Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is addressing a cabinet meeting on Parliament Hill in Ottawa on May 19. Sean Kilpatrick / The Canadian Press
Ottawa will reveal this week whether it will force all owners of banned assault weapons to give up these firearms, after a previous, unapproved bill, which would have made surrender optional, provoked intense criticism from advocates of arms control.
The new strongest mandate, if it materializes, would be contained in a firearms bill that the Liberal government is due to present on Monday. The bill is expected to mark a kind of rebirth of Bill C-21, a gun control bill that died in the order paper when federal elections were called in August.
The Liberal Party committed during the 2019 election campaign to introducing a repurchase program of “all military-style assault rifles legally purchased in Canada,” only to design a voluntary, non-mandatory repurchase program revealed when C- 21 was introduced in early 2021. This bill proposed increasing sanctions for arms smuggling and creating a criminal offense to alter the capacity of magazines beyond legal limits. He also proposed allowing municipalities to ban guns.
Bill C-21 would also have allowed existing rifle owners to keep banned weapons under a grandfathering process. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said earlier last year that his government had decided on a voluntary system after studying and rejecting the measures introduced in New Zealand. The government there banned and ordered the repurchase of tactical-style rifles following a 2019 massacre in Christchurch that left 51 people dead.
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The bill was met with rapid criticism at the time, especially from arms control groups who felt it was not going far enough. “It was a total failure,” Heidi Rathjen, coordinator of PolyRemembers, made up of survivors of the 1989 École Polytechnique shooting that left 14 women dead, said Sunday. “The C-21 bill was an empty shell that was designed to do as little as possible and provide points of conversation for politicians.”
During the 2021 election campaign, after the death of C-21, the The Liberals pledged to make it mandatory for owners of prohibited assault rifles to sell firearms to the government for destruction or to make them inoperable at federal expense.
The federal government has given further guidance on the repurchase program to be introduced in its new firearms bill will be mandatory. The measure is specifically mentioned in Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s letter of mandate to his Minister of Public Security, Marco Mendicino. In March, Ottawa extended an amnesty over the possession of prohibited firearms until the fall of 2023, which Mr. Mendicino said it was necessary to complete a mandatory program, which could be launched this spring, “if not as soon as possible.”
A spokesman for Mr. Mendicino declined to comment we content of the bill and said the minister was not available. During an appearance on CTV’s Question period on Sunday, Justice Minister David Lametti did not offer further clarity on whether the grandfather clause would reappear in the new bill. He said he would not go into the details of the legislation, adding that “there are several different measures we had pointed out, as well as what we had done” with Bill C-21. “Everything is still on the table,” he said.
The bill comes at a particularly busy time, following the high-profile mass shootings in Uvalde, Tex., And Buffalo, NY, this month. The killings have intensified the political debate south of the border over toughening gun laws. Liberals warned on their 2021 election platform that “US-style armed violence is on the rise” in Canada.
On Friday, Statistics Canada reported that violent crime with firearms had increased from 2013 to 2019, after several years of decline. In 2020, there were 29 victims of violent gun-related crimes per 100,000 people in Canada, compared to 19 victims in 2013, according to police reports.
Statscan warned that there were “data gaps” about firearms, including the fact that “there is no consistent definition of a shot applied by police services.” The agency also said it collects “little information” about firearms associated with crime.
Rod Giltaca, executive director of the Canadian Coalition for Firearms Rights, said he fears the new bill will reduce the rights of licensed gun owners and have a negligible effect on public safety. “We are in favor of any measure that will make criminals responsible or that will demonstrably increase public safety,” he said.
The Statscan report said 59 percent of gun-related violent crimes involved handguns in 2020, with a higher rate in urban centers. Several groups are waiting for a federal handgun ban, rather than bans imposed by lower levels of government.
“It simply came to our notice then. That doesn’t mean shifting responsibility to the provinces, “said Wendy Cukier, president of the Coalition for Arms Control.
The Liberal government has spent more than $ 920 million since 2016 on various arms control measures.
In the spring of 2020, it banned more than 1,500 “assault-style” firearm models, including the VZ58 rifle, one of the weapons used during the 2017 shooting at a mosque in Quebec City. which killed six Muslim faithful.
Earlier this month, it introduced final regulations requiring gun companies to keep records of sales and inventories, confirm the identity of buyers, and ensure they have valid firearms licenses. The regulatory change is taking place three years after Bill C-71 received royal approval.
The rules drew criticism from the Conservative federal party, which said in a statement that the government was recovering the national long-arms record, created by the liberal government of Jean Chrétien in the 1990s and completed by the Harper government.
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