CONTROL OF AMMUNITION AND COMMUNITY-BASED CRIME PREVENTION INITIATIVES
CONTENTS
Tuesday 7 June 1994
Control of ammunition and community-based crime prevention initiatives
Peter Hogg
Premier's Council
Dr Tom Brzustowski, deputy minister
Barbara Morrison, coordinator
Coalition for Gun Control
Wendy Cukier, executive director
Calvin Barry
STANDING COMMITTEE ON ADMINISTRATION OF JUSTICE
*Chair / Président: Marchese, Rosario (Fort York ND)
*Vice-Chair / Vice-Président: Harrington, Margaret H. (Niagara Falls ND)
Akande, Zanana L. (St Andrew-St Patrick ND)
Bisson, Gilles (Cochrane South/-Sud ND)
Chiarelli, Robert (Ottawa West/-Ouest L)
*Curling, Alvin (Scarborough North/-Nord L)
*Haeck, Christel (St Catharines-Brock ND)
*Harnick, Charles (Willowdale PC)
*Malkowski, Gary (York East/-Est ND)
*Murphy, Tim (St George-St David L)
*Tilson, David (Dufferin-Peel PC)
*Winninger, David (London South/-Sud ND)
*In attendance / présents
Substitutions present/ Membres remplaçants présents:
Callahan, Robert V. (Brampton South/-Sud L) for Mr Chiarelli
Frankford, Robert (Scarborough East/-Est ND) for Ms Akande
Jamison, Norm (Norfolk ND) for Ms Harrington
Clerk / Greffière: Bryce, Donna
Staff / Personnel: McNaught, Andrew, research officer, Legislative Research Service
The committee met at 1543 in room 228.
CONTROL OF AMMUNITION AND COMMUNITY-BASED CRIME PREVENTION INITIATIVES
Consideration of a matter designated pursuant to standing order 108 relating to control of ammunition and community-based crime prevention initiatives.
PETER HOGG
The Chair (Mr Rosario Marchese): I welcome Professor Peter W. Hogg to this committee. Mr Hogg, you have half an hour for your presentation. Try to leave time for the members to ask questions, so if you could limit your remarks to 15 minutes, that would be helpful.
Dr Peter Hogg: Thank you, Mr Chair. I'll be happy to do that.
My name is Peter Hogg. I'm a professor of law at the Osgoode Hall Law School of York University. My specialty is constitutional law, and I've written a textbook on constitutional law. Donna Bryce, your clerk, has shown me the speaking notes for Katherine Swinton's presentation to the committee and completely agree with her views as expressed in those notes.
I directed my attention to the question of whether the Act to control the Purchase and Sale of Ammunition would be a valid provincial enactment, and I have no serious doubt that it would be. It seems to me that the province does have the power to control the sale and purchase of a dangerous product like ammunition. The power to do that comes from the province's power over property and civil rights in the province, which authorizes the province to regulate the sale and purchase of commodities, including dangerous commodities, in the province.
A restriction on the sale of cigarettes to minors is an example of a valid provincial law. Restrictions on the sale of liquor are valid provincial laws. Restrictions on the sale of drugs are valid provincial laws, even though the federal Parliament, in the Narcotic Control Act, also has a presence in the dangerous drugs field.
It is not an objection to a provincial law that one of its objectives is to prevent crime. There have been a number of cases -- some of them are mentioned in Professor Swinton's notes -- in which the courts have said that the fact that the province has the motive of preventing crime does not make a law that is otherwise within provincial jurisdiction into a criminal law. So I don't think it's objectionable to the law that the motive is to prevent criminal activity, but it's not just criminal activity; accidental activity, other dangerous activity with firearms.
Secondly, it's not an objection to the validity of a provincial law that it contains a criminal penalty for its breach. Most provincial laws, as you know, do that, and the Constitution, in section 92(15), specifically provides for that, so the fact that there is a penalty for the violation of the ammunition statute wouldn't make it into a criminal law.
I think the only concern about a statute that looked somewhat like Bill 151 would be the argument that it's really a disguised attempt at gun control, and of course gun control has been traditionally regarded as a federal domain, but I wouldn't acknowledge that gun control is necessarily exclusively a federal jurisdiction. It seems to me that there may well be room for overlapping federal and provincial laws in that field anyway.
Again, if you think of the question of tobacco as an analogy, the province prohibits the sale of tobacco to minors; the federal Parliament is now prohibiting the advertising of tobacco products. Admittedly, the federal legislation is now under challenge, but it's been upheld in the Quebec Court of Appeal. There's nothing intrinsically odd or strange about both levels of government playing some role in the control of dangerous products.
Why don't I stop there, and I will be delighted to respond to questions.
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Mr David Tilson (Dufferin-Peel): I suppose the subject of constitutional law is a difficult one and certainly one that we should be considering. Is there an issue of NAFTA, or free trade, of ammunition coming from across the border? I'm ignoring cigarettes and alcohol, but as I understand it, a substantial amount of ammunition can be brought over, and I forget the quantity -- was this said in the hearings before? -- from the United States legally, and I guess the issue is, can the province regulate that and is that a contradiction of NAFTA? It may not be a constitutional question; it may be. I don't know whether you have any thoughts on that issue.
Dr Hogg: I think it's partly a constitutional question, because I think an attempt by the province to prohibit the importation of ammunition, which of course Bill 151 doesn't try and do, would be unconstitutional, not because of NAFTA but because that would fall within the federal Parliament's trade and commerce power.
There have been some successful laws, though, which have successfully skated around that prohibition. For example, if ammunition was imported from the United States and then sold in Ontario, there's no doubt that this bill would apply and it would be valid and I don't think there would be any violation of NAFTA, because what NAFTA requires simply is national treatment. It requires that you treat all ammunition the same way, and the province would be doing that. It wouldn't be giving any favours to local ammunition over ammunition from the United States or Mexico. So I don't think NAFTA would be a problem.
The main problem would be to control people from purchasing ammunition in New York or Michigan and driving it across the border. At the moment, that bill doesn't deal with that until the importer actually tries to sell it. But if the importer uses it for his or her own purposes, it won't be caught by the bill, and it's not very easy to design a provincial law that will catch that.
Mr Tilson: You feel that it's constitutional for the province to enact legislation to regulate the sale of ammunition in hunting stores or stores that sell weapons in the province, but that it would be legally impossible to regulate individuals, obviously, from bringing ammunition overthe border -- or from any other province, for that matter, I suppose.
Dr Hogg: Yes, that would be more difficult. I'm not sure it would be impossible. You would need a somewhat different bill from this one, but I could imagine a law that said something like this: "No one shall possess ammunition unless they are the holder of a valid Ontario Outdoors Card with the appropriate hunting licence or with a valid firearms acquisition certificate."
That law might well be valid and that would then catch the person who drove the ammunition across the border, because you wouldn't be trying to make the law bite on the transaction of bringing it across the border; you'd simply be prohibiting anybody -- they might have made the ammunition themselves -- from possessing it if they didn't have the requisite qualifications. That might be possible.
Ms Margaret H. Harrington (Niagara Falls): I had two questions. You pretty well answered the one with regard to some of the practical difficulties about mailing ammunition, say, or bringing it from one province to another. You think that could be remedied fairly simply.
Dr Hogg: I'm not as confident about the validity of the anti-possession law, because I can see that starting to slide closer to a criminal law, but my opinion would be that it would be valid, so yes, I think it could be done.
Ms Harrington: I noted yesterday that Professor Swinton did think there would be some practical difficulties with the importation of ammunition.
Dr Hogg: Yes. You certainly couldn't directly prohibit the act of importation. That is beyond the power of the province. If you did it in the way that I am suggesting, you'd still have a major problem of compliance because it would be so difficult to detect possession that hadn't been evidenced in any way by a purchase or sale within the province. It wouldn't be easy to deal with.
Ms Harrington: Yesterday, Professor Swinton suggested in fairly strong terms that any provincial legislation could be or would be challenged constitutionally. Would you agree?
Dr Hogg: I suppose that is quite likely because there's an active gun lobby that would be anxious to use all means at its disposal to oppose the legislation, but I don't think the challenge would be successful. I am confident that this bill, for example, would be upheld.
Ms Harrington: So it really does depend on the wording?
Dr Hogg: Yes. The way this bill is designed, I think it clearly stays within the authority of the province.
Mr Tilson: I want to be clear on what you said. You've indicated that legislation regarding the sale and purchase of ammunition is intra vires.
Dr Hogg: Yes.
Mr Tilson: I'd just like you to clarify again the possession of it. Does the province have the jurisdiction to regulate the possession of ammunition?
Dr Hogg: Yes. I think there are really three categories. The bill, in my view, is in the safe category of the purchase and sale of ammunition within the province. That's one category. That's safe. Completely impossible is the regulation of importation. That is outside the power of the province.
In the middle, in a grey area, but I think probably valid, would be an attempt by the province to prohibit the possession of ammunition within the province by persons who did not have the hunting licence or firearms acquisition certificate that the bill contemplates. I'm hesitating a little on that because I can't think of any precedents for it offhand, but I think that would probably be upheld. It would not be as clear as the present bill.
The Chair: Mr Hogg, there are no further questions. Is there anything you might want to add?
Dr Hogg: No, Mr Chair. I think I've said all that I can usefully say to you.
The Chair: Then we would thank you, Mr Hogg. I think you've been very helpful.
Dr Hogg: It's been a pleasure to appear before you.
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PREMIER'S COUNCIL
The Chair: Dr Tom Brzustowski, Deputy Minister, the Premier's Council on Health, Well-being and Social Justice. Welcome.
Dr Tom Brzustowski: May I introduce Mrs Barbara Morrison, who's a member of our staff, the coordinator of the councils. We are now known, as of last Thursday evening, as the Premier's Council without the long words afterwards. There is now a single council and the long words are all gone. Would you like me to begin?
All right. As you are well aware, Mr Chair, we were invited on quite short notice, but we're very pleased to come because I think that in one corner of your mandate, the matter of prevention at the community level, we may have something which could be of use to you and we'd very much like to share that with you.
I would like to make essentially just three points. One has to do with the recent work of the Premier's Council -- under the long name still -- the Children and Youth Project, which resulted in a report that I think a number of the members here have received and some in fact attended a briefing on it, called Yours, Mine and Ours: Ontario's Children and Youth. I'll talk about that very briefly. Related to that, I would like to refer to a little bit of research that is helping develop a knowledge base on the roots of violence.
Finally, I'd like to say just a few words about community mobilization, which is very much our direction on the future. When I talk about that, and when I talk about the roots of violence and the work of the Premier's Council, we're really talking about prevention. I would like to say one or two words about both the difficulties vis-à-vis public opinion and some of the financial implications of moving towards prevention. These are the points; they're sort of three and a half, if I may.
A very simple point about the work on the Children and Youth Project: I'd like to attract the members' attention to the obvious thing that is in there, and that is that the report proposes a number of interventions which might lead to the healthy development of all children. It's a population-based approach; all children would be addressed. The hope is that the right set of interventions at the right times during the development of the young person might lead to the development of a competent, responsible citizen. That's based on a fair amount of research. The very obvious thing I'd like to draw your attention to is that we're talking about an intervention of a social nature -- not a medical nature; not creating new institutions; not a physical nature -- that can be undertaken by the community when helped by essentially positive or helpful policies.
That is the content of that report: social interventions designed to promote the healthy development of the young individual. That is the work of the council. I think most members have received the report. I have given some copies to the clerk; additional copies are available from us. I think our time would not be well spent going over that report, but at any time that any of the members wish to discuss it with us in detail, we're available, entirely ready to help. That's one point.
The report is based on a great deal of research. I wanted to illustrate to the members that some of this current research is controversial but some of it is also very surprising. I have one page that I've asked to be distributed to you, which is a reprint from a recent issue of a scientific journal called Science that points out that in a study done on a Danish population -- Danish because the Danes apparently have a tremendous record of keeping good accounts of their social markers, their social indicators -- very strong indicators of the potential for violent behaviour were two factors which appeared very early in life.
The first was the difficulty in the birth of the child and the second was the rejection by the mother, which was measured here very strictly, in these terms: that the pregnancy was unwanted, the mother attempted to abort the foetus and the child was sent to an institution for at least four months of its first year. These were the very tight scientific definitions of rejection in this study.
What happened was that in this cohort of almost 4,300 males born in Copenhagen between September 1959 and December 1961, 3.9% of the children met these criteria. But this small minority was responsible for 22% of the violent crimes committed by children in the entire cohort, which tells the researchers that some of these factors that have to do with the difficulties of birth may indicate a biological vulnerability, and secondly, rejection in the first year of life is a good indicator of what might be the precursor of violent behaviour.
All of this to say that it's from information like this, for use for example in the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research in their human development project, that we are learning that there are social determinants of violent behaviour, social determinants of a lack of confidence of adults, social determinants of a lack of ability to socialize and function within institutions. These are all determinants which in fact apply to quite young children. So this is the kind of scientific basis which has gone into the report which I mentioned at the outset.
Where do we go from here? The second phase of the project on children and youth will deal with community mobilization, because these measures are social interventions that are best taken at the community level and in detailed ways best worked out by the community in full knowledge of their own circumstances, their own conditions.
The Premier's Council has been given by the Premier, as part of its future mandate, three points on which it should focus. One of them is to help communities develop the capacity to deal with their own problems, to do projects. You may know that the council operates by doing projects and the projects bring to one table a group of people who are interested in the same issue but from different perspectives and don't have a history of working together. Over time they actually develop a consensus, and it's an action cut on that consensus that leads to the sort of thing we're talking about.
So community mobilization is very much the focus. We feel we have a lot to learn. I wish we could come in here and say, "We know how it's done and what one must do." We don't. We've had the merest beginnings of some sampling of opinions and reactions at the community level, but it is an important part of our future.
Finally, the last comment I want to make deals with the economics of prevention. Another paper was distributed, a copy of the pre-budget submission from the Premier's councils to the Minister of Finance dated February of this year. The single point made in that pre-budget submission was that government must find the means to begin what has to be a long-term shift of public spending on social programs from a heavy emphasis on remediation or dealing with consequences to a new balance more heavily on the prevention side.
It's interesting that if you look at the amount being spent now on prevention vis-à-vis the amount being spent on the consequences of failing to prevent or, essentially, paying for problems that we know in theory how to prevent, if you compare these two numbers, the prevention spending is tiny compared to the spending on incarceration and the spending on all sorts of remedial measures. That means that a relatively very large increase in spending on prevention could be accomplished at a relatively very small decrease of the spending on remediation if it was just a shift within a constant sum of resources. The difficulty, of course, is public acceptance of a shift in public spending, because the goals of prevention are very diffuse. They're diffused over society and they're not as immediate to people as are measures that they might rely on when they're in trouble themselves or needing care.
I hope this brief glimpse into what the councils are doing may help in your thinking a little bit. It's a sliver. It's a small corner of your mandate, but it is an area in which we are quite committed to moving forward.
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Ms Christel Haeck (St Catharines-Brock): Mr Chair, what you have to see is Dr Brzustowski's T-shirt given to him by his staff members at the former MCU, which very clearly gives you this symbol of a ski that has snow on it and somebody brushing it off, so "brushed-off-ski." They realized that his name, being much longer, provides some interesting problems. I only have five letters in my name and I have many variations on the theme, but the mail still gets to me.
Tom, it's nice to see you again. You've been doing some excellent work over at the Premier's Council, which leads me to my question with regard to the allocation shifts.
Some of the things that you've been doing, and what Dr Mustard obviously has been saying and doing, really look at the prevention focus in I think a different way than what really is being proposed by this legislation and really recognize that there are limited moneys out there, which would obviously require shifting resources and possibly setting some different priorities.
Where would your support lie, very specifically, if I may ask? Obviously something's going to end up being negatively affected in this whole process. I think I'd like to hear your remarks on that, if I may.
Dr Brzustowski: I'll come back to this document, the pre-budget submission, which came from the two councils, both of the old Premier's councils, the Premier's Council on Economic Renewal and the Premier's Council on Health, Well-being and Social Justice.
Both discussed this document and they came down very strongly on the side of investing in prevention. They actually went so far -- and this is a statement of faith; I don't think anybody can prove it but a lot of people believed this -- that the only way to control the cost of open-ended social programs, the only way to get a handle on that in any way at all, is to invest in prevention.
It's a long-term investment. The benefits may not show up for some time, but these people, the 80 or so external volunteers on the two councils, believe that that may be the only way to control the total cost to society of open-ended social programs, the ones that require service or care or try to repair some damage.
The second point is the one I just finished making. It's a point that bears making time and time again. If you have two numbers and one is tiny, as is our spending on prevention compared to our spending on remediation, you can increase the little one a lot in relative terms by a very tiny shift from the big one.
Barbara can perhaps refer to some specifics in the cost of the justice system, but the council has come down very, very strongly on the side of investing in prevention.
Ms Haeck: Possibly she could give us some insight into some of these concerns.
Mrs Barbara Morrison: Sure. I'm quite familiar with the area of youth justice and I understand that Tony Doob spoke to you about that yesterday. I would just like to emphasize what he has already said about custodial costs. We are incarcerating far too many young offenders in this country and in this province. We're incarcerating far more than most of the countries in the western world, and they're being incarcerated for non-violent offences, primarily.
If we were able to shift some of the money that we're spending on custodial costs to programs in the community, I think we would see far better results, because the young offenders we are incarcerating are still recidivists. I don't think that increased jail sentences are the answer, as in the recent amendments to the Young Offenders Act that were introduced on Friday by the Justice minister, although he did say that he hopes this will result in fewer jail sentences for non-violent offences.
We are receiving about $40 million from the federal government through the young offenders cost-sharing program. They're spending $160 million nationally. We're getting about $40 million of that, and 80% to 90% of that money is going towards custodial costs. Clearly, that's not the answer.
Ms Harrington: You were talking about the cost of prevention versus remedial measures, and that got me thinking. The question I wanted to ask you was, do you feel that the passage of Bill 167 will have any effect in the long-term impact on this aspect of society that we are discussing now? What I was thinking about was alienation from society as young people grow up who are gay or lesbian, who are in their late teens or early 20s, the lack of self-esteem, the lack of a positive role model for them in society and that feeling of alienation, of not having a rightful place. Do you feel in the long term this bill may address some of those questions which may influence their outcome in life?
Dr Brzustowski: Let me begin first of all with an apology. Between yesterday afternoon and today, I have not had a chance to study the bill. I simply have not, and for me to pretend that I have in trying to answer your question would be foolish.
However, the issue of having young people develop in a way which enables them to participate in the institutions of society, to have socialization skills, to avoid alienation, to in fact never be relegated to the side because of any particular quirks or abilities or aptitudes that they have or fail to have, these are extraordinarily important issues, and I think every indication is that they do affect the behaviour of adults. The competence of the community in the broadest sense is affected by the extent to which a large number of members of that community have the competence to work within their institutions.
There's a very interesting new movement by an old name growing up in the United States called the communitarian movement. It's headed by a man called Etzioni. Apparently it's quite influential in the current White House. One of their beliefs, which also independently was the belief of the Children and Youth Project working group, was that the parents have the responsibility for raising their children to be competent citizens, but the community has the responsibility to support the parents in that task. Everything comes around the community joining in to help in the socialization, to help in the development of competent individuals.
I can't comment on the bill. I'm sorry; I wish I could. But there is independent information that these are extraordinarily important considerations, the social ones.
Mr Tim Murphy (St George-St David): I want to talk about a couple of things. One of them is the transition from remediation, I guess as you call it, to prevention. I have been a prosecutor in court acting as a crown agent, and I have done in the course of that some young offender matters. I have seen some young offenders go through the system, and their view of it of course is that it's all a joke. They have said that quite publicly and quite clearly while they were sitting in the prisoner's dock, and laughed at the judge and their own lawyer, the crown and everybody who was in there. These are people who are pretty young and already have this attitude. It's clear what they're doing is reflecting an attitude that is shared by those people who have probably been in the system more than once.
I guess my concern in relation to that is, I heard some reasonably shocking statistics, and I'm wondering if they conform to your understanding, from the Solicitor General and Correctional Services ministry that the recidivism rate for male young offenders is 50% and for female young offenders is 33%. Is that your understanding?
Dr Brzustowski: I'll have to turn to Barbara for that.
Mrs Morrison: I'm really not up on the young offender statistics right now. It's quite possible.
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Mr Murphy: If that's the case, how does prevention get you some way of dealing with those kinds of figures? We all agree that in theory, intellectually, the idea of nipping the problem in the bud before it becomes a problem is unassailable as an intellectual notion. The problem is how you actually do that in fact.
It strikes me that we don't have any easy answers to that, obviously. One of the things, though, I did want to ask your opinion on is, we have heard proposals for dealing with young offenders and in fact the whole social justice system. The funding to welfare and other kinds of systems that are meant to provide opportunities for people who have been denied the same opportunities the rest of us have is to be cut by 10% to 20%, for example. That is the proposal that's been put forward.
From your view, what kind of impact would a cut in welfare spending of 10% to 20% have on the crime rate in the province of Ontario by young offenders and subsequently by those young offenders as adults?
Dr Brzustowski: Let me deal with what I see as two questions, and please be as keenly aware of my limitations when I speak about this as I am aware of them.
I've heard one suggestion, a profound and disturbing suggestion, for the source of the attitudes towards the justice system on the part of young people, and it's disturbing because it's so profoundly cultural. The suggestion is actually being made that some of our young people are raised in a culture, a popular media culture or their own local culture, in which they do not develop a sense of the future. They seem to not have the ability for abstract thinking, to be able to draw deductions from observations, and they don't seem to be able to think beyond the present, the sort of nine-second sound bite and the 30-second in-depth presentation.
Mr Murphy: They'd be successful in politics, though.
Dr Brzustowski: The fact is, the suggestion is being made that there are children for whom something in the future, as the prospect of a punishment in the future, is meaningless. That goes far beyond my competence to talk about, but I just pass that on to you because I have heard it and I think it relates to this.
Mr Murphy: I've seen it.
Dr Brzustowski: Yes, all right.
The other point, again based on the work of the Children and Youth Project of the council, it's so important that we remember that the recommendations in that report, based on the idea that there are interventions that'll work, are a set of recommendations of social interventions. There's not really a call for spending there.
On the other hand, I'm sure that the conditions that would make these interventions possible depend on finances; for example, the whole notion of giving the child a good start at birth by providing good services to the mother before birth and good neonatal services afterwards. Clearly if there were some drastic changes in the welfare patterns, some of that might not be capable of being established.
The transition to school, bringing the child to the point of being able to learn in a social setting which is very different from the social setting of the family, developing those social coping skills, that requires somebody's time and somebody's care, not necessarily the parents'. Again, that costs money or it may cost money. It may be a volunteer effort in the community but it may cost money. So there's another possible impact.
I can't predict specifically what it would be but for those conditions to be conducive to those interventions succeeding, I think we can't have the bottom falling out. On the other hand, it's not a scream for more money specifically in that direction.
I wish I could say more but I really can't.
Mr Tilson: Ms Morrison, you made a comment that there were too many young people being incarcerated. All of what you say makes sense and all of these complicated issues -- psychological, social, education, deterioration of the family unit, many, many things which are intertwined, just unbelievable, horrible things that are going on by adults to children and children among themselves, stuff that shocks many of us -- what goes on certainly shocks me, and I don't think I'm any different than anyone else as to some of the things our society has seen.
We're having people getting shot in dessert restaurants and walking along a park in Mississauga and a street in Ottawa, just unbelievable things. Many of those crimes are being committed by young offenders and we're reading where in the States, and maybe it's happened here in Canada, awful crimes are being committed in the schools. It seems to be a status to have a weapon in some of these schools, all across the province. I come from a semirural area and these problems aren't just in the downtown core; they're all across this province.
The whole intent of what Mr Chiarelli -- and I shouldn't say it without him being here, but I believe his whole intent is that, and what this committee is discussing is, how are we going to deal with these things? You've talked about the initial problems and the preventive issue. The fact of the matter is that we also have to look at the protection of the public.
Lawyers who practise criminal law tell me that young offenders come and say: "It doesn't matter. We're not going to go to jail on this. They're going to slap our wrists." In my riding we have a Camp Dufferin, which is for young offenders, and it holds 31 young people. Well, 30 walked away last year. They just walked away; there are no walls. There's no respect for authority in many of these situations. The police tell me there's less and less respect for the uniform.
I understand all of what you're saying and I commend you on listing all of these issues. They've been talked about by others, and I appreciate all of your thoughts. But as politicians, whether federal or provincial, what are we going to talk about now? All of those things that you're talking about are not going to be solved this week. You're going back even before birth. It's very complicated stuff. Certainly it's complicated for me to comprehend.
Meanwhile, we have all these horrible crimes going on. I for one think -- I'm repeating what constituents tell me -- that we have gone too soft, that we have let some of these young hoodlums, hoodlums for whatever reason -- maybe it's our fault, maybe it's the adults' fault, maybe it's our grandfather's fault, maybe it's our great-grandmother's fault. I don't know. All I know is we have these problems that are going on. Crimes are being committed by people who have just had their wrists slapped, serious crimes.
When you make that comment that there are too many people being incarcerated that isn't what many of the public are saying. They're worried about protection. They want to walk the parks of Mississauga and the streets of Ottawa without the fear of young punks with whatever kind of weapon they may have doing things to them for no cause whatsoever.
Mrs Morrison: I could respond in many ways, but I'd like to make two points. One is that the Young Offenders Act can't be a panacea for all that is wrong. I think the report documents in the context chapter the very serious situation that we feel we are in right now. We feel that we are at a crossroads.
Several of the things that were mentioned are addressed, albeit briefly, in the report, such as poverty. But that was not the focus of the report. It wasn't to focus on the problems but rather to take an approach which is a population-based approach for what we can do for healthy child development. In terms of the Young Offenders Act, I also think the public have never really had the facts. I think there's a lot of misunderstanding. There's no doubt some incredibly horrendous crimes have been committed by young offenders but also by adults. The Just Desserts involved adults, not young offenders. But I think that when these horrendous crimes happen, we have incredible media attention to them and a lot of misunderstanding.
I think there's also a lot of misunderstanding about the cost of incarcerating these children. I've been in several of the facilities. In a lot of them we don't have a lot of good programming, and I think for a lot less money we could do far more with them in the community in terms of education, retraining, service, retribution for crimes that they have committed. I think that in terms of recidivism we would have better results.
The Chair: Mr Brzustowski and Ms Morrison, I want to thank you very much for coming on short notice. Your contribution was also very helpful to us.
We don't see Ms Wendy Cukier yet. We might recess for a few moments until she and/or the next deputation arrives.
The committee recessed from 1631 to 1635.
COALITION FOR GUN CONTROL
The Chair: I welcome Ms Wendy Cukier from the Coalition for Gun Control. You have approximately half an hour for your presentation.
Ms Wendy Cukier: Thank you very much for allowing me to appear before you. I have to apologize for not having sufficient copies of everything for all the committee members. I actually found out about the meeting fairly late last week, so I'm not as well prepared as I might have been.
I'm going to focus specifically on the framework for gun control that we have been advocating for the last four years. I'd be happy to talk about ammunition in isolation as well because I realize that that's the focus of your particular committee.
It's also important, though, to say at the outset that none of us believes that gun control is a panacea. It's important to start by saying that we recognize very much that a comprehensive approach to crime prevention and community safety has got to fundamentally address the roots of crime. I'm sure you've had lots of expert testimony on that as well as some of the issues in the justice system.
I was a member of the federal minister's Ad Hoc Committee on Crime Prevention and Community Safety, so I recognize and the members of the coalition recognize that gun control is not the whole solution. Nevertheless, we think there is sufficient evidence, and as I said in the letter I have submitted today, I'd be happy to provide you with a more detailed and well-documented brief which presents the pretty copious research from respectable academics who would argue that there is a direct link between access to firearms and homicide, suicide and injury rates.
The other thing that's important to mention is that we don't view gun control as strictly a crime question. It's very clear that it's a public health issue as well, given the high rate of suicides, particularly among 16-to-25-year-olds, with firearms, as well as the high rate of accidents. You're probably aware that 1,400 Canadians every year are injured with firearms, the average cost of the firearm injury is $30,000, and it's a $45-million burden to the health care system. Clearly it ought not to be viewed strictly as a crime issue.
Unless you're dramatically different from the federal elected representatives who have been dealing with this issue, it's likely you've been inundated with letters more likely opposing gun control than supporting it. I want to address some of the key counterarguments that are brought up regularly, and I also want to address the issue of support.
It's very clear that opposition to stronger gun control is very well orchestrated, very well financed, very well coordinated, yet it's very clear from the polls that have been done and from the wide range of community and other organizations that support us that there is very strong public support for gun control. That's essentially what I wanted to address with you today.
I should give you some background. I'm a professor at Ryerson and a volunteer with the Coalition for Gun Control, which was founded four years ago and currently includes 200 organizations that support what we regard as a moderate position. We are not opposed to gun ownership, we're not opposed to hunting, we're not opposed to farmers having guns, we're not even, in principle, opposed to target shooting, but we think public safety should be a priority.
Our position is fairly comprehensive. It includes: renewable possession permits for all guns, including rifles and shotguns; registration of rifles and shotguns, because as you know, right now there are six million in circulation and no one knows who has them; controls on the sale of ammunition, something we've been advocating since we were founded in 1990, and I'll talk about that in more detail; a ban on military weapons and large-capacity magazines; stricter controls on handguns; strict penalties for misuse of firearms; and controls on illegal importation. And with that goes a whole series of points related to implementation and administration of the law, public education etc.
I mentioned in starting that in our view gun control is part of a general crime prevention strategy. The concern we have principally is with murder, suicides, accidents and injuries involving firearms. That being said, it's also very clear that gun theft is a problem: 3,000 guns are stolen every year and those guns, by definition, are being used by "criminals." We've seen a number of those incidents recently in the Toronto area.
If you look at the data currently available on the guns used in murders in Canada, over the last 10 years the majority has been rifles and shotguns, and because rifles and shotguns are not registered you don't know whether they're legally owned, but given that it's relatively easy to get a rifle or a shotgun, we can assume they are. In the last couple of years, handguns have been used more commonly in murders than previously, and the jury is still out on whether that is part of a trend. A study that was done by the Department of Justice showed very clearly that legally owned guns figure more prominently in certain kinds of crimes than in others. If you look at domestic violence, for example, 80% of the weapons are rifles and shotguns; of those, 80% are legally owned.
If you look at gang-related and drug-related violence, on the other hand, chances are that a higher percentage of the guns are smuggled in. Currently we're working on trying to better document the sources of guns used in crime, but it is very clear that legally owned guns are part of the problem.
In any case, whether the guns are legally owned, stolen or illegally imported, it is fair to assume that in Canada most crimes with guns are committed with legally purchased ammunition, so we're very pleased that this committee is seriously looking at the issue around control of ammunition. That isn't to say that controlling ammunition alone will eliminate the problem, but it will certainly make it more difficult to use weapons that are not legally held.
Without going into great detail on all the points, I'd be happy to answer questions.
One of the things I want to draw your attention to is the list of coalition supporters, which is in the package I submitted. All the organizations on this list, including a number which have endorsed our position over the last few weeks, have formally endorsed the points I outlined. The groups include national organizations like the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police, the Canadian Police Association, the Canadian Bar Association, the Federation of Canadian Municipalities, the Trauma Association of Canada, and the Canadian Association of Emergency Physicians. Doctors who deal with trauma and emergencies are particularly concerned about firearms because they're typically the people who treat the injured. They have commented on the dramatic difference between what we see in Canadian emergency rooms versus the United States, and they regard that as being in part a function of access to firearms.
Other organizations which support us include the Canada Safety Council, which, as you know, is also very active in the efforts to reduce traffic fatalities and injuries; as well as groups like the Canadian Jewish Congress, the United Church of Canada and so on. In addition to the national organizations which support us, there is a wide range of regional, provincial and other organizations.
The reason it's important to draw your attention to this fact is because we do have representation from groups across the country. We also have representation from relatively small communities, as well as urban centres. One of the misconceptions which is actively promoted, I believe, by opponents of gun control is the notion that this is an urban-versus-rural issue or that this an east-versus-west issue or that this is a problem that is of concern in Quebec and nowhere else in the country.
That's the reason I included a copy of the Angus Reid poll that was done for us last September, which I think shows quite persuasively that public support for gun control is strong across the country: 86% of Canadians support registration of firearms, 84% support a ban on military weapons, and 71% would go as far as banning handguns. Interestingly enough, the majority of gun owners support those points as well.
The other dimension that's important to recognize is that gun control supporters in Ontario are second only to those in Quebec, so there's very strong support in Ontario.
The third thing I wanted to point out before leaving this open to question is that I brought along copies of letters from some of the Ontario organizations -- not all, but some of the organizations -- which have formally endorsed the coalition and which we know have written to the Minister of Justice, Allan Rock, asking that he act on our position. You will recall that the elements of our position include controls on the sale of ammunition.
You'll note that in the pile of letters we are not simply supported by the Toronto Police Association, the Metro Toronto Police Services Board, Toronto city council etc; we also have support from the Thunder Bay police chief, the Sault Ste Marie police chief, the Sudbury police chief, the Sarnia police chief etc. We have support from police across the province, including in northern Ontario.
The other set of letters I included were a number sent by health professionals. The one I want to draw your attention to is the one from the Sudbury General Hospital trauma unit. They say they have just completed a study -- they're the lead trauma program for northeastern Ontario committed to the concept of injury prevention in their region -- and have documented that intentional and non-intentional fatalities were nearly twice as high in this region, ie, northeastern Ontario, which is predominantly rural, as they were in the rest of the province. Suicides and homicides account for 30% of these figures and guns account for approximately 60% of the methods used to kill. Consequently, they say that gun control appears to be a major issue in northern remote and rural Ontario.
It is important to remember that in this debate you will hear from gun owners and you will hear from gun dealers and you will hear from the groups they fund that gun control doesn't work, that we don't need gun control, that gun control inconveniences -- and if you look at what we're asking for, really the most you can say is that it inconveniences -- law-abiding gun owners, but on the other hand, we have the police and we have health care professionals from across the country saying that gun control works and we need more now.
I want to close in saying that our position is that we want strong federal legislation. We want the province to do what it can to ensure that we get strong federal legislation. Otherwise we will end up with the patchwork system we know so well in the United States, where Washington, DC, has great gun control but it lives next to West Virginia. So that's our priority: strong federal gun control. That being said, the provinces should do everything in their power to ensure that happens. If it doesn't happen, they will have to then act. Thank you.
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Ms Haeck: I'm happy to see in your package that the Regional Niagara Health Services Department is part of the package; I'll read it with interest.
As you and I have met on at least one other occasion, you know the joys of living on the border and the whole problem of moving back and forth and trying to control purchases that were made on the other side. In light of the fact that the province doesn't have any jurisdiction on these over-the-border purchases -- that's strictly within the purview of the federal government -- how you would deal with the practical considerations of trying to implement it as a province, if this piece of legislation should pass; whether in fact there really is an opportunity for the province to do any serious control?
Ms Cukier: There's a question of direct control, there's a question of advocacy in terms of influencing the federal government, and there's also a question of administration of the law. I believe the Solicitor General of Ontario recently authorized a joint task force, including police forces from Toronto, Peel, Niagara and Hamilton, to really try to deal with the issue of gun smuggling and illegal dealing. I view that as a very, very positive act.
We're not arguing that the provinces should wrest control over this from the federal government, but there are things the province can do effectively to pressure the federal government and, at the same time, to administer the law.
Mr Robert V. Callahan (Brampton South): I was down in Washington recently and somebody there said that if you take out the murders from the violence statistics in Washington, they're the least violent city in the US; ie, mostly what they've got are murders.
In this report you've done, you talk about fewer gun-related offences in Europe. What is the scenario in Europe? Is it more difficult to get a gun?
Ms Cukier: Much more difficult. As I said, because I was asked to appear before the committee only last Wednesday I haven't put together a detailed brief, but I can provide you with an article that was published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal by a criminologist who compared the rate of access to guns in 14 countries -- the US, Canada and 12 European countries -- and correlated it with suicide and murder rates and showed very clearly that in places where there's less access to guns, there are lower murder and suicide rates.
Mr Callahan: What do they do in Europe?
Ms Cukier: The model we've proposed is identical to the model currently in place in Great Britain. In Great Britain, it's very, very difficult to get handguns. If you want a rifle or a shotgun, you have a permit for that rifle or shotgun. It's registered. When you want to purchase ammunition, you show your permit. And the burden of proof is on the applicant, not on the police, so gun ownership is not regarded as a right but a privilege.
Mr Callahan: The firearms acquisition certificate legislation came in about 10 years ago in Canada. Correct me if I'm wrong, but number one, that doesn't apply to shotguns, does it?
Ms Cukier: Yes, it does.
Mr Callahan: It applies to all guns?
Ms Cukier: You need an FAC, but if you owned it prior to 1978, you didn't have to get one.
Mr Callahan: But the gun itself, the serial number of the gun is not registered with anybody?
Ms Cukier: Exactly, except in the store where it's bought, but that information remains in the store; it doesn't go anywhere.
Mr Callahan: So if a gun is located at a violent crime, you'd have to go through a bit of rigmarole, I would imagine, to find out who owned that gun.
Ms Cukier: If it's a rifle or a shotgun.
Mr Callahan: The other thing you say that's very interesting, and you haven't got any statistics on it, is that in terms of guns involved in robberies, "While there is limited data available, it appears that many of these weapons were legally owned." I practised criminal law for 30 years, and the weapon of choice seemed to be a sawed-off shotgun which, when the facts were related to the incident, normally was stolen from someplace. Are you not able to get statistics from police departments or from courts?
Ms Cukier: Because rifles and shotguns are not registered, you have no real way of tracing them back to their original source, unless they're reported stolen. With handguns, Metro police did a search: 50% of the handguns they had in custody had been previously registered. But with rifles and shotguns there is no way to trace. If they found the weapon used in Just Desserts tomorrow, they would have no way of tracing that back to its original purchaser unless it had been reported stolen.
Mr Callahan: I guess what you're suggesting is that you're endorsing the licensing of ammunition as proposed in the bill, but one step further: that there should be a system of registration into a central computer bank?
Mr Cukier: Absolutely. Again, I don't want to take the committee's time to go through the details, but as you know, with information technology developing at the rate it is, it would be a relatively simple matter to move from the information that's collected in the stores right now and get that into a database. If you required the FAC in order to purchase ammunition, that would in effect require people to have an FAC as a possession permit, which it isn't right now.
Once you went to that process, you could start requiring that people give you information about what guns they currently own. The current law prohibits the police from asking an applicant what guns or how many they currently own or intend to acquire, when they're applying for the FAC. The only information we have about who owns what guns relate to restricted weapons.
Mr Tilson: Thank you very much for appearing. Your paper is certainly thorough and assists me in a whole slew of facts I had some knowledge of, but not as thorough as this.
I agree with much of what you say and I'm sure you agree with the intent of what this committee is looking at, Mr Chiarelli's bill, Bill 151, An Act to control the Purchase and Sale of Ammunition. That's the general topic this committee is looking at.
But in my riding, a semi-urban/rural area, there are farmers who claim they need weapons to shoot animals that are destroying their chickens. I also know very well two individuals who spend a lot of time and money collecting antique weapons, replicas and the real thing. They go away to international conferences and spend an absolute fortune on these things. I've attended some of their presentations on the issue with respect to the history of weapons and relating it to our culture. I hear from those people. I hear from hunters. You alluded to all of these things in your presentation. I hear from sports people who just like it for the sport of it, having weapons for the sport.
The next group really alarms me, particularly in rural areas where police protection is becoming less and less, the lack of 24-hour service. With people who live on estate lots out in the country or on farms -- they may not be farmers, but they live out in the middle of nowhere -- and all this thought that goes on in the United States where everybody's got to have a gun in their bedside table, I have people tell me that they feel comfortable having a weapon, legal or illegal, for that reason.
This report certainly is excellent and the facts are alarming. But what am I to tell these people, all of whom have legitimate -- and I'm not attacking what you're saying. I can agree with much of you what you say. But as a politician, what am I going to tell all these people who say they have all these rights?
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Ms Cukier: I think they don't have the rights. I think it's clear that the Canadian Constitution is "peace, order and good government." But that being said, I think there's been a real misconception that gun control and gun abolition are the same thing, and that simply isn't true. Probably what you have to do is sit them down and say: "Yes, it's a little more inconvenient, but do you really have an objection to guns being registered? Don't you think it would be a good idea if we could trace guns back to the owners?"
I grew up when you had to go into a Liquor Control Board of Ontario and fill out a little form before you could get a bottle of beer. It seems to me that one could at least suggest the same level of control over bullets, where you have to show a permit or whatever. Quite frankly, even though there are people who advocate that we should all have AR-15s and AK-47s, I grew up in St Catharines with lots of hunters. My mother is from northern Ontario, and most of the hunters and farmers I know have no sympathy whatsoever with the Rambo wannabes, and that's basically what the modern military weapon aficionados are. It's quite a different thing than serious gun collectors who have an interest in history and so on.
I guess all you can say to them is, "Yes, maybe this is a little more inconvenient, maybe it's going to mean a little more paperwork and maybe you're going to have to jump through some hoops." But overall, we have to put the priority on public safety. Nothing that we've proposed will significantly impact on the hunter, the farmer, the aboriginal, and that's the message that really has to be communicated.
The Chair: Thank you very much, Ms Cukier, for your thoughtful presentation and for taking the time to come before us today.
CALVIN BARRY
The Chair: I'd call assistant crown attorney, Mr Calvin Barry. Mr Barry, you have half an hour.
Mr Calvin Barry: I'm assistant crown attorney at the downtown Toronto office for the Attorney General of Ontario. As I understand it, you want some input into the retail sale of ammunition in the province, the private sale of ammunition in the province and community policing and other initiatives similar to that.
I did not have the opportunity to look over the Ammunition Control Act, the provincial legislation that is being put together. I can tell you that there's an Explosives Act, a revised statute of Canada, a federal act, that the Department of Justice prosecutes at times. I have never seen a prosecution in Toronto from the Department of Justice, although I hear they happen from time to time.
I thought it'd be best to give a quick overview of some of the Criminal Code provisions that cover ammunition, just so you know what is there, because there are, as you know, what some people call the Kim Campbell amendments that were in part a result, as I understand it, of the Marc Lépine incident in Quebec. There were a number of amendments that came into force in the summer of 1992. I know some people in my office still don't know about them, so I thought it would be good to make a brief overview.
The Criminal Code covers gunpowder, for example, which is a component used in the making of ammunition and bullets. Section 2 of the code has a definition of "explosive substance." Sections 79, 80 and 81 cover explosive substances.
My answer as to any reforms for ammunition is that your best way to go is federal legislation. Part III of the Criminal Code deals with firearms. It's my view that a lot of provincial initiatives are really piecemeal ways of attacking the problem, a patchwork effect, and that the real answer and the real teeth are legislation at the federal level. The reason the province would be very helpful is that it could lobby and make it known on behalf of Ontario, especially in big metropolitan centres, such as Ottawa, Windsor and Toronto.
I work in Toronto, but I grew up in Thunder Bay, Ontario. I've prosecuted in Thunder Bay, up north around Bracebridge, in Toronto and in Ottawa, so I have a pretty wide spectrum of experiences across the province, at least in respect of the prosecution of criminal offences, particularly violence and ones involving guns.
Looking to the provisions of sections 79, 80 and 81, it is an offence to be in possession of an explosive substance such that it could cause harm to people or property. I highlight that because that's important when I get to the private sale of ammunition.
Subsection 86(2) is your main offence, at part III of the code, that deals with using, carrying, handling, shipping or storing any firearm or ammunition. What is ammunition? You would, in a trial, call an expert from the Centre of Forensic Sciences to say that there are a piece of lead, a component of gunpowder and a shell casing. A police officer with any experience could also testify, and that's accepted at the provincial and General Division benches throughout the province, what constitutes bullets or ammunition. It's an offence that's known as a hybrid offence, which can be prosecuted on summary conviction or by indictment. The indictable offence would be punishable by up to five years imprisonment. Summary conviction, as most of you know, is up to six months in jail and/or a $2,000 fine.
It's my view there should be another offence that covers just the possession of ammunition, to make it quite clear. When you have words like "uses, carries, handles, ships or stores," it's problematic because you could have somebody on the street of Toronto with a bunch of bullets in his or her pocket. I recently had a situation with a young offender and the police want to deal with it because the bullets fit restricted weapons or prohibited weapons, which by definition are illegal. A restricted weapon is illegal unless you have a firearms acquisition certificate. This is where an offence lies for careless storage of ammunition or firearm.
Section 100 is an important section in the code. That deals with prohibition orders, and under subsection (1), for an offence that involves violence, the accused could be punished by imprisonment for 10 years or more, or for a section 85 offence, then there's a prohibition that can be 10 years and on a second offence it can be up to life, prohibition for firearms, explosives and ammunition. Explosives cover bombs and that sort of thing, but with ammunition, we're back to bullets and that sort of thing.
What I would like to see under section 100, and a good response from the province to lobby for this, is that there be included section 90 and section 91. Section 90 is prohibited weapons and section 91 is restricted weapons. These should be included in there to cover the handguns that shoot these bullets, but also, if it could be for being in mere possession of ammunition that fits into, and you could use an expert to do this, a restricted weapon or a prohibited weapon, then you would be able to prohibit people, upon conviction of one of these offences or a new offence that they could make, from being in possession of ammunition that fits into a section 90 or 91 handgun.
The new offence, possession of ammunition, could be a hybrid offence: It could be prosecuted by summary conviction or by indictment, say up to five years by indictment. There are certain situations with the young offender, for example, where with bullets you might want some jail but not a crippling amount dealing with the sentencing principles in your worst offender and your worst-case scenario.
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Right now under the Criminal Code section 491, there's a forfeiture provision of firearms. Section 102 deals with forfeiture of prohibited weapons and I think ammunition should be expressly included in there. If it is, then you could easily forfeit the ammunition that comes with the guns. You take away the bullets and the ammunition and then these people who are into using firearms that commit offences have no bullets for them.
Provincially, what you might be able to do is have something similar to what they have in provincial legislation for impaired drivers. As you know, under the Highway Traffic Act, upon conviction of section 253 which is the impaired over-80-type allegations, dangerous driving, failure to remain at the scene of the accident, the provincial legislation kicks in and you can have a suspension for a number of months. In dealing with the retailer, a retail location that sells guns, ammunition and that sort of thing, you could have suspensions if they are not storing their ammunition properly per section 86 of the code, if they're selling to feeble-minded people, people who appear to be impaired, people who are under the age of 18 -- if the age could be raised to 18, that's another route I would suggest where provincial legislation itself could come into effect -- and the revocation of a vendor's licence upon conviction of a criminal offence dealing with ammunition or firearms.
The definition of "ammunition" should also cover pellets, and that would be something that would be best done by amendment to the Criminal Code. As you know, that wouldn't be the legal definition of "ammunition," but pellets cause a big problem in a number of offences, and especially, young offenders are able to access pellet guns. In my view, anyone who is under the age of 18, even under supervision, shouldn't be in possession of any type of firearm. There can be some minor exemptions that can be acquired through a minor permit with the supervision of an adult for northwestern Ontario, a community such as Moosenee, north of Thunder Bay, where hunting and that sort of activity is required for livelihood.
Just so you know, on August 1, 1992, there was a Criminal Code order in council prohibiting armour-piercing bullets, bullets that mushroom upon impact. There was some headway in the August 1, 1992, amendments, but it seems to me that any bullets that can be used in a restricted weapon or in a prohibited weapon, handguns under section 90 or 91 of the code, could covered be also by order in council at the federal level.
Also on August 1, 1992, large-capacity magazines became prohibited weapons for the first time. If you have a handgun, you cannot have a magazine that holds more than 10 bullets, and for a rifle, five bullets. This was part of what I call the Kim Campbell gun amendments at the federal level.
As to some comment that I was able to read in some of the literature that was put out through Lyn McLeod's package, gun-free zones might work. I haven't seen whether or not there would a constitutional challenge to that sort of thing -- I've not had any experience with anything similar -- but in bigger metropolitan centres -- Toronto, Ottawa, Windsor, London -- it could be that we're moving towards you're not allowed to have any guns, for example, in the city of Toronto, unless you have a firearms acquisition certificate for a restricted weapon and you're a member of a bona fide gun club and you have the permit with you, the transportation permit from A to B and the permit to have the gun, not only a gun permit but a firearms acquisition certificate.
If you're coming into the city, what you would do is drop off the gun similar to the way you would at a border where the customs and excise work, and then you pick it up when you leave the country. That could also apply for bullets that are used under weapons that come under section 90 and section 91. A property receipt could be given, and that could be set up provincially, some type of administrative ruling for that. There could be some section 91 and 92 criminal law power arguments, but that's something that should be looked into further.
There are regulations right now under the Criminal Code pursuant to section 116 of the code which allow the drafting of regulations where the offence penalty for breach of a regulation is under section 86. Those regulations right now make it an offence to have unlocked trigger mechanisms on restricted weapons or on firearms. You have to have a lock on them now, and right now the bullets have to be locked with the gun, which seems to me to be a little silly, because when the criminal gets into one of these vaults or gun cabinets, he or she finds the bullets, and without the bullets, you can't use the gun.
Just winding up, if you have a separate subregulation to those gun regulations under section 116 of the code, you could have a situation where you could have an offence to have them stored together. They should be stored separately: the bullets in one separate locked container and the guns in a separate, distinct locked container. If you are a bona fide gun collector or gun holder, it's very simple to have an extra key or to have a combination lock to access that separate second component. We have a problem in Toronto when we have a lot of these.
I do a lot of holdup squad prosecutions and we trace the gun. There have been a lot of jewellery heists you might have read about in the paper. From September to December of 1993, I prosecuted a number of them. The guns are coming from small towns in a lot of cases, believe it or not. Peterborough, Owen Sound, Bracebridge are where these handguns are being found. There have been break-ins of cottages. You have to up the protection of keeping these guns locked away.
It's one thing bringing guns over the border; there's not a lot we can do about that unless we up the Customs checking of people coming across the border. But that is something that could be increased in terms of some of these other communities and in Toronto to make sure that everything is locked in separate containers.
There was a recent break-in that I'm dealing with the homicide squad on where a number of handguns were stolen. When you go into a lot of these gun stores, you can see a number of guns right in clear view under glass compartments. Where something's locked with glass seems to be a little absurd when you can have a steel enclosure. Criminals can break glass quite easily. They come with a crowbar or with any implement and they break the glass and then they're at the guns. There's no reason, when you're trying to balance the people who want to buy guns legally, bona fide gun collectors and the ones who are at shooting competitions and that sort of thing, why they can't look at a magazine or a brochure of the gun.
The ammunition shouldn't be in clear view. It can be locked separately. I've never seen someone say: "I'd like to look at this bullet. I want to buy it because it has a nice colour to it." So that's something that could be looked into with provincial legislation or with a regulation pursuant to section 116. Finally, really briefly: community-based crime prevention initiatives. I speak on a number of panels that try to encourage this type of activity in the community: 54 Division, for example, is one of the jurisdictions where I prosecute offences emanating from those locations. The autodialer, computerized PC COPS program, is very helpful. The police love it; it's working. Police officers go on bicycles and go to the community. Police officers get to know everyone on a first-name basis.
For example, in 54 Division they've had a lot of success in the Flemingdon Park-St Dennis Drive area with getting the nicknames of the people and getting to know the community. The people start to trust the five or six officers who are on a first-name basis. That sort of thing is definitely helpful for the police and then for the prosecution when we have to have people testify to the crimes that are committed in their community.
There's Neighbourhood Watch, the block captains and that sort of thing. There's now a high-rise watch for high-rise apartments in certain areas in Toronto.
To have on the side of police vehicles "Greek, Portuguese, Italian, Japanese spoken" is a great initiative to encourage community-based policing.
I understand that 54 Division just bought an all-terrain vehicle and so they're moving towards really getting into their communities.
That is all of my speedy presentation.
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Mr Callahan: You've indicated that you'd prefer to see this moved through federal legislation. I just put this to you: If it were a provincial charge, you could make it a crime of absolute liability, which would mean if you've got bullets and you don't have an FAC, you're guilty. No mens rea and no defence. Moving it up to the federal level, I think, would weaken the whole process because you, as a crown, would have to prove beyond a reasonable doubt on a different evidentiary burden and you'd have to prove true mens rea. It seems to me that this should be a crime of absolute liability with no mens rea whatsoever. If you haven't got an FAC, you shouldn't have bullets. I'll ask you to comment on it a second.
The second thing is, you're talking about the way we could control guns at the border. Of course, first, how does a customs officer find out that they've got to have reasonable and probable grounds to be able to search the vehicle to find the gun? If he doesn't, then you've got a case where taxpayers' money's wasted and it gets thrown out of court.
Finally, when these courts make these prohibition orders -- and I've never tracked this down over the years they've been made against clients of mine -- are they fed into a computer system so that they're accessible to anybody -- not just the police on a CPIC check -- to anyplace that's selling guns or ammunition? Otherwise, what good's the order? The only people who seem to be able to drum up the prohibition order that's been issued against an accused is the police on a CPIC check and probably only if it's been put on there.
But would you agree that it should be much more accessible to all people on the information highway so that these orders have some meaning to them? They're probably all rhetorical questions.
Mr Barry: To your first question, I think that it might be a little problematic with the 1982 Charter of Rights and Freedoms and the Constitution. It's envisioned like a section 7 argument, for example, life, liberty and security of the person and having a provincial offence which really might cover the area of a criminal offence to make it a balance of probabilities might be your first hurdle. For example, speeding, you still have to prove the case beyond a reasonable doubt, but they call that a strict liability offence and then there are certain other POA offences, as I understand it, that are absolute liability. On parking, for example, you might have a bit of a constitutional challenge with it, but they are moving towards speeding radar and that sort of thing in the province and that's going to have its own constitutional hurdle. So there's always a lot of room to have a charter specialist look at the legislation before it's passed.
I do agree to an extent that having an absolute liability offence would be good in principle, but there are some problems. The Criminal Code would cover it because there's a specific part in it that would give federal jurisdiction. Something like this, I think, should have a federal response to it and then be vehemently prosecuted in some of the bigger jurisdictions where there is a gun problem.
As to your section 100 query, prohibition orders, as I understand it, under the Criminal Code your fire acquisition certificate is automatically revoked upon being ordered into one of these, so you wouldn't have one when you go. I understand there is a liaison with these gun dealers, the legitimate ones, the one who are registered, and with the police to have checks on these people. I'm not sure if it's mandated -- I don't think it is -- by provincial legislation to make sure that everyone has a doublecheck to make sure there are no bogus FACs going around or forgeries thereof. A province-wide registry on a computer network that gun stores, hardware stores could access would be an idea too, and that could be something that I think could be companion legislation that would be legal if it was provincial legislation.
Mr Charles Harnick (Willowdale): Mr Barry, we have before us this provincial private member's act called An Act to control the Purchase and Sale of Ammunition, and it sets out certain prohibitions for the purchase and sale of ammunition and it prescribes fines for people who contravene the act. One section after the offence section says, "A judge who convicts a person of an offence under subsection (1) shall, if it is the person's second offence or a subsequent offence, make an order prohibiting the person from selling ammunition from the premises" etc.
First of all, my understanding is, if this act is to become law, it would be regulated by the Provincial Offences Act. Am I right?
Mr Barry: That's correct. Definitely.
Mr Harnick: My understanding, as well, is that the vast majority of charges under the Provincial Offences Act, although it doesn't have to be this way, are dealt with by justices of the peace. Am I right about that?
Mr Barry: I'd say about 90% of them in Ontario.
Mr Harnick: Would you not agree with me that when we are dealing with a bill which is a form of gun control in a sense, if we're dealing with regulating the purchase and sale of ammunition, that it would not be the best idea to deal with this kind of an offence, a gun-control-in-essence offence, before a provincial offences court or a justice of the peace?
Mr Barry: I know a lot of justices of the peace, so that's a tough question. A lot of them are very --
Mr Harnick: I don't say that in a way that should be construed to denigrate the abilities of a justice of the peace, but what we are dealing with here is gun control, a very serious matter, that if you look into the bill very closely you'd almost say is overlapping into federal criminal jurisdiction. What I fear is that if you have an act like this, it means that the sections that you're pointing out to us, sections 90, 79, 80 and 81, all of those sections might be overlooked if we can simply send somebody before a justice of the peace.
Mr Barry: As you know, for a provincial court judge you have to be a lawyer for 10 years, and a lot of them are vastly longer at the bar of Ontario than that period. I suppose it's a question as to the type of educational program you'd have if this amendment came out. For example, I believe Judge Lapkin is the one who supervises the province's justices of the peace, and there would have to be a very comprehensive educational program.
There's a provision in the Provincial Offences Act that on consent of both parties, a judge can hear the matter. For example, in occupational health and safety when there have been some deaths, some of the mining disasters in the province, the adjudication of the trials has been done by a provincial court, because of some of the complex issues and some of the evidentiary issues. What you say there could stem out of inquests in deaths of people too, and among the criminal charges of murder you could have some of those as --
Mr Harnick: My concern is that if we now have really what is a regulatory provincial act that all of a sudden takes one of the elements of gun control and puts it before a justice of the peace, we're dealing with an issue that is of such a serious nature that I'm concerned that it's easier to just do it this way and avoid the provincial court and avoid the gun control sanctions of the Criminal Code, because this is neater, it's cleaner, it's cheaper, it's faster, and all of a sudden we're going to start belittling the issue of gun control rather than taking the Criminal Code and using it and really making an effort, as the previous presenter indicated, to deal with strict enforcement of gun control. Do you see where I'm coming from?
Mr Barry: I think a lot of that has to be with education, but you have a good point about some of the issues and being familiar with the Criminal Code, which probably has to be looked into probably a little bit more.
The Chair: Thank you, Mr Barry, for the contribution you made to this committee and for taking the time at short notice to come before us.
The committee adjourned at 1729.