Hon. Michael L. MacDonald: Honourable colleagues, I rise to speak on the government’s motion to impose time allocation cutting off debate on Bill C-21. Before I go to my prepared remarks, I want to say a few words about gun issues in general.

I am a person who has never had much interest in guns. I grew up in a house where there were always the same four guns: a .32 Special — a rifle — a 10-gauge, a 16-gauge and a .22. My father and one of my brothers hunted. I wasn’t interested in hunting.

The first time I went after animals of any sort, I was 10 years old. My grandfather taught me how to tie rabbit snares. That was great until the day I went out and found a couple of rabbits in the snares, with their eyes popping out and their tongues hanging out. That was enough rabbit hunting for me.

Once, when I was about 12, my father took me out hunting. A big beautiful buck came out into the clearing; I screeched and the buck took off. That was the last time my father took me hunting.

I was never much for shooting animals or hunting, but I had a lot of friends who hunted. I like venison. If people showed up with venison, I was more than willing to eat it. My father knew how to prepare venison. I am not against hunting and people handling long guns.

I remember back in the 1990s, when Allan Rock, with the Chrétien government, brought in the gun registry. We were assured it would cost $2 million. It cost $2 billion. We know what it accomplished: absolutely nothing. It was just a big expensive bureaucracy that accomplished nothing but picking on lawful gun owners.

We also know that we are susceptible to media. We see some of the extreme things that occur in the U.S., but we have a different gun culture in Canada. I don’t think there is any doubt about that. I think we should respect that gun culture. I think we are fairly modest when it comes to dealing with these issues.

I have no stake in gun issues, because I have no interest in guns. I put guns in the same category as motorcycles and skydiving; I would just as soon avoid them. It is not something I am interested in. But I am interested in treating law-abiding citizens properly.

In this country, we’ve had the regulation and registration of handguns since the 1930s. We’ve always been fairly responsible when it comes to handguns. We also know that in this country, 96% of the firearm-related charges that were laid against unlicensed criminals were for the illegal possession of firearms. It was always unlicensed criminals with illegal firearms, and we know that almost 96% of the illegal handguns in this country are brought across the Canada-U.S. border.

I’m not sure what this bill is going to solve, but I think it is very unfair to the law-abiding gun owners of this country.

We see the government bringing up time allocation. I am disappointed but not particularly surprised with this motion since it is perfectly in keeping with how the government has approached this entire bill.

The Senate committee reviewing this bill met for 12 meetings and heard from dozens of witnesses, most of whom opposed the bill and many of whom suggested important amendments. Yet, not one amendment was supported by the government majority in this committee.

The entire review of Bill C-21 in committee turned out to be little more than a sham. The witnesses who took the time to appear, and who offered detailed proposals for amendments, fundamentally wasted their time, and now the government is imposing time allocation. That means that important issues that have not yet been touched on by this chamber in relation to the bill will simply be ignored.

I want to touch on just one of those issues, concerning the so-called red flag provisions in the bill.

The red flag provisions in Bill C-21 will permit any individual to make an application to the court for an emergency firearm prohibition order to immediately remove firearms for up to 30 days from any individual whom they believe may pose a danger to themselves or to others.

It also permits an application to be made for the removal of firearms from an individual whom they believe may be at risk of providing access to firearms to another person who is already subject to a firearms prohibition order.

What does this provision actually add to the current law? That is something that we as senators should actually take the time to understand.

The reality is that, as witnesses at committee stated, the police already have full authority to remove firearms from any individual whom they believe may pose a public safety threat. The police can do this without issuing a warrant.

Right now, any individual has the ability to call the police, or the Chief Firearms Officer, or CFO, of their province and raise public safety concerns. The police or CFO then responds to such concerns.

The government argues that these new provisions in Bill C-21 will add “another tool to the tool box,” enabling citizens to go through the courts if they so choose.

But we really need to ask ourselves who is going to take days, weeks or months to go to the court when they can just call the police?

We are told that there are certain circumstances where the police may not act. They may reject complaints that have been made by neighbours. In those circumstances, where there has been a police investigation and the police have talked to the person concerned and to his or her family, we are to believe that reasonable people will then decide to go to court instead of relying on what the police have found.

If we are going to be honest with ourselves, such cases will likely be few and very far between. Legitimate cases may, in fact, be practically non-existent.

But this provision then gives rise to new concerns.

The Criminal Justice Section of the Canadian Bar Association has argued the following:

. . . the current law contains sufficient powers to accomplish the goal of seizing weapons believed to have been used in a crime or removing them from the hands of persons who are believed to be a danger to themselves or to others.

The Criminal Justice Section of the Canadian Bar Association also:

. . . believes the proposed amendments included in Bill C-21 “pose a threat to public safety and a disproportionate risk to marginalized groups” . . . .

Tim Thurley, a firearms researcher and policy specialist who appeared before the committee, made a similar point. He said:

The ill-considered red flag proposals are . . . problematic. Under Canada’s existing licensing system, police and judges already have the power to remove guns and revoke licences from those who pose a threat. The new provisions have no requirements to consider Indigenous hunting rights, for the complainant to have any relationship to the accused or for the accused to be heard in court. Indigenous people are disproportionately impacted by the criminal justice system and are also the most reliant on firearms for subsistence. We will undermine the built-in safeguards of the existing red flag law. Where people hunt to feed families, this has real consequences.

Noah Schwartz, Assistant Professor, Department of Political Science, University of the Fraser Valley noted:

This new change would allow for ex parte revocations, which means that an accusation could be made by someone who doesn’t even know the person they are accusing. They might not have ever met them in real life. There would be no way for the accused to know who is making that accusation.

Natan Obed, President of Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami, echoed the same concerns when he testified before our committee.

Chief Jessica Lazare of the Mohawk Council of Kahnawàke said:

In terms of red flag and yellow flag provisions, we do have concerns regarding the anonymous tip kind of approach, where this could be a potential for racial discrimination.

Serious concerns have been raised about the constitutionality of these provisions in Bill C-21.

An amendment was, therefore, proposed in committee to narrow the scope of these provisions to enable immediate family, persons residing with an individual, police and health professionals to make such ex parte applications. All other complaints would be made, as they are today, to the police or to the Chief Firearms Officer.

However, the amendment was rejected by the government majority, meaning that these witnesses’ concerns have all been ignored.

So now, in the red flag section of the bill, I believe that, at a minimum, we have a provision that is unlikely to be used, except perhaps by angry neighbours who cannot get a response to their liking from the police or who don’t particularly like their neighbours.

At worst, the provision will pose yet another burden on our already overloaded courts, and perhaps will even be found to be unconstitutional.

This is a concerning component of the bill, but it is hardly the worst part of the bill. Yet, we have not discussed this matter in this chamber at all. And now, because of time allocation, there will be no opportunity to do so.

I suppose that means that the majority of government senators are content to simply leave this matter to our already overburdened courts.