PUBLICATION: Toronto Star
DATE:
2004.08.21
SECTION:
National Report
PAGE:
H01
BYLINE:
Tonda MacCharles
DATELINE:
OTTAWA
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Debate
over gun control rages on
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Police
support called crucial to success Ed Hudson, a 59-year-old veterinarian and gun
enthusiast, can't get himself prosecuted for being an unlicensed owner of 50
unregistered guns, no matter what he does. He has been arrested three times and
had two shotguns seized after pulling stunts where he practically begged the
police to charge him under the Firearms Act.
But
the charges that were laid - having a weapon in a public place or obstructing a
police officer (under the Criminal Code, not the firearms law) - were always
dropped. Police did confiscate two of his long-guns, and now are seeking
destruction orders for them. Last Monday, a court hearing in Humboldt, Sask., on
whether the police can destroy one of his 12-gauge shotguns was postponed,
again.
Hudson,
who has been a Canadian citizen for 24 years but still speaks with the southern
drawl of his native Atlanta, is impatient for the hearing to be held, eager to
make in court constitutional arguments about a right to bear arms that he thinks
would blow a hole in the federal gun licensing and registration law. He's not
giving up.
On
Wednesday, in Biggar, Sask., Hudson and members of his Canadian Unregistered
Firearms Owners Association, will hold a skeet-shooting contest. Only unlicensed
owners of unregistered guns need apply for the pleasure of blowing clay pigeons
out of the sky. But audiences are welcome. Oh, and the RCMP are also invited.
It
doesn't matter to Hudson and other critics that the federal government has made
changes to the gun-control program, or that the Supreme Court of Canada has
already ruled Ottawa can legislate gun control because it's about public safety
- a federal matter.
The
high court focused only on whether Ottawa was stomping on provincial toes in
regulating property - a provincial matter, says Hudson. His concern is much
broader. "We're saying our civil rights are violated, and (the government
of) Alberta never said anything (at the Supreme Court) about our civil rights
being violated," says Hudson. "It's a rights and freedoms issue. We
want to fight this in the courts."
The
Supreme Court of Canada has also ruled that: "Canadians, unlike Americans
do not have a constitutional right to bear arms." But that was in a 1993
case regarding limits on automatic weapons.
To
Hudson, the question of compelling law-abiding hunters and farmers to register
their legal rifles and shotguns is still wide open. And none of the changes made
to the firearms program, last year after the Auditor-General's damning
indictment of the $1-billion cost overruns or last May before the election, will
ever satisfy him. "The only change that would make me happy is that it all
be repealed," Hudson says.
That's
not likely under a Liberal government that has invested so much political
capital in the beleaguered 10-year-old gun-control law. Just before the
election, the Liberals rejected the kind of wholesale change that might silence
critics.
Prime
Minister Paul Martin ignored several recommendations from Albina Guarnieri, then
the junior civil-preparedness minister who did an intensive review of the
program.
The
changes Guarnieri reportedly urged - taking licensing and registration offences
out of the criminal code, dropping the more expensive licence fees and letting
the RCMP run it instead of a separate bureaucracy, for example - were set aside.
Instead,
Public Safety Minister Anne McLellan and Treasury Board President Reg Alcock
pledged to cap costs, toughen sentence provisions for certain gun crimes, drop
the $25-registration and transfer fees, and streamline licensing renewals.
They
also promised Parliament would have greater say over the registry itself.
McLellan isolated the cost of the registry at $33 million last year, and has
ordered it to come in at $25 million in the next fiscal year. The tab for the
registry is to be approved in a separate vote. It is only a part - but the most
contentious part - of the overall $103-million program.
Still,
all the promises have not been enough to make the debate over gun control go
away. Far from it. Next week, both the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police,
and the Canadian Professional Police Association, which represents rank-and-file
police officers, hold annual meetings.
On
Thursday, at the Saint John, N.B., meeting of delegates representing frontline
cops, watch for fireworks. The association, formed last year when the Canadian
Police Association and the National Professional Police Association merged, has
not yet adopted an official position on the controversial firearms program. The
former CPA supported it, but the more urban-based membership of the NPPA did
not.
And
for many, the $1-billion price tag over the past decade still rankles. "One
billion dollars would put thousands of police officers on the streets,"
says Sergeant Al Koenig, head of the Calgary Police Association. "You could
buy 50 helicopters and give them to police services."
Koenig
intends to bring a motion to the floor of the CPPA conference calling for a
formal withdrawal of any support for the firearms registry, and for the
government to address training, licensing and sentencing issues.
He
says there ought to be strict mandatory sentences for crimes committed with guns
- an automatic 10-year penalty on top of, not concurrent with, any other
sentence, say, for a robbery or assault, and mandatory five-year sentences for
possession of restricted, prohibited or smuggled weapons. "Even the
criminals would understand they don't want to be caught in possession of a
firearm." It's such a touchy topic for the new police organization that
executives refused interviews prior to the meeting.
Meanwhile,
the chiefs, who are meeting in Vancouver starting tomorrow, will get an update
on the program, but it is not expected to be a hot topic with them. Except for
Toronto Police Chief Julian Fantino, most publicly support the program.
"The program is fundamentally sound and it will work, and it is already
working," says lawyer Vince Westwick, chair of the law amendments committee
for the chiefs. "They may not be as evident to the public, but there's been
a huge number of changes and from what we can see many of the irritants are
starting to be addressed."
The
support of the police is crucial, admits federal firearms commissioner Bill
Baker. "The most important client, without question, is the police
community," he says in an interview at his Ottawa office.
That's
why Baker is heading to Saint John to update the frontline officers. "I
don't expect any group to dance on tables over firearms control," he says,
wryly acknowledging past police and public complaints over costs, red tape and
wait times for processing licenses and registration.
But
those days are gone, says Baker. Now, he says the Canadian Firearms Centre is
running a much more efficient and effective operation. Almost all the
initiatives introduced in a 2003 action plan to curb costs have been introduced.
A processing centre in Montreal has closed, its operations moved to the
Miramichi, N.B., facility that processes applications and a parallel
headquarters office in Edmonton has closed, its work now consolidated at the
centre's downtown Ottawa headquarters.
Baker
says most people seeking firearms licences to own a gun now see their
applications processed within 45 days. That includes a statutory 30-day
"cooling off" period mandated by law, and most can get a firearm
registered within 30 days after that, sooner if it's done online. With the
dropping of registration fees in May, now it costs $60 to get licensed, $80 if
it's for a restricted weapon, he says. The centre now also has the ability to
stagger, and extend for up to nine years, the five-year licences, avoiding an
expected crunch next year when most of the 1.97 million licenses come up for
renewal.
To
prove its point that things are better, the centre produces statistics to show
that no matter what the complaints, police and prosecutors are using the license
and registration database, and it is meeting its original public safety goals.
It
says more than 12,600 licences have been refused or revoked by firearms
officials for public safety reasons, since its start. Those reasons range from
an applicant's history of violence or mental illness, a decision by a firearms
official that the applicant posed a potential risk to themselves or others, or
had unsafely used or stored firearms, been convicted of drug offences or
provided false information.
Police
make more than 13,000 queries to the firearms database each week. And since
January, 2003, prosecutors have relied on more than 1,300 affidavits from the
centre to support prosecutions of gun-related crimes. "It will take a lot
more time, I guess, to bring around public opinion," but Baker says he's
"hopeful that, if not dancing on the tables, they will at least say this
continues to be a worthwhile investment in public safety."
"And
if they don't, well, that's a matter that Parliament and the government would
have to deal with."
So
if the government has so much confidence in its law and the way it's working,
then why doesn't it charge the likes of Ed Hudson and others, and let them have
their day in court? Baker says there's no "concerted decision not to charge
them." That, he says, is up to the police. But he admits the government is
loath to let a few high-profile critics derail its efforts to ensure compliance
by many.
"If
early on in a new program all of our energies are focused on enforcement and
deterrence and so on, you may succeed in compelling a few people to comply who
would not otherwise, but you're ignoring the vast majority who would support
you," Baker says. "So, strategically, it's a good way to introduce a
new program."
Ed
Hudson sees it as hypocrisy. "They're not enforcing the law. I should be in
jail now. I should be charged for possession of firearms without a licence and
without a registration."
But
Hudson believes the federal government is really afraid. "I think they know
that their law is so draconian that it does violate the Charter of Rights and
Freedoms. Then they're going to have to start patching it up, and then they're
going to figure out at some point that it's got so many patches on it that
they're going to have to throw it out." Patches, changes or cost cutting
won't change his mind though. "They can make it more acceptable to some
people, but they could never make this law acceptable to me."