time and indicated that this very thing existed, and they are frightened that such a thing is in this bill. Now, it's easy to say they aren't going to take your guns, but the fact remains that it could happen.

Have you looked at that area, and could you respond?

Ms de Villiers: Yes, I have thought about that. One of the reasons we chose to come to Canada - and we had a number of choices - was because I thought this was a truly democratic country in the dictionary sense of the word. I have to say that the very fact I am here today proves that fact. I've only been in this country for 15 years. Although I consider myself a Canadian, the reason I'm sitting here telling fourth- and fifth-generation Canadians my opinion is because this is a democratic country.

In CAVEAT what we say is that every one of you has a voice, and we're trying to give every member of Canada a voice, basically, and have them use it.

You said you were going to put victims' rights first. I would just like to say one thing, because this is apropos, and that is that you're a member of the public today and you're a victim within the next second. You're still a member of the public. So what I'd like to say here is that victims are not an isolated little group corralled into a corner to sob brokenly. We are part of the general community. When I speak for victims, it is according to the coroner's motto, which is to let the voice of the dead speak for the living. So what we are trying to do is use our children or whatever to speak for the living.

Unless there's a total military coup, which can happen in any country at any time, in which case guns could be seized, I suppose, summarily, under the current system I truly believe it would be extraordinarily difficult to get to the point where you could actually walk in and confiscate all the weapons in this country without a majority vote in the Houses of Parliament. There would have to be a total overthrow.

You're hearing from many groups, including us, ad nauseum on this gun control bill. That alone shows that all our input is being put out into the media as we're speaking. This is going across the country.

I do believe that is a really alarmist philosophy. Having come from a country with some of those concerns, I think it is always there. There is always the possibility, but I think that is so under any regime. Quite frankly, under the current system of democracy in this country, I truly believe that is not even a vague probability within the foreseeable future.

That's all I can say.

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Mr. Bertrand: It just happens that by profession I'm a European historian. The context of Czechoslovakia, Hungary, or any of those countries is, as Ms de Villiers just said, so incredibly different that to think for a minute that sort of thing could happen in Canada.... We're having enough trouble getting our Parliament to agree on registering long guns. If somebody tried to confiscate them, think of the uproar in this country. It's inconceivable to me. I certainly wouldn't put it in the context of any former Iron Curtain countries or anything like that. The context is just too different.

The Chair: The time has expired for this meeting.

I want to sincerely thank the witnesses. I know how difficult it is for some of you to keep revisiting these horrible and sad experiences you've had as relatives and parents of victims. That's all the more reason that we thank you for coming and speaking for the silent or those who can't speak.

Once again, I want to assure you that as far as this committee is concerned, victims will always have a place at the table on any bill. We know you have a hard time because you don't have great resources and huge piles of money to enable you to travel, research documents, and so on. You have to do this by the skin of your teeth, or whatever, so we appreciate it. No doubt you'll be visiting us again on another bill.

The meeting is adjourned until this afternoon, when we will hear from some women's groups on the same issue.