Liberal government's 'empty shell' firearms bill unlikely to curb violence, gun control advocate warns
Jesse Snyder 


OTTAWA — Gun control advocates are blasting Ottawa’s “empty shell” firearms legislation, saying its primary function is to provide Liberal talking points rather than curb gun violence through sensible reforms.

© Provided by National Post Ecole Polytechnique shooting survivor Heidi Rathjen: “The point of banning assault weapons is to say that these are guns that are too dangerous to leave in the hands of ordinary Canadians.”

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has drawn fierce criticism from both sides of the firearms debate with the tabling of Bill C-21, which extends some penalties for firearms-related offences. Many gun owners say the legislation arbitrarily targets law-abiding citizens, while gun control advocates say it fails to get guns out of the hands of potential risks to the public.

Perhaps most notably, the legislation does not enforce the Liberal government’s promised buyback program, instead allowing Canadians to keep their newly prohibited rifles but not use them.

“I don’t understand the political calculation, and it’s all the more baffling that the bill is an empty shell,” said Heidi Rathjen, who survived the 1989 mass shooting at Ecole Polytechnique in Montreal. The decision by the Liberal government to stop short of its mandatory buyback is evidence of a contradictory position by Ottawa, Rathjen said, who has repeatedly said prohibited firearms cannot be left in the possession of civilians.

“The point of banning assault weapons is to say that these are guns that are too dangerous to leave in the hands of ordinary Canadians,” said Rathjen, who founded Poly Remembers, a gun control advocacy group.

The firearms buyback program came as part of an order in council issued by the Trudeau government on May 1, which immediately outlawed 11 semi-automatic rifle styles, including well over 1,500 firearm variants. 

Ottawa had said it would buy back “all” citizen-owned firearms included under the order, following a two-year amnesty. The government has so far struggled to secure private-sector bidders to design the buyback, which some experts estimate could cost well over $1 billion.

Bill C-21 modestly expands a number of existing laws, like lengthened prison sentences for people who smuggle firearms or who manipulate gun magazines beyond their legal limit. Changes to “red flag” laws grant expanded powers to courts to search and seize the possessions of gun owners.

But most of the changes amount only to half measures, Rathjen said. A recommendation by Poly Remembers to ban the sale of any magazine that can be manipulated, for example, was dismissed by Ottawa, who instead introduced increased penalties that are unlikely to prevent would-be killers from using higher capacity clips.

“There’s so many of these little things that once you scratch the surface under the talking points, there’s not much underneath,” Rathjen said.

“Everything that we see is window dressing.”

Her comments were echoed by other gun control advocates, who say the Trudeau government used their talking points in the lead-up to the May 1 ban, only to disregard those policies in C-21.

Trudeau in October 2019 tweeted that Liberal gun control measures were the “strongest of all the parties,” quoting a Poly Remembers press release. However, Rathjen said, that was awarded strictly on the basis that the Liberals had promised to introduce an entirely mandatory buyback program.

“This is a total betrayal,” said Suzanne Laplante-Edward, whose daughter Anne-Marie Edward was one of 14 women killed in the 1989 shooting.

“They lied. They lied to us. They lied to Canadians,” she said in a statement Tuesday.

Trudeau on Tuesday said the Liberal ban was introduced explicitly to prevent shootings of the sort that took place in Montreal. “I remember where I was when I was 17 and heard the news of a massacre at the École Polytechnique. I’ve sat down with first responders, doctors and nurses who see every day the cost of gun violence,” he said.

Representatives of gun retailers and private gun owners, meanwhile, have likewise said that Liberal talking points are contradictory and unfounded, especially claims that so-called “military style” rifles are comparable to those used by the military.

Assault rifles have never been legal in Canada, and the firearms included under the Liberal ban are far from military grade. For years, sport shooters in Canada have instead used semi-automatic rifles that mimic the look of military firearms, but can carry a maximum of five rounds in their magazines.

The rifles included under the Liberal ban have been restricted in Canada since 1977, meaning they could only be shot at designated ranges, could only be transported directly to and from designated ranges, and required the owner to secure additional safety training before purchase.

Liberal ministers nonetheless claimed that their new legislation would outlaw military-grade firearms from public use.

Joël Lightbound, Liberal MP for the Quebec riding of Louis-Hébert, said the Liberals had outlawed “powerful and dangerous” rifles that “were designed to be used on a battlefield in the time of war.”

The current standard issue rifle used by the Canadian military is the Canada Colt C7, a variant of the M16 that fires at a rate of up to 900 rounds per minute from a 30-round magazine. Semi-automatic ARs of the type previously used by Canada citizens, by comparison, fire at roughly 100-120 rounds per minute, and carry a maximum of five rounds.

Repeating previous talking points, Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland on Tuesday also said firearms included under the government’s ban were “designed for just one purpose: to kill people and to look like they can kill people.”

The federal union representing the Royal Canadian Mounted Police has itself opposed Ottawa’s gun ban, saying it does little to address gang violence and gun smuggling at the Canada-U.S. border, which accounts for the majority of firearm-related violence.

Statistics Canada says the country had 678 homicides in 2019, of which 38 per cent were committed using firearms. Of those homicides, 60 per cent were committed using a handgun rather than a rifle. The majority of those homicides were a result of gang violence, which has increased 10 per cent since 2015, the RCMP bargaining group said in a press release last year.