Over the past few years, Canadians have watched in horror as shooting tragedies have become all too frequent.
In Toronto, two young women enjoying a summer’s evening on the Danforth were killed and many others injured by a shooter with a stolen handgun.
In Quebec City, an Islamophobic terrorist armed with assault-style firearms and a handgun murdered six innocent worshippers at the Centre Islamique du Québec.
And in Nova Scotia, the lives of 22 people were taken — and countless others forever changed — in a 13-hour rampage across the province. It remains the worst mass shooting in Canadian history.
Canadians are demanding action.
When they re-elected this Liberal government in 2021, it was on the promise of doing more to combat gun violence — and we have delivered.
Combating gun violence requires hard work and a multitude of solutions, not slogans. It begins with strong borders, where we’ve invested nearly a half billion dollars and deepened co-operation with the United States to fight smuggling.
It includes strong laws, like our ban on assault-style firearms and the national freeze on handguns.
Finally, we’re pursuing strong prevention strategies that invest in our communities to stop gun crime before it starts. And of course, we recognize the role firearms play in gender-based violence and suicide.
The centrepiece is Bill C-21, Canada’s most significant legislation on gun violence in a generation.
Despite the lies peddled by Conservative politicians, Bill C-21 does not touch hunting rifles. It is squarely focused on assault-style firearms, with a new technical definition of what constitutes one.
The bill also cracks down on illegally manufactured firearms or “ghost guns” and charts a course to regulate large-capacity magazines.
This landmark law strengthens Canada’s national handgun freeze and assault-style firearm ban. It takes aim at organized crime and ghost guns. And it addresses the alarming role of guns in domestic violence and suicide — all while respecting Indigenous partners’ inherent hunting rights.
Bill C-21 is the product of extensive consultations across the country — from survivors’ groups in major cities to remote communities in the North.
Polling shows that it has the support of nearly four in five Canadians.
And in a vote last month, the bill received the support of four of five parties in the House of Commons.
Canadians agree — weapons made for the battlefield have no place in our communities.
Yet, Conservative politicians, in both the House and Senate, don’t see it that way.
Fuelled by misinformation and egged on by the gun lobby, they continue to stand in the way of progress and attempt to block C-21.
Look no further than the many Conservative politicians who enthusiastically participated in the annual general meeting of the Canadian Coalition of Firearms Rights — basically the National Rifle Association of Canada — earlier this month.
Canadians deserve better. They deserve to feel safe in their communities.
While Conservative politicians take their marching orders from the Canadian NRA, we’re doing the hard work of protecting our country.
Progress on gun violence is a difficult, emotional issue. Bill C-21 strikes a balance that all Canadians can get behind.
There is no time to waste. Let’s stop the political games and put Canadians’ safety first.
While Conservatives delay, distract and dismiss, we will keep moving forward.
We’re calling on senators to debate and pass Bill C-21 — now.
Bill C-21 gets it right. Now, it’s time to get it done.
Pam Damoff is the member of Parliament for Oakville North-Burlington and parliamentary secretary to the public safety minister. First elected to Oakville town council in 2010, she has served as an MP since 2015. She has been a lifelong advocate for protecting communities from gun violence, helping shape progressive firearms legislation as a member of the Standing Committee on Public Safety and the National Security Committee and most recently as parliamentary secretary.
Comments
Four in five Canadians have no need of an assault-style gun, and one in five have no business with them.
No one can make a claim to "needing" almost any type of private property in Canada. However, what our reliable Civil Law courts will not permit is for any stripe of Canadian government to evade their centuries-old Common Law liability under the "Doctrine of Fair Compensation for government confiscation of legitimate private property". And what the devious Trudeau Liberals, along with their feckless allies are shamelessly hiding is the still mushrooming compensation bill to licensed Cdn gun owners. A recent ATIP disclosure alone exposed that the government in fall 2019 expected a cost of almost $2 billion just for their intended spring 2020 OIC confiscations. However, much has been added--including a so-called "freeze" on a million legally registered handguns--worth far more than an extra billion dollars--according to what a senior LPC official told Torstar's Tonda MacCharles in a front page interview on December 7th, 2018, "Why No Handgun Ban?" Such a transparent attempt to evade compensation will be met by countless CL precedents. And now that Bill C-21 with its amendments has been horsed through the House SECU committee and a final House vote, through what was an embarrassing application of closure tactics, at least several billion dollars more of public liability is inevitable--for a total likely to exceed more than $5 billion---without any empirical evidence that street gang gun crime will be stifled, that a national mental health screening program--promised and discarded in the early 1990s by Chretien when he opted for a "cheap long-gun registry", will be implemented and that the at least several hundred thousand smuggled American handguns in the hands of our criminals will somehow disappear like magic. Governments can always use their bully pulpit to manufacture consent. But what they loathe is an informed public that demands evidence.
The National Observer should not be publishing pieces written by any Member of Parliament or political staff because their job is to deceive us.
Huh? Paranoid much?
With what's going on in the States right now, even CONSIDERING more "gun rights" is insane.
Funny how none of our msm ever disclose that one of the huge differences between Canada and the US regarding large numbers of firearms killings and woundings is our long time acceptance of universal, mandatory gun owner licensing. Every single day of the year Canadians with a firearms license have their names run through CPIC in search of a match against criminal charges--which will lead to the seizure of any firearms they legally own.
However, in the US there is no national universal firearms licensing AND 26 of 50 states have zero licensing requirements, beyond adult legal age to purchase firearms from licensed dealers. This is a night and day difference that Ms. Danoff and her governing party would prefer Canadians not know, but it matters a great deal, since Canada is awash with hundreds of thousands of used American handguns, smuggled here for vast profits--selling for as much as $7000 each--to gangs on our city streets. And Bill C-21 will be largely ineffective against the profit motive of criminals.