CONTROL OF AMMUNITION AND COMMUNITY-BASED CRIME PREVENTION INITIATIVES
CHIEF PROVINCIAL FIREARMS OFFICE
CONTENTS
Monday 6 June 1994
Control of ammunition and community-based crime prevention initiatives
Katherine Swinton
Anthony Doob
Paul Mullin
Chief Provincial Firearms Office
Henry Vanwyk, chief provincial firearms officer
STANDING COMMITTEE ON ADMINISTRATION OF JUSTICE
*Chair / Président: Marchese, Rosario (Fort York ND)
*Acting Chair / Président suppléant: Bisson, Gilles (Cochrane South/-Sud ND)
*Vice-Chair / Vice-Président: Harrington, Margaret H. (Niagara Falls ND)
*Akande, Zanana L. (St Andrew-St Patrick 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:
Runciman, Robert W. (Leeds-Grenville PC) for Mr Tilson
Wessenger, Paul (Simcoe Centre ND) for Ms Harrington
Clerk / Greffière: Bryce, Donna
Staff / Personnel: McNaught, Andrew, research officer, Legislative Research Service
The committee met at 1601 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.
KATHERINE SWINTON
The Chair (Mr Rosario Marchese): We have here University of Toronto faculty of law professor Katherine Swinton, with whom we will be beginning. Welcome.
Ms Katherine Swinton: Thank you for the invitation to appear before the standing committee. My area of academic expertise is Canadian constitutional law, so my remarks address Ontario's constitutional capacity to implement certain measures related to the sale of ammunition, and I would say much less the community-based crime prevention initiatives. I've really mostly talked about the sale of ammunition.
Even within the field of constitutional law, in 15 minutes, I'm going to be more specific than the whole Constitution. I'm going to focus mainly on the distribution of powers between the federal and provincial governments in the Constitution Act, 1867, rather than the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms or aboriginal rights. Though arguments could be made with regard to the latter two areas, I think the big issue will be the distribution of powers. Let me begin with a little overview of the distribution of powers in general under the Canadian Constitution. My apologies if this is all very familiar.
Under the Constitution Act, 1867, the provincial legislatures and the federal Parliament are each given jurisdiction to enact certain laws with regard to certain classes of subjects. These powers are said to be exclusive; that is, neither can enact a law characterized as falling within the powers assigned to the other level of government.
In practical terms, there is often a great deal of overlap between federal and provincial regulatory activity despite this reference to exclusivity, as laws may have, to use the constitutional term, a "double aspect"; that is, they may have features that can bring them within both federal and provincial areas of jurisdiction.
Most important for your area of inquiry is the degree to which the federal jurisdiction to enact laws under the criminal law power will constrain Ontario.
Under section 91(27) of the Constitution Act, Parliament has the exclusive authority to enact laws with respect to "the criminal law, except the constitution of courts of criminal jurisdiction, but including the procedure in criminal matters." That I think will be the major area of discussion, though there is another possible area of concern which I will call the territorial constraint on provincial jurisdiction; that is, the degree to which the province can regulate matters that fall outside the territorial boundaries of Ontario. But let me focus on the criminal law power first.
This power allows the federal Parliament to enact the Criminal Code and measures like environmental regulations and consumer product standards. Generally, the courts find a law to be within that federal jurisdiction if it meets two tests: one, that it has the form of a criminal law, that is, it's got a prohibition and a penalty; and secondly, it has a criminal law purpose -- public safety, public order, security, public health, to name a few.
The provinces do not have the power to enact criminal laws as such, although they do have the authority to enact a wide range of regulatory standards in the public interest. They also, as you no doubt know, have the power to attach penalties to validly enacted provincial laws under the Constitution.
Much of this legislation that is regulatory of areas of public interest falls within the power to legislate with regard to property and civil rights in the province under section 92(13) of our Constitution, but also provincial laws deal with the administration of justice and matters of a merely local or private nature in the province. Thus, provinces have successfully been able to pass laws dealing, to name a few examples, with film censorship, a short-term ban on all public demonstrations in Montreal, liquor control laws -- obviously, in earlier times there were prohibition laws enacted by the provinces that were valid -- and restrictions on nude dancing in establishments licensed under provincial liquor licensing laws.
In each case, the province's law was upheld by the Supreme Court of Canada on the basis that the province was regulating an area of business activity or a matter within provincial jurisdiction, not trying to trespass on the criminal law power by punishing antisocial or immoral conduct.
In the cases I've mentioned, not by name but by example, where the provincial laws were upheld, and in other cases where the provinces' laws were struck down under the Constitution, the courts have looked closely to see whether you could characterize the provincial law as a criminal law, the kind of law that the federal government should be enacting under its jurisdiction. I think it's fair to say, and I know my students would back me up on this, that drawing the line at times between the federal criminal law power and the provincial penal power or regulatory power hasn't been easy to do. In some cases the provincial laws have been regarded as criminal law. Two recent examples: Calgary had a law which was struck down which tried to control street prostitution. By banning people from being on the streets for purposes of prostitution, that was held to be criminal law and therefore invalid. More recently, Nova Scotia tried to limit access to abortions by providing they could only be done in hospitals licensed under the licensing regime, and the Supreme Court of Canada last fall said that they could not do that, that they were trying to enact criminal law in relation to abortion, not merely regulating women's safety and health, which would be valid provincial concerns.
I repeat again, perhaps because I know my students say this, that finding the line between a valid provincial regulatory initiative and a criminal law hasn't been easy. When I try to generalize, I think I would say the following: The closer the law seems to be to the traditional areas of criminal law concern, the more vulnerable it looks. Prostitution and abortion look more like criminal laws, and the judicial antennae seem to come up when you see those of kinds of concerns by the provinces.
In addition, the more the province looks like it's trying to fill a perceived gap in the federal criminal regime, the more vulnerable the provincial law is under the Constitution. I'm not going to say it's automatically invalid, but as I say, there's a concern when you see the provinces moving into areas where the criminal law seems usually to be used and where there's debate about its efficacy.
Let me turn more specifically to your committee's concerns. I understand you want to talk about and examine the province's jurisdiction to deal with the sale and purchase of ammunition. It is difficult in the abstract to talk about what the province can do. As a constitutional lawyer I feel much more confident talking about jurisdiction when I have a piece of legislation or a fact situation to deal with, so I'm going to focus a little more directly on the proposed bill that you have before you.
I think there's a good argument that this proposed Bill 151 which I was given would be within the jurisdiction of the province, particularly if it were understood that it was directed to purchases and sales within the province of Ontario. The reason I say that is that a province has constitutional restrictions on its ability to legislate with regard to activities outside the provinces.
Sometimes the provinces can get into extraterritorial regulation, but again, the law starts to become more vulnerable, more open to challenges constitutionally when it tries to regulate purchase and sale outside the province. The way I read the bill, I think that on its face it would probably be interpreted to be dealing with purchase and sale in the province of Ontario. Let me talk about whether that's valid, and then I'll come back to whether you could do more.
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As I've said, the province has general authority to regulate businesses, including safety standards for them. What I think is interesting about your bill is that it doesn't purport to ban the sale of ammunition, nor does it have the effect of banning the sale of ammunition. Rather, I think the argument would be made that it restricts the purchase to those who have a valid reason in law to have ammunition; that is, hunters who have a valid licence or those who have federal permission to acquire a gun because of a firearms acquisition certificate.
Thus, I think you can make the argument that the bill fits within this traditional regulatory framework, since it's trying to restrict access to a dangerous good in the province of Ontario, that is, ammunition, and ensure that it is purchased only by those who have a good reason for having it and some minimal, at least demonstrated competence in handling it safely.
I think you could make a good argument that this is regulating the sale of a dangerous product within the province and falls within that line of cases that has dealt with the regulation of dangerous products. While the analogy is not perfect, I will draw an analogy to the early cases dealing with liquor prohibition where the provinces had extensive jurisdiction, not only to control access to liquor but actually to prohibit its sales because liquor was regarded as a dangerous substance.
There is no doubt that some people would argue with my conclusion that this law could be upheld. I think the reason they would do that is twofold: One is because it's dealing with the sale of ammunition and the second is the fact that the form is prohibitory with a penalty attached in form; that is, you can make an argument it fits within traditional criminal law or that it looks like criminal law. It's got the prohibition on sales, it's got a penalty if you don't obey and it's dealing with ammunition. The argument would be that you're dealing with a traditional area of criminal law: gun control, protection of the public from the use of firearms.
I would assume that someone challenging this bill would say what you're trying to do is supplement the criminal law regime dealing with gun control by making it harder to use guns.
I always think there's some difficulty in predicting what the courts will do in this area, but I believe that the argument this law is invalid would have much more weight were your committee recommending that Ontario ban the purchase of ammunition or come close to a total ban. The closer you go towards that end of a regulatory spectrum, I think the more vulnerable the law would be. But the fact that you're sort of trying to fit this law into a regulation framework, both within the hunting regime in Ontario and the federal gun control legislation I think makes a much stronger argument that Ontario's regulating a retail business activity in Ontario rather than trying to get around the restrictions on the criminal law. I'm sure we'll explore that further in the question period.
Let me just raise a couple of more issues. A further issue raised, not in the bill itself so much but in the motion that I was given, is whether the province could regulate ammunition purchased outside the province and the country. Some might see this as a more problematic exercise of jurisdiction since the provinces can't regulate interprovincial and international trade and commerce under the Constitution. There have been a number of cases which have struck down provincial efforts to control entry of goods when that has been done for competitive purposes.
Again, I think Ontario would have a good legal argument for trying to control entry in this kind of case because I don't get any sense here that you're trying to enhance Ontario's position in the market for ammunition in any way for Ontario's retailers. I think what you're trying to do here is protect the public by controlling access to a dangerous substance. There certainly have been laws which have been upheld which control entry of products which are dangerous to people in the province, or even control extraprovincial activity because it has an impact in the province, an example being the securities area.
That said, that's sort of the legal response. As a step outside my legal role, there may well be very practical problems with Ontario trying to implement any kind of regime to control the purchase and sale of ammunition outside the province. I think we've witnessed with the cigarette purchase issue that it's very hard to control entry of these kinds of products at the border, particularly if other provinces aren't in a cooperative regime, so this may well be an area where you need the cooperation of the federal government or other provinces to have an effective regulatory regime.
I just flag that for you, but I will stop at this point.
There could be other constitutional issues to raise that I haven't addressed. One would be whether the current bill, for example, should be examined for its impact on aboriginal hunting rights. A second issue is whether the bill could be made more stringent in the kinds of sales it controlled, because the more stringent it becomes, the more it may run into what are called paramountcy problems with the federal regime; that is, conflicts between the federal and provincial laws. At this point, I don't think they are an issue, but they could be if you started to change the bills.
I'm going to stop there, and if I can be of help to you in a question-and-answer session, I'd be glad to do so.
Mr Robert Chiarelli (Ottawa West): I think you dealt very succinctly with the issue, and it will certainly be very helpful for us on the committee when we're looking at Bill 151.
You mentioned something about cooperation with the other provinces and the federal government with respect to outside-the-province controls of one type or another. What is the range of cooperation and actions that could be taken cooperatively with the other provinces and the federal government, in your opinion?
Ms Swinton: If the other provinces would pass similar legislation restricting access, it's going to be much more effective, because the danger of this kind of law where you're just regulating purchase and sale in Ontario is that someone could go to Manitoba or Quebec and do an end run on your legislation.
Mr Chiarelli: Are we talking about the enforceability of that provision or about the constitutionality when you say cooperation with the other provinces?
Ms Swinton: That's enforceability as much as anything. I suppose conceivably you could say, "No one shall bring ammunition into the province of Ontario," or at least no Ontario resident. Let's even say we did that because we're trying to protect other residents from their fellow residents. You could put that on the books and you may be able to defend it constitutionally, but I don't know how you would really enforce it when you think how easy it would be to conceal ammunition in a car as you drove back and forth, let's say, to Manitoba. I admit I'm moving over towards sort of the practicalities of this.
Mr Robert W. Runciman (Leeds-Grenville): This doesn't deal with the constitutionality, but the legislation doesn't define "ammunition," and I'm wondering if from a legal perspective you see any problem with that. You could be looking at arrows and bolts for crossbows, BBs, pellets for pellet guns. Essentially, I'm wondering if the legislation, as written, is enforceable without some kind of definition of "ammunition." It's too broad in its scope.
Ms Swinton: With all due respect to whoever drafted this, there are ways I could see would make this a better law for purposes of enforcement and reliability, if you could do things like define "ammunition" and make it clear what the geographical reach of it is. To the extent you don't, you know that you're going to litigate it, that you're going to create uncertainty for the prosecution and so on. It makes it tougher for the police to enforce. It probably is a worthwhile exercise to say: "What is it we're trying to get at? Is it the crossbow or is it guns we're trying to get at?" So let's define guns and ammunition used for guns and deal with that. If you're really trying to make this a better law, I would suggest you might put both the definition sections in.
You'd want perhaps the definition of the Outdoors Card -- I had to learn what that was -- and so on. You'd want to put the firearms acquisition certificate as defined in the Criminal Code from time to time: those kinds of things that don't necessarily change the thrust of the bill but make it more enforceable.
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Mr Runciman: Yes, there are people who purchase ammunition who normally don't have an Outdoors Card or an FAC, necessarily; so I'm advised. We'd appreciate your input and any suggestions you feel might strengthen the legislation, as we will have an opportunity to perhaps move amendments during the course of the process.
I share your concern that doing this sort of thing in isolation will ensure that it's extremely difficult to do anything meaningful because of the easy movement of these kinds of products across provincial borders, let alone national borders. My own view is that if we're going to proceed, this should be a national program.
Ms Zanana L. Akande (St Andrew-St Patrick): Professor Swinton, can you expand on the practical problems that you've referred to in the first full sentence on page 7, please?
Ms Swinton: This is with regard to trying to control the bringing of ammunition into the province. When I tried to think about how you would do it, in many ways things like ammunition, like cigarettes, will cross borders just in cars. You've got to figure out, is there any way you can actually stop people's cars, realistically, along Ontario's borders and check for ammunition? If you can't, there's a problem. I must confess that I'm not an expert in the use of the mails for transmitting ammunition, but you might want to ask as a committee, or if you have staff to do the research, if there are ways in which people can import ammunition by mail, by courier, whatever. If there are, can Ontario possibly get a hold on those kinds of importation? If you can't, then you've got a major problem. Those who really want to get ammunition will be able to get it.
Ms Akande: You yourself have referred several times to the possibility of another interpretation as to whose jurisdiction it is and whether in fact it is provincial jurisdiction. While you're giving us your interpretation, at the same time, we ourselves are getting the impression -- am I correct? -- that you're quite certain there will be many others who will have yet another interpretation about this.
Ms Swinton: I think there would be. I would think that if this kind of bill were passed, at some point you would see a constitutional challenge to it. There are some real interests in it. When someone gets charged, let's say the first time they're told they illegally sold the ammunition, I would think they will as one of their defences inevitably say, "You couldn't pass that law anyway, so you can't charge me." While there are lots of cases which have allowed the provinces to enact what you might call in the United States "police power" kind of laws, you still get these ones that come in every so often that create the uncertainty, like when Calgary's prostitution law went down, or the Nova Scotia control on access to abortion.
As a lawyer I can tell you what the court saw as problematic in them, but what I also can anticipate is that what at least some judges would see as a problem here is that you are into an area that the federal government has been in quite strongly, the gun control area. You are arguably trying to make that regime work better by working on the ammunition side when they've been working on the gun side, and you don't have an extensive sort of regulatory framework; this bill looks like it's going to sit there by itself, a little short bill saying, "Don't buy ammunition." It's not like it's stuck in the middle of a hunting and fishing act, where you've got -- having looked at this recently, for my appearance -- a very extensive code of regulation about hunting, but also the use of firearms and bows and arrows and so on in hunting, where you see the much closer tie to provincial jurisdiction.
Putting all that together, I'm sure there would be a challenge.
Mr Chiarelli: If this were a federal bill, do you think it would still be open to challenge constitutionally on the basis that this really is the purchase and sale of goods and it ought not to be regulated as criminal law? Would you anticipate that type of challenge on the flip side?
Ms Swinton: I probably would anticipate somebody will challenge it some time. There's that expression that the constitutional law is the last refuge of the guilty person, so in that sense somebody will probably try it. But I think the courts have accepted sort of a preventive role for the federal government in the area of gun control, and this seems to link up to it so much with, "We've got the guns and we're also going to link up what you use in the gun." I would think they would be on safe ground.
ANTHONY DOOB
The Acting Chair (Mr Gilles Bisson): We'll call our next presenter, from the University of Toronto Centre of Criminology. We have 30 minutes. If you can leave some time at the end for questions, it will be appreciated.
Dr Anthony Doob: I was asked to focus on the issue of community-based crime prevention strategies rather than on firearms or ammunition. You have before you some detailed remarks. I don't plan especially, given that we are running late, on going through them in detail, but they are there for whatever use you may wish to make of them. What I might try to do is to limit the length of my initial remarks to try to put this particular issue of community crime prevention in some kind of context.
The first important point that I would like to make about it is that we don't have in Ontario a major or growing crime problem. We certainly have enough crime to keep us busy, but the assertion that the crime problem is growing or has recently become out of control, I think should be questioned and I think really should not be part of the way in which the committee is thinking of the problem.
We certainly have a problem. There's a serious problem of crime there, it's been there for some time and it's important to address it in a sensible way, but I think we shouldn't address it in the context of its being a crisis, something which is new, something which we have to do something about quickly or things will become much worse. I don't see any evidence of that whatsoever.
The second is that I think it's appropriate that we look at community-based crime prevention initiatives, in part because the criminal justice system is not very good at preventing crime. The criminal justice system, at best, is good at punishing people, but it is less good at changing the level of crime within the community. It's attractive to think that governments can change the nature of crime or can change the amount of crime, but I think we're fooling ourselves if we think that this is going to be an effective way of dealing with it. So looking to crime prevention is certainly the strategy I think many criminologists would suggest.
The third is that I don't think we can forget that there are very real costs of crime prevention, just as there are costs of any kind of intervention at the community or government level. I realize the current economic situation that we find ourselves in in Ontario, but I think we have to realize that we're using thousands, I would argue millions, of dollars ineffectively in the criminal justice system.
One way of getting money for community-based crime prevention initiatives would be to look more carefully at the way in which we're using some of our criminal justice dollars. Our criminal justice dollars are not being used effectively. It's a complex question as to how we might improve the use of these dollars, but certainly there's no question that we're squandering a substantial amount of money in this area. I think we do have money for crime prevention; the question is, how do we go about using it?
There's a tendency, as I've pointed out, for the public to believe that the criminal justice system really is the best way to deal with crime. The first thing we should be addressing is that a deterrent strategy really is, in many ways, a bankrupt strategy within the area of crime prevention and that the criminal justice system, or initiatives even within the community to sort of focus on deterrence, is probably not the most effective way of doing it.
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Kids, young adults, those most responsible for a substantial amount of crime, don't think in a manner which is really consistent with a deterrence model. The process whereby deterrence would be effective really starts with the notion that people are thinking about the consequences. They're assuming there's a reasonable likelihood that they're going to be caught and charged criminally, they have a pretty good idea about what the actual penalty would be and they think they're willing to submit to that penalty, assuming they would be caught. That really isn't the way in which most people are thinking about crimes when they're committing them, if they are thinking about consequences whatsoever. When we're thinking about crime prevention, I think we have to look more into the community.
In my written remarks I have some detailed comments on the report which was released last week called the Violence-Free Schools Policy. I'll leave those largely to your reading, but the main point I would like to make in the context of that policy is that I don't believe at all that this should qualify as something which is a community-based crime initiative. It's in many ways a policy which is in its beginning stages but which unfortunately relies unnecessarily, and I'm afraid ineffectually, on the criminal justice system to do much of its work.
I've detailed many of the problems with one part of that, but in particular I think the problem is that it goes against a community-based crime prevention model in that it dumps many of the problems on to the police automatically without really taking into account the fact that many of these are probably best dealt with within the community or, perhaps more narrowly, within the schools. I personally have more confidence in principals, vice-principals and teachers than is apparent in that particular suggested policy.
I think it's important for us to look within the communities and within the schools and within the larger community for solutions to problems. I don't think the policy that is being proposed in that document, which would require school personnel to call in the police for a large number of events that aren't necessarily events the police can handle very well or that the criminal justice can handle very well, is the appropriate way to go.
In general, I think the problem that we have to face and that this committee is going to have to face in the area of crime prevention is that it has to avoid quick-fix solutions. Quick-fix solutions in the criminal justice area tend to be both wasteful and, in many situations, counterproductive.
The usual starting point, or probably the most important starting point, of a crime prevention policy will be one which really defines the problem at a community-based level in careful ways. This means talking not about crime or violence but about the specific problem within that community.
If we're talking about crime or threats or specific kinds of threats which are occurring in a particular location, the questions which I think we should be asking at a community level are really: What form does the problem take or what form does the violence take if it's a violence problem? Where is it taking place? When is it taking place? Is it widespread or is it caused by a smaller number of people? It's those kinds of questions that I think we have to address in looking at crime prevention. It's only when we look at it really at the microlevel, at the local level, at the actual problem level, that we're going to be able to find solutions.
Part of the difficulty is that there are many solutions out there for crime prevention but those solutions have to be tailored to the particular problems. If one community has a problem of vandalism, or if a community has a problem of violence, it isn't necessarily the same vandalism or violence problem that another community has. It may be caused by different kinds of people or by different kinds of situations.
The first important suggestion which I think criminologists would have in this area is to look carefully at it and look to the range of solutions possible. Some of those may involve education and understanding on the part of the potential perpetrators of these acts as to what it is that they're doing and what the consequences of it are. Some of them may involve issues of deterrence, usually in terms of apprehension. Some of them may involve trying to find out why the people are misbehaving, are causing crime in the way in which they are, and looking for more basic solutions.
It doesn't necessarily mean that the only solutions are at the structural level of society. I'm not suggesting either that those are beyond the call of this particular committee. In fact, I think they are things that this committee should be looking at. But one can look beyond issues of economic inequality, for example, to crime prevention strategies which have a more immediate kind of impact.
The impacts of crime prevention strategies, though, are unlikely to be completely short-term. One has to look to the long term. One has to look at putting in place policies and strategies which in the long run, over a long period of time, are going to have an impact.
In my written remarks I use two examples, one on drinking and driving and the other on wife assault, both of which, it seems to me, we're beginning to address or we have addressed over the past 10 or 20 years and we're beginning to see in different ways. The solutions to reducing these particular problems are really long-term, and I think in general what we have to learn is that that's going to be the case more often than we would like it to be. It would be attractive to think this committee could recommend legislation and the Legislature could pass legislation which would deal effectively with a particular problem. I don't think it's that easy. If we look for those kinds of short-term quick fixes, I think we're really fooling ourselves.
We have to work at the local level. We have to identify the specific problems we need to address. We have to look to solutions to these and to remember that these solutions are going to be effective only if there's a long-term commitment to the process and a long-term commitment to trying to find effective solutions within the context of financial constraints and other kinds of constraints on what's available to us.
I am happy to expand on any of the remarks I've made or answer any questions that you might have.
Ms Christel Haeck (St Catharines-Brock): I want to thank you for your presentation. I've been reading parts that you haven't necessarily highlighted in your verbal remarks and I appreciate the comments overall.
You've been in one sense careful not to highlight one thing or another. You talk about examining a problem community by community and really trying to hybridize a solution there, and that's a very interesting point.
Looking at it from a province-wide situation rather than community by community, what would be your priority? What would you see is the first thing, an important thing to undertake? I realize that this legislation is not necessarily something that you think would have the desired results.
Dr Doob: I think there are two things. One is that I would listen to the community's definition of problems, because communities will have a wide range of different kinds of problems, and for those problems what is salient for one community may not be salient for another.
In general, obviously violence is of most concern to most Canadians, and the problem, to some extent, with the way in which we run our criminal justice system is that we're focusing our policies on violence even though a substantial amount of the criminal justice system's problems aren't violence. Nevertheless, I think that in terms of crime prevention, it's violence that we should be focusing on. But when I say that it's violence, as I said, I think we have to look at it at a local level.
When one talks to people who are responsible for certain kinds of property, for example, it seems to me that the problems of violence in the school are really quite different from the problems of violence in a shopping mall. It may look the same at certain levels, that certain people are being pushed or hit or threatened or whatever, but the kinds of solutions that are available to the schools and to the owners of a shopping mall are really quite different.
In that context, you have to say, well, what is it that's occurring? The problem of school violence itself, of course, may vary enormously from school to school. I think we have to understand that, and what I would hope is in the province's policy, which obviously isn't supposed to be coming into effect until more than a year from now, one possibility would be to allow flexibility on a community basis in order to figure out how best to deal with it. If the schools can deal with certain kinds of serious matters very well within the school without calling in the police, I think we're probably likely to be better off in dealing with it. So I would focus on the local interests of those people involved.
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Mr Runciman: I tried to get through your brief quickly as well. I appreciate what you're saying about the ammunition issue, which is what we're dealing with today, and an element that you raise in respect to the last paragraph: "More importantly, of course, what it may do is divert attention, time, effort, and resources from more effective means of controlling crime."
I agree with you in that respect, and you raise the issue of resources, which I think is an interesting one. I'm not sure that there is enough attention paid around this place in respect to resources, and I look at that in terms of the costs of any piece of legislation or any government initiative. I think that we should have some means of assessing what the costs are if indeed this sort of initiative becomes law. How do we police it? What kind of manpower requirements will be necessitated by this legislation? Are we going to be diverting police from more perhaps meaningful -- that's obviously a subjective judgement -- purposes in their daily duties? Those kinds of questions I think should be addressed in respect to every initiative undertaken by governments, given the scarcity of tax dollars available. Do you have any response to that?
Dr Doob: I'd agree with you. The way in which I see it really is in terms of opportunity cost. Let us say that we're going to be doing something which would cost $1 million. The easiest example that I can think of is if we do something which has the effect of putting, let's say, young offenders into custody. We're talking about, in this province, roughly $200 to $300 per day per kid, so we're talking about somewhere between $70,000 and $100,000 per kid per year. You take 10 to 15 of those kids and you're talking about $1 million. So one question we can ask is, if a policy is going to put 10 or 15 kids into custody, might we be able to use that million dollars more effectively in some other way? If it's going to cost $1 million to implement something having to do with ammunition, might we be able to find some other way to do it?
My impression is that there are lots of groups in the communities that are either dealing with victims or dealing with crime prevention strategies which can deal with those kinds of problems better. Using the example of education, my guess is that the desire on the part of many boards to dump problems into the criminal justice system is largely that they don't feel they have the resources to handle it.
Mr Runciman: As a criminologist, how much exposure you do have to front-line police officers? Do you meet with them on a regular basis?
Dr Doob: I certainly teach a number of them. I see them in a number of different contexts. I think that part of the issue that the front-line police officers may have is, again, the paper burden, the additional responsibility. It's a lot being put on to the police which really has relatively little to do with direct front-line policing.
Mr Runciman: I don't want to get into a debate with you. I share your views in respect to the ammunition; I have some serious difficulty with some of the other comments you make, your flat statements of fact about how few people, particularly young people, go through a process of considering the implications of committing an offence. I think, given my discussions with police officers and what I've witnessed on television in the news, that's not the case. Certainly many young offenders tend to be very much aware of the limited implications for many of them in terms of the commission of a crime, and I have a great deal of difficulty with that approach.
Some of the other matters you're talking about, that tougher penalties are effective deterrents: I think it's effective in the sense that we get some of these people off the street. I think there's an instance I heard in the news today where a two-time murderer had been out and was just arrested this weekend in a shooting in British Columbia. He'd murdered somebody in Canada and murdered a police officer in the United States, and our parole system had allowed this individual back into the community.
I think it's those extreme cases that we have to be able to deal with, and that's why the public is outraged with instances like that. We have to address them, and I'm concerned that people in your profession tend to put too much onus on the other side of the argument in terms of our ability to rehabilitate. I think you also have to understand where the general public is coming from in respect of the concern about criminal activity.
Dr Doob: I think the issue is not whether the criminal justice system as a whole can act as a deterrent. If we're talking about, let's say, penalties for kids or penalties for adults, I think the issue is whether three years versus one year or two years versus four years is going to make a difference in terms of whether or not they will be likely to commit the offence.
In terms of the other issue, I differentiate between deterrence, which is suggesting that by having these penalties out there, people will not commit the acts so as to avoid being penalized, in particular by incapacitation. I think most criminologists would agree with you that there are some people -- young people and adults -- whom we really don't know how to deal with and we don't have any good solutions for and the best we can come up with is simply locking them up to incapacitate them. I think the purpose behind doing it is clear: We're saying this person is so dangerous that we have to keep them in custody. I think the issue of parole and sentencing is something we'd probably best leave to another time, though.
Mr Chiarelli: Your comments raise questions in my mind about where we're going as legislators. If I can just refer very briefly to some of your comments here at the beginning, you say, "They are obvious points, but at the same time are points that are easily forgotten in the desire to do something relevant about crime."
First, it is not clear to me that we have a major crime problem here in Canada generally, or in Ontario specifically. I would say that, from a legislator's point of view, it appears to me that it is very clear that we have a problem. If we don't have a problem in reality, then we certainly have a problem with public perception of what's going on.
I've been a member now for somewhere around seven years. When I was first elected, we looked at public opinion polls and it would usually show something about the economy as the first issue -- jobs, unemployment or something like that -- and almost always in second position, and sometimes in first position, was the question of the environment. Over the last several years, we find that the issues of violence or crime or safety in our communities is way up on the scale compared to where it was.
I would like to know from you, from your expert observation, what is happening out there that makes people tell us that crime and violence are a very serious problem. When I talk to Allan Rock, the federal Justice minister, he tells me he's got to respond to the public by tougher gun control and by amending the Young Offenders Act to make it tougher in certain respects, to address concerns of the public. What are we misreading, if there's no problem with respect to crime in Ontario?
Dr Doob: I'd like to back up a little bit in answering that. I think that sentence which you quoted has to be read in the context of the next sentence, which is, "We...have enough crime to keep us busy," and we have a problem there in the sense that there's something which we can do. There are certainly countries which have lower crime rates than we do.
What I'm afraid of and my concern is that most people I speak to assume that in the last five years or 10 years or 15 years, somehow crime has gotten out of control. I don't see evidence of that. If you look at homicide rates, for example, in this country, they've been more or less stable since the mid-1970s; they go up one year and down the next. There's a lot of variability but I don't see evidence that things are dramatically worse or in any serious way worse than they were a short time ago.
I would agree with you completely, however, that the perception is that crime is increasing. I'm not exactly sure why that's the case. There are certainly some indicators which would give you the impression that it is. For example, if you look at youth crime, the number of violent cases coming before the courts has increased dramatically over the last 15 years. That seems to be a quite sensible response on the part of the police in dealing with violence. If you look at the way in which the police handled violence in the early 1980s, they tended to handle it more informally, and as the public has been pushing them and everybody to deal with it in a more formal way, more of these cases are coming before the courts.
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I'm not convinced that arguing about whether or not crime is increasing or staying the same is really relevant, though. I think there are clearly problems. Crime is not evenly distributed across our society. There are certainly parts of our community which are more affected by crime than others, and I think in that context we should be addressing the issue.
The issue, for example, of violence in schools is clearly something that people are concerned about. We should understand more about the nature of that, and one part of the policy which I would applaud is that we have increased reporting so that we know more about how it's distributed and the nature of it.
What I'm suggesting, though, is that there's a tendency to assume that crime is increasing and to assume that the best response to this crime is criminal justice system intervention. In that sense, what I would like to suggest to the committee is that the focus on community-based crime prevention initiatives is in fact the appropriate focus and for it not to get diverted into seeing the criminal justice system alone as the solution to problems of crime, whatever level they may be.
Mr Chiarelli: We obviously have to get to the root causes and address them, but there certainly must be a place for the criminal justice system to play, and maybe an improved place to play.
That leads me to the next point with respect to the ammunition bill. As you are aware, there was a drive-by shooting in Ottawa, which was committed by a number of young offenders, or alleged young offenders. They had illegal guns, but they had store-bought ammunition.
I spoke to the owner-proprietor-manager of a hunting and fishing store, located in my riding of Ottawa West, which is an urban riding, and I very specifically asked, "Would you feel comfortable selling ammunition to a 13-, 14- or 15-year-old, no questions asked?" He said, "Yes. I think that should be legal, it is legal, and that's the way the law should remain."
Are you telling me that the province of Ontario should not be concerned about the owner of a store that sells ammunition feeling it perfectly okay to sell ammunition to a 13-, 14- or 15-year-old? I know that 13- or 14- or 15-year-old has had some problems if he or she wants to go in and buy ammunition for an illegal purpose, but given the fact that you have an owner of a store who is perfectly willing and wants it to remain okay and legal to sell to a 13-year-old, do you think it might be appropriate to have a law that says, "No, you've got to be a certain age to purchase ammunition," and there should be certain precautions which the owner of a store takes in selling to a youthful person such as this?
Dr Doob: I certainly am not in favour of selling ammunition to young people. My point, however, was a slightly different one, and that is that if people are able to get illegal guns, I find it difficult to believe that they wouldn't also be able to get illegal ammunition. So my concern about focusing on ammunition is that it may divert us from trying to deal with the problems as they are.
We're having an enormous difficulty, obviously, dealing with control of firearms themselves. It seems to me that it's going to be much, much more difficult to regulate the use of firearms by way of ammunition than it is to regulate firearms themselves.
The previous witness before your committee pointed out the problems we've had with regulating cigarettes, and I think the circumstance here is not too different, that we're looking to regulate something which is very easy to obtain, so that what we're really doing is focusing on obviously a dangerous article, but I'm just not at all confident that by focusing on ammunition we're going to do anything to reduce the number of crimes committed with firearms.
Mr Chiarelli: If we're not distracted by that, you would buy into it?
Dr Doob: I think the issue of regulating who it is who buys various things under various circumstances, I would agree with that. I agree with the idea that we shouldn't be selling cigarettes to young persons as well, even though kids may be able to get cigarettes in other illegal ways. What I would not like us to do would be to walk away from this, having passed some regulations having to do with the sale of ammunition, and say, "See, we've done something about crime," because I wouldn't be at all convinced that we would have.
The Acting Chair: Thank you for your presentation.
PAUL MULLIN
The Acting Chair: Next we'll be calling the Metropolitan Toronto Police Force firearms registration unit, Detective Paul Mullin.
Just for the purpose of the committee -- I know the committee knows already, but for the other people here watching and for the sake of the record -- what we're talking about here today is not necessarily legislation. We're talking about a motion in regard to the role that the government of Ontario can play in the control of the retail sales of ammunition, the private sale of ammunition and the ammunition purchased outside the province and the country.
Go ahead, sir. You have 30 minutes.
Mr Paul Mullin: Good afternoon. I am a detective with the Metropolitan Toronto Police Force and have been for the last 30 years. I am presently assigned to the registration unit of the Metropolitan Toronto Police which causes the investigation of firearms, firearms offences, the registration of all restricted weapons, as well as the recommendation and the investigations of the firearms acquisition certificate.
Prior to my posting to that position, I was a firearms officer with the major crime unit and also was involved in the investigation of firearms. I have been also assigned to divisional detachments, at which time I investigated crimes. Most of my investigations had to do with crimes of violence and crimes with firearms.
A little personal history: I am a hunter. I'm a gun collector. I'm a target shooter. I've represented Canada internationally in shooting. I've obtained the highest recommendations and have been accredited several points in standings in the international shooting level. Also, I'd be the first one to say, yes, we do need legislation dealing with gun control; yes, we do need legislation dealing with ammunition, whether it's at the provincial or the federal level.
Just to go through a little bit of history in dealing with ammunition, I draw your attention to the article. Ever since the beginning of time, man has found some way or tried to find some way to annihilate his fellow man. One thing I want to state straight: A firearm is meant to kill. That's all it's meant for; that's what it's designed for. It's from that designation that we've now evolved to the target end of it. However, back in the beginning of history, a firearm was issued for one purpose and one purpose only: to kill.
In dealing with firearms, we go back to the 11th century to the invention of gunpowder. The Chinese invented gunpowder. It was they who introduced the first firearm. We believe it's around 1130 AD that the Chinese invented a firearm. It was bamboo or paper wrapped with metal and powder was packed in the charge.
No matter how you look at it, ammunition consists of four basic parts: the casing, the primer, the powder and the bullet. It's important that you remember that any definition that you draw has to incorporate those four ingredients. In order for a cartridge to be discharged the primer has to be detonated. I have explained each one of these in the proposal.
I draw your attention to the large number of ammunition manufacturers. Canada only has one known, major manufacturer: IVI. However, there is a lucrative market out there for reloaded ammunition or those that want to load ammunition. That's not even counting those individuals who load ammunition and sell it to club members or other individuals at a minimal profit or even sometimes at a great profit.
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In dealing with ammunition, let's draw attention to, first of all, the fact that a gun is a firearm. A firearm is nothing unless it has got ammunition attached to it. The ammunition, the bullet, does the killing. If the firearm was just a firearm with no ammunition, it can't do any harm or injury. Once you inject the bullets, then you have a problem; that's when the injuries or deaths occur.
We in the city of Toronto, the Metropolitan Toronto area, are faced with a plague of imported illegal firearms that have come across the border. The police, with search warrants, are trying very hard to gather up these guns. As you're aware, it's almost impossible. However, when we find these firearms they're usually in the hands of drug dealers or people that were known to us as drug dealers, and of course there are the others that belong to normal citizens who smuggled them across for their own use.
But I'd like to draw your attention to the firearms that come across for drug dealers. They're a cheaply made firearm. They've been used in homicides and robberies. They're a calibre called .380. Numerous times officers have executed search warrants to premises for drugs where they have found just ammunition and no firearm. As we know, in the community the firearms are lent, they're borrowed, they're even rented to different individuals. It's up to that person to supply his own ammunition. So if there's a piece of legislation to curtail the purchase of ammunition or even the possession of it, then we have a charge even though we find the ammunition without the firearm.
Also, in dealing with the ammunition -- and when I talk about ammunition, I'm talking about the components also -- at the same time the person is apprehended for use of or possession thereof, not only can we ask for a penalty, I'm suggesting on behalf of the chief that we could have a prohibition order on that person dealing with ammunition, which prohibits him from ever possessing it or from possessing it for a lengthy period of time.
An ammunition permit could be issued by the province. There are a lot of people out there that all they do is collect ammunition. They're not hunters, they're not gun collectors, they're not shooters. All they do is collect ammunition. They would be happy to purchase a permit to allow them to purchase their ammunition. A hunter has no problems, because he's got his Outdoors Card. It could be attached to his Outdoors Card, just a little piece of a certificate; on the FAC, a certificate to the FAC, very simple. However, make it so it's for possession.
If a dealer sells ammunition, it should be his responsibility, and this is something that could be administered by the chief provincial firearms office, that he has to record all sales of ammunition and to whom. There should be an age limit placed on the person purchasing ammunition, which I draw at 18, which falls in line with the Criminal Code. The Criminal Code says that there are also minors; if he's got a minor's permit, he has an FAC, similar to a minor's permit. He can get a certificate attached to that which allows him to purchase his ammunition.
I draw your attention to the money that could be saved by insurance companies paying out for windows, streetlights etc in the urban community, damage done by pellet guns. If we were to control the sale of pellets and BBs, I'm sure we could save thousands of dollars dealing with the damage to property.
Ammunition is controlled by the Criminal Code in some levels. There's a control of ammunition out of handguns which is penetrating body armour. It's a prohibited weapon -- nobody can possess; incendiary ammunition -- nobody can possess. The Criminal Code also makes reference to the fact of the safe storage of ammunition, that it cannot be stored with a firearm. However, the Criminal Code does not say who can possess, other than the fact if you're prohibited from owning a firearm, it includes ammunition or other explosives.
In closing, I'd just like to mention again that, if ammunition was curtailed, it could possibly be that some of these shootings that we have in our community could be curtailed. I'm opening for any questions.
Mr Chiarelli: Mr Mullin, I assume you were in the room when the previous witness presented his brief.
Mr Mullin: I was, sir.
Mr Chiarelli: If I can just refresh our memory on it, in terms of ammunition sales, he said:
"It may make you feel good for you to think you have done something about gun deaths. I personally do not imagine that this is an area where legislation will make me safer. More importantly, of course, what it may do is to divert attention, time, effort and resources from more effective means of controlling crime."
What's your response to that type of statement and that perspective?
Mr Mullin: Well, sir, we all know what happened at Just Desserts. That was a legal gun that had been cut down, possibly stolen from a gun collection, possibly purchased legally by some means. However, where did the ammunition come from? The ammunition is the one that did the death, not the gun. The gun was just the object that caused the ammunition to be expelled.
If we can control the ammunition it's possible that we control some of these deaths and injuries. Yes, maybe that person could still be alive if he hadn't gone out and purchased that ammunition for that gun, because right now you don't need a permit to purchase ammunition. Any person could go to the store and buy anything from a .22-calibre cartridge up to a .50-calibre cartridge, whether it's a handgun or a rifle. You can also go out and purchase your shotgun shells.
Mr Chiarelli: Do I understand you correctly, you would prefer to see the legislation ban the illegal ownership or possession of ammunition as well?
Mr Mullin: No, what I said is that we have permits to possess ammunition. Let us go out and get our permits, then that will allow us to go and purchase our ammunition at the quantity we require. But the criminal who goes in and obtains a firearm illegally still has to purchase that ammunition. I draw your attention to some of the handguns, a .380 calibre or 9 millimetre, the ammunition in a retail store sells for roughly $20 a box or greater. That's going to hamper that person, unless he's going to go out and import it illegally with his handgun.
Mr Runciman: Sergeant, you were talking about smuggled weapons. How big a problem is that, at least in the Metro area where you serve? Are you aware how significant a problem it is?
Mr Mullin: It's a plague, sir. I am quite aware of it. If you read the newspaper on the weekend, the Sun, you read about Larry Braxton. That was my case, I initiated that investigation. We have a dealer down in the United States who has been charged by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, plus two Canadians. The two Canadians are charged with importing illegal firearms into Canada. The dealer down there is charged under their legislation for not recording the sale of firearms.
Mr Runciman: You say these are mostly Saturday- night specials, these little .38s?
Mr Mullin: They are a cheaply made, newly manufactured firearm. They're a semiautomatic. They hold seven shots. They're a .380 calibre; .38 is equivalent to the .38 special that the police now carry.
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Mr Runciman: Do you see any Uzis, the Israeli automatic weapon? Do you see much of that around?
Mr Mullin: The Uzi is basically in the hands of a gun collector who is grandfathered to that weapon.
Mr Runciman: Okay. So you don't see many of them in the hands of the criminal element.
Mr Mullin: Not the Uzis. I would draw your attention to the AK-47, which is a Russian-manufactured assault rifle that we are starting to find in the community, to be used by the criminal element.
Mr Runciman: I understand your support for this resolution in the sense there's an attempt to do something here, but I wonder how realistic it is. You were talking about positives. If smuggled weapons are a plague, it seems to me the argument is made that it's going to be a heck of a lot easier to smuggle ammunition. It's much easier to conceal ammunition than cigarettes, for example, so I don't see how you're going to resolve that issue by simply saying that only certain people can acquire it. I see that as a real problem and a real weakness.
You mentioned too that the responsibility for this should be left with the chief provincial firearms office to control the sale of ammunition. I'd like to know what the implications of that are. How do you control it? What's the paperwork burden here? Also, how do you police it?
I raised this issue with the previous witness about the cost implications of these kinds of things. There's not only a direct cost to the taxpayers but there's a cost as well associated with the time for a police officer, supposedly, or some sort of bylaw enforcement officer, if you're going to delegate these powers to the municipality -- I don't know if you can legally -- but there are a lot of implications to this sort of initiative that have to be measured. Governments have failed to measure those kinds of economic implications as well.
There's a red tape implication I would think, and police officers are overburdened with red tape now, I think most of you would argue. So there's a pretty heavy downside to this as well that we should be looking at.
Mr Mullin: There is a downside, sir. However, the simplicity of it all is that when the sales clerk does make a sale of ammunition, all it requires of that sales clerk is to first of all ask for the permit, if there is an ammunition permit. He records that on the sales slip, the sales slip is kept by the store and the person walks out with his ammunition. It's a very simple procedure, in my opinion.
The downside of it all is, if we catch somebody who's got ammunition and he has not got a permit, then he can be charged. Although it's a provincial act, we still have something on that person, and yes, we can go for a prohibition if the act goes that way.
But it's the simplicity. I believe the chief provincial firearms office can draw up some type of simple procedure, some type of ledger that is kept, ie, the chief provincial firearms registry that they keep for firearms.
Ms Akande: Thank you very much for your report and your contribution. I think some of the issues that I want to speak to have already been raised by some of the other members so I'll cut it very, very short.
I was concerned about the fact that the very process that you're suggesting around the sale of ammunition and the permit process would in fact take a great deal of funds, not only in terms of implementing the system but in enforcing it once it was in place. I wanted to bring to your attention something I had read in the statistics: that many violent crimes -- unfortunately, final violent crimes in that they result in people's deaths -- are not committed by long-term criminals but are the acts of emotions of people who select to do this on a one-time and final basis.
I'm saying to myself, if we're going to put a great deal of funds around permits for the sale of ammunition and enforcing to see that only those who have these permits buy it, we still haven't controlled the criminal element who can get this illegally, I've no doubt. We've almost created, by creating this system, another form of illegal trafficking, and that is now in ammunition, yet we haven't any real confidence that we've reduced the number of crimes.
I somehow think the system that you're suggesting would not only be expensive but distracting to the real problem at hand. Could you help me with that?
Mr Mullin: I know where you're coming from. However, I have to disagree in some respect because, being out in the community, especially in the urban community, you see in different places where you go young people, young offenders who have got possession of pellet guns. You do not require an FAC to purchase a pellet gun. You can go to your local Canadian Tire store and purchase a pellet gun, buy a box of pellets, a box of cylinders and you go out and you can do whatever damage you want.
We've often read in newspapers about the number of injuries that happen. Yes, we'd be saving those. We'll leave the control of the firearms to the federal legislation. Let's get hold of the ammunition, because if we can prevent that young person from getting a box of pellets, then we've saved somebody from injury, ie; I draw back to the situation, this latest shooting that took place up at Black Creek and Lawrence, where the person was shot in the mouth with a small-calibre handgun.
Obviously, that ammunition had been purchased somewhere, and if we can try to control it -- let's put it that way: We're going to try and control it. We execute search warrants; we find ammunition on the premises. Okay, who owns the ammunition? Where's the firearm? No firearm. Fine, at least we got an offence that's been committed, straight possession without a permit.
Mr David Winninger (London South): Thank you for coming today. I have a couple of short questions for you. First of all, as a detective on the Metropolitan Toronto Police Force and as an avid target shooter, you probably have extensive contacts. I just wonder whether you had heard any indication that the federal government might be moving to restrict the sale of ammunition.
Mr Mullin: I'm sorry, I can't answer that question. I'm involved in the federal legislation committee. It has nothing to do with ammunition, but I prefer not to answer that question at this time.
Mr Winninger: You'd be in a conflict if you were to answer that question.
Mr Mullin: That is correct.
Mr Winninger: The other question I wanted to ask you to answer is in regard to Professor Doob's paper. I didn't happen to notice whether you were listening in on the last presenter.
Mr Mullin: I was, sir.
Mr Winninger: One of the points he raised, interestingly, is the issue of weapons and ammunition being illegally obtained and then used in the commission of crimes. He raises this both in his paper and I believe he alluded to it during his presentation.
Do you have any knowledge as to the percentage of crimes, violence, that are committed using illegally obtained firearms and/or ammunition?
Mr Mullin: That study is under way now, sir, through a working group and they've targeted the Metropolitan Toronto area. It has not yet been concluded. They're studying homicides, robberies and firearms that were seized by the Metropolitan Toronto police.
Mr Winninger: I see. It would appear that if there were a significant percentage of violent crimes committed using illegally obtained firearms and/or ammunition, one might consider putting all the teeth into legislation. One could, and yet one would still find that the access to weapons is eluding us. How would you deal with that?
Mr Mullin: It would be nice to have it all in one legislation. However, as I said before and as was brought out in the committee here, the criminal is still going to obtain his ammunition; he's going to try to obtain it. That's the part we've got to curtail. If we catch him with his ammunition there's got to be some way that we can hold him accountable for it. Whether he smuggled it across or he obtained it by any other means, he's got to be held accountable for what he has in his possession.
Mr Winninger: What I'm hearing then is there's a very large federal dimension to this problem as opposed to uniquely provincial.
Mr Mullin: Yes.
The Chair: Thank you, Mr Mullin, for taking the time to make your deputation to this committee.
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CHIEF PROVINCIAL FIREARMS OFFICE
The Chair: I would like to invite Inspector Henry Vanwyk and Mr Ed Maksimowski, counsel, Ministry of the Solicitor General and Correctional Services. Do we also have Detective Constable John Hicks? Welcome. Please begin any time you're ready.
Mr Henry Vanwyk: Good afternoon, Mr Chairman and members of the committee. My name is Henry Vanwyk. I'm an inspector in the Ontario Provincial Police, currently designated by the Solicitor General to fulfil the role of the chief provincial firearms officer for Ontario, commonly referred to as the CPFO.
With me here today is Mr Ed Maksimowski, counsel on firearms issues from the legal services branch of the Ministry of the Solicitor General and Correctional Services, and Detective Constable John Hicks, a firearms business inspector from my office.
May I please explain that the CPFO creates policy for all firearms officers and local registrars of firearms in police services throughout Ontario. The CPFO also implements new legislation and new policies in Ontario by issuing guidelines to police.
There is a variety of ammunition on the market. The primary controls for that ammunition are found in the Explosives Act of Canada and the Criminal Code of Canada. The Explosives Act of Canada refers to ammunition as we commonly know it as "safety cartridges."
First, let's look at the Criminal Code and the regulations pursuant to the Criminal Code. In order to sell ammunition at retail, an incorporated or non-incorporated business must have a firearms business licence known as a firearms-ammunition permit, a combination permit or an ammunition-only permit. Ammunition permits are issued by the CPFO pursuant to section 105 of the Criminal Code. Ammunition permit holders must abide by the safe storage regulations of the Criminal Code.
Subsection 84(1) of the same code defines a large capacity cartridge magazine as "any device or container from which ammunition may be fed into the firing chamber of a firearm." A large capacity cartridge magazine exceeding the limits specified by the cartridge magazine control regulations is a prohibited weapon.
The magazine regulations set out the limits for handguns and centre-fire, semiautomatic long guns, as well as a list of rare and historically valuable magazines that are exempted from these rules.
Subsection 86(2) of the Criminal Code outlines the offence of negligent handling of a firearm or ammunition. It is a dual procedure offence with a maximum term of five years upon a second or subsequent indictable conviction.
Let's deal with the storage, display, handling and transportation of certain firearms next. The regulations specify that all firearms must always be stored, transported or displayed unloaded; firearms must be stored separate from ammunition unless stored in the same locked container or vault; loaded firearms may only be handled in places where they may be lawfully discharged, and the various prohibition orders provided for in the Criminal Code specify prohibition of the possession of certain ammunition as well as firearms.
The prohibited weapons control regulations under the Criminal Code also deal with ammunition, particularly companies that test or manufacture ammunition for prohibited firearms.
There are also orders in council made pursuant to part III of the Criminal Code. Subsection 84(1) has a definition of a prohibited weapon and it allows for certain types of ammunition to be declared prohibited weapons by order in council. Prohibited weapons order number 10 lists four types of prohibited ammunition: armour-piercing handgun cartridges, explosive ammunition, incendiary ammunition and shotgun cartridges containing flechettes.
Next, I'd like to deal with the Explosives Act of Canada, a little-known act.
Ammunition, ie, the standard cartridges for rifles, shotguns, pistols and revolvers as we know them, is considered as a type of explosive.
The Explosives Act is very oriented to the safety elements in the manufacture, transportation and availability of various types of explosives. There are Explosives Act regulations dealing with home reloading and the conditions under which such work may be carried on, the quantities of and storage rules for small-arms cartridges and propellants that can be kept for sale, and the quantity of small-arms cartridges that may be stored in the home. Of importance to the issue before this committee is the age for legal sale of ammunition. It is not allowed to a person under the age of 16 years unless that person under 16 years is the holder of a valid permit, known as a minors' permit, to possess a firearm issued pursuant to subsection 110(6) of the Criminal Code. This is a minors' permit for sustenance purposes and is more common in the territories. If the person appears to be under 16, proof of age must be supplied.
The next issue is that of identification of ammunition purchasers. We looked at the role identification could play in the control of ammunition sales.
First, we asked all the other provincial and territorial jurisdictions in Canada to advise of any known provincial acts about ammunition. There were none reported.
If identification is to be the firearms-only type, then the following types might be acceptable for the purposes of allowing purchase of ammunition:
There's the firearms acquisition certificate, of which there are some 325,000 in Ontario. Within five years, all will have the photograph of the holder on them.
There's the Outdoors Card for hunting. The executive vice-president of the Ontario Federation of Anglers and Hunters advises there are some 600,000 active hunters in Ontario. These do not carry a photo.
There are also permits to carry restricted firearms. There are about 20,000 of them in Ontario, mostly for club target or occupation purposes such as security guards. They also do not have a photo.
There are firearms registration certificates. When you go and register your handgun, the registration certificate is issued, one for each firearm. Again there's no photo.
Even with all those types of documents, there are concerns about other firearms owners and users. There will still be legitimate firearms users in the thousands who do not have one of the above and would be unable to buy ammunition. There are farmers, law enforcement officers who want to practise, and also skeet and trap shotgun shooters, who don't really need any of the kinds of permits I mentioned if they don't want to purchase another firearm but who may still have the need for ammunition and would not be able to buy ammunition if we restrict the types of identification allowed.
This leads to the natural question, what is the purpose of having identification in firearm sales? If it's simply to confirm age, any photo identification will do. If it's to create a record, any photo identification will also do.
It was mentioned that perhaps there should be some form of recordkeeping. On the face of it, keeping a record of persons who buy ammunition appears to have little value when you look at the amount of work and the amount of paper it would take. However, as an investigative tool, it may well provide corroborative assistance in high-profile and other shooting investigations.
Is there really a point of creating an offence, the compliance of which cannot be done unless it's verified through an inspection of records?
If the issue is serious enough for society to deal with it by the creation of a law, should the compliance therefore not involve an ammunition sales register?
If there are successful needle-in-the-haystack investigations, such as fatal hit-and-run investigations with thousands of persons to interview -- I hear the record is 12,000 -- then why could ammunition sales registers not be of assistance in dealing with the purchase by known associates of shooters in serious shooting investigations?
We should look next at the federal realm. From the four years of interprovincial and federal-provincial meetings I have attended, I have always come away with the picture that gun control falls under the Criminal Code of Canada and that ammunition falls both under the Criminal Code and under the Explosives Act of Canada. From these same four years of meetings, the clear emphasis was always that ammunition controls are federal in nature.
In these meetings that led to Bill C-17, it was suggested by some of my colleagues from other jurisdictions that the control of the sale of ammunition be transferred to the Criminal Code from the Explosives Act so that the provisions would become better known and enforceable by all police. This was not done, although there were no federal objections to the idea raised at the time. I'm assuming it just didn't reach the priority table when the legislation was drafted.
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The current legislative options for the federal government include a fresh look at the ammunition question as it relates to the Criminal Code. I'm led to believe that there will be announcements of the new legislation by early fall and that the new legislation may very well touch on ammunition.
A danger in the creation of a provincial ammunition business law is that the federal government may then leave the issue untouched. If other provinces then did not follow Ontario's lead, Ontario would be an enforcement island in a sea of no controls. It would be a difficult enforcement problem indeed.
One of the things we have to understand is the fit of ammunition controls within the general gun control picture. It must always be remembered that federal gun control is done at three levels of endeavour: (1) people controls, (2) hardware controls and (3) offences and penalties.
The people control is the screening out of criminals, also the violent, the unsafe, the incompetent, through the FAC process, thereby attempting to frustrate firearms from being acquired by the wrong people. Further, there are also enabling provisions allowing for prohibitions on firearms possession designed to frustrate persons who have abused the system from reacquiring firearms for set periods of time.
The hardware control level is the control of the movement of firearms, thereby frustrating the illicit movement of firearms through business permits, the registration system, carry permits, rules on collectors, and others.
The offence and penalty provisions deal with the criminal misuse, the negligent misuse and the careless misuse of firearms.
I would like to enter a summary of issues.
The role the government of Ontario might play in the retail sale of ammunition: It could create an offence on the sale of ammunition without having seen or recorded certain particulars from photo ID; it could create an offence of purchasing without providing the same information; it could create enabling provisions allowing those persons who might investigate firearms offences, including conservation officers, providing for their access to those registers; and it could record a number of items, such as date, name, type, calibre etc.
The role the government of Ontario might play in the private sale of ammunition: This is known as the reloading market, and it's estimated at several million rounds per year in Ontario; this is anecdotal evidence from my staff. Segments of this market are part of the underground economy. The reloading market ranges from persons making their own ammunition for themselves and a few friends, to persons making ammunition as secondary employment or secondary income. A lot of gun clubs also reload for their own members and guest members at discounted prices. The sale of ammunition is prevalent at gun shows, where unlicensed ammunition sales do take place.
The federal theory, by persons responsible for the enforcement of the Explosives Acts, on reload ammunition is that if a person sells the reload ammunition for about the same amount as it took to make it, then it's not really a retail sale and no Explosives Act of Canada designation to manufacture is required.
It is reported that there is only one federal inspector in Ontario to deal with Explosives Act matters in Ontario. There then is some advantage in transferring ammunition controls to the Criminal Code, where every police officer can enforce the controls.
Some statistics on firearms licences that include the sale of ammunition: In Ontario, for the manufacture of ammunition the fee is $500, set by the federal government, and we have 11 licences in Ontario that include the manufacture in their licence.
Wholesalers selling ammunition: The fee is $500, and there are 51 licences that include wholesale ammunition.
Retailers selling ammunition but not firearms: The fee is $25. You write in, obtain the licence by mail, and it'll be mailed to you as soon as the $25 reaches my office. There are some 2,193 such licences in Canada, as of approximately a month ago, with 33% in Ontario, some 739.
The retailer selling firearms and ammunition: The fee depends on volume -- it's prorated -- but it could climb to as high as $800. There are some 5,646 in Canada, as of about a month ago, with 1,206, or 21%, in Ontario.
Those statistics come from the Department of Justice and also my office.
The CPFO staff estimate that there are probably around 50 to 100 unlicensed ammunition retailers in Ontario. CPFO staff also estimate that the number of reloaders in Ontario number somewhere between 50,000 to 80,000. CPFO staff are unable to measure the effect of the underground economy in this area.
A provincial law on ammunition business sales would have to be so worded that it would have to apply to any person selling ammunition to any other person.
What we would essentially do is create a "find committing offence." I am not enthusiastic about creating another paper trail or a paper empire system in company to the systems already there for the firearms controls, so we recommend that there be "find committing offences," such as when Detective Mullin indicated that they come across situations and would like an opportunity to take some action. It's also because at the present time my office does not have the staff to inspect ammunition dealers alone; we only have time to deal with the firearms and ammunition dealers.
The role the government of Ontario might play in the purchase of ammunition outside the province and country: The federal government should be pressured to instruct its customs inspectors to ensure that persons coming into Canada are in compliance with the quantity and age restrictions of the Explosives Act of Canada.
We must note that without a licence or any kind of permit, any person may bring into Canada 5,000 safety cartridges or rounds of ammunition, except hollow-point ammunition; 5,000 percussion caps/primers used in the reloading process; 5,000 empty primed cases used in the reloading process; and eight kilograms of smokeless powder. I'm not sure whether that's every time you cross the border or whether there are time limits.
It's not possible to detect ammunition crossing provincial borders. The government of Ontario would then be placed in a position to either pressure the provincial governments in Canada to enact legislation similar to what Ontario proposes or pressure the federal government to enshrine the Ontario provisions into federal legislation in order to prevent a patchwork of enforcement.
In conclusion to my remarks, much has been said on who should do what in relation to problems of violence, firearms and ammunition. What must be said is that all firearms owners have a role to play in the public safety of our society.
Further, those persons who are involved in the regulated and unregulated firearms industry, ammunition industry included, must be aware of their public safety responsibilities when engaged in their trade. We know of dealers who are already enforcing a self-imposed business rule of the presentation of an FAC as the only way for a customer to purchase ammunition. Certainly if the federal role needs strengthening, that message must go forward with dispatch from this point.
Thank you for this opportunity to speak here today, and I'm prepared to answer any questions.
Mr Runciman: I appreciate your being here and I appreciate the work you've clearly done to present a brief. I note the comments you make in respect to not having the staff to deal with licensed ammunition dealers, let alone look at the underground system that currently exists and that certainly would grow and probably prosper if this sort of initiative were undertaken in isolation by Ontario alone. Just how tough is it for you now in terms of your staffing levels? How much of a job are you able to do now with the restrictions placed upon you?
Mr Vanwyk: As any good bureaucrat, I never have enough staff to fulfil the vision of what I would like to see in enforcement. Nevertheless, we prioritize our work. Our mandate crosses the entire part III of the Criminal Code. Perhaps as economies improve, and certainly depending on the effect of the new federal legislation, the demands of the new federal legislation could seriously impair efforts.
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Mr Runciman: How many people are we talking about in the CPFO staff, how many bodies?
Mr Vanwyk: There is an establishment of 10 uniformed staff.
Mr Runciman: Ten uniformed staff to deal with a population of 10 million people.
Mr Vanwyk: There is a specific mandate that comes from the federal-provincial agreement, which is currently being renegotiated, and this particular mandate deals primarily with the FAC system and also deals with the firearms business systems. They were creations of the 1978 C-51 legislation. If any new federal initiatives increase that workload, that certainly would be difficult. You have to remember that there are some 1,200 firearms businesses in Ontario. A number have dropped out as a result of Bill C-17, but we do attempt to inspect them as often as we can.
Mr Runciman: What does that mean, "as often as we can"? With 10 people and 1,200 dealers, realistically, how often can you inspect?
Mr Vanwyk: There are many dealers in northern Ontario where, for instance, a grocer will become a firearms dealer to assist his or her people in their small community. We have other dealers -- I think there's one in the Ottawa area -- where you could conceivably take two officers and spend a week.
Mr Gary Malkowski (York East): How strong is your sense that the federal government will move on the sale of ammunition, and what are some of the practical problems that would be involved if one province acted alone?
Mr Vanwyk: I have a sense that it's being discussed at the federal level, and having attended federal-provincial meetings, I also would find myself in some difficulty.
The practical problems: If indeed the federal government were, for instance, to introduce legislation to amend part III of the code so that the purchase or other acquisition of ammunition would have the same controls as the purchase or acquisition of firearms -- in other words, you have to have an FAC or you don't have access to it -- that concept is already within the police ranks and is something the police could readily enforce.
If you take it to a provincial model, it does become another provincial statute and it competes with other provincial statutes. I'm not sure whether you're familiar with the book that most police officers carry around, with all the offences of all the statutes of the province of Ontario, but it's quite thick already.
It really comes down to if the federal government allows you to bring in 5,000 rounds every time you go to the States, and if you can order through mail-order companies from Winnipeg, or if you can drive across or know somebody who drives across and bring it from another jurisdiction, Ontario as an island -- those are primarily the difficulties.
Ms Haeck: I'm extremely interested, living on the border as I do, in what you describe as legally allowed to be brought into the province of Ontario. It looks like they're taking out almost an entire herd of caribou with the amount of ammunition and powder. When was this last looked at? Do you have some idea? This is a substantial amount of ammunition.
Mr Vanwyk: We have been unable to find, even through federal contacts, a compilation of all the regulations of the Explosives Act of Canada, but we have been sent certain pages. I understand there were some reviews of those regulations in 1990 and 1992.
There was the provincial suggestion at some of the meetings with the federal government that perhaps they should change the age limit from 16 to 18 so it would match the age limit of the FAC. However, for reasons I do not know, that was not done.
Also, in regard to bringing in ammunition from near the border, that's not just in Ontario; it's the entire US-Canada border.
Mr Tim Murphy (St George-St David): Thank you for your report and the work you've put into it. I want to follow up in two areas. One was started by Mr Runciman, but I do want to ask your straight-out opinion: Is there a provincial bill that controlled ammunition sales, that encompassed some of the concerns you've outlined, that you would support?
Mr Vanwyk: My support of legislation is virtually automatic by virtue of my employment.
Mr Murphy: I understand that. I meant as an expert.
Mr Vanwyk: It is my sense, from everything that I have learned, that it fits within the federal realm and my preference is to push for efforts in that field.
Mr Murphy: The reason I asked is that I've received calls from individual police officers and chiefs of police who have actually encouraged me and Mr Chiarelli and others in this regard, and I did want to get your views.
The second thing I want to follow up on is the inspection of firearms and ammunition sellers. How many times, with a staff of 10 -- and I gather there are 1,206 such sellers -- would you visit a retailer in a year?
Mr Vanwyk: It is possible, when you're not implementing legislation such as Bill C-17, which takes a lot out of an organization, to inspect each and every single one each and every year.
Mr Murphy: Does that happen? Let's take 1993. Did that happen in 1993?
Mr Vanwyk: Did we inspect 100% in 1993? The answer to that is no.
Mr Murphy: If there is such a thing as an average inspection, how long is that for each licensed dealer?
Mr Vanwyk: I'm advised that it's anywhere from half an hour to two weeks.
Mr Murphy: Am I right, by this figure, that you do no inspections of any retailer that sells only ammunition?
Mr Vanwyk: That is correct. That's quite common across Canada.
The Chair: Thank you, Mr Vanwyk, for your thoughtful remarks. I thank all three of you for coming and the time you've taken to prepare your submission.
This committee is adjourned till tomorrow. Just to remind the members, we will be meeting on Wednesday as well. We have approval from the caucuses.
The committee adjourned at 1749.