Federal Liberals to campaign on letting cities tighten handgun controls

Thestar.com
June 18, 2019
Tonda MacCharles

The federal Liberals will not legislate a national handgun ban, but will campaign next fall on allowing municipalities like Toronto to enact additional restrictions on handguns, says Bill Blair, the federal minister in charge of the file.

Toronto got another sickening taste of gun violence Monday when four people were injured in a shooting during the massive Raptors victory rally.

Blair, the former Toronto police chief and minister in charge of border security and organized crime, said in an interview the Liberals will propose banning “assault style” firearms but they believe an outright handgun ban would not significantly enhance public safety and would be too expensive for questionable benefit.

That confirms what the Star first reported in December --that the Liberal government would stop short of an outright handgun ban, and would focus instead on prohibiting “assault style” firearms. The potential cost for Ottawa to buy back handguns that Canadians had legally purchased and owned under current laws was pegged by federal sources as high as $2 billion.

However, Blair said communities with concerns about handgun violence should be empowered to pass their own tighter controls, for example to require higher levels of secure storage on firearms than would be required under federal criminal law, and the Liberal proposals should be debated in a campaign.

“What I believe is that we can work with --and it would have to be done through the provinces --but work with the municipalities so that they may be able to effect additional regulation regarding storage,” Blair said in an interview with the Star.

“In a place like Toronto, or Montreal or lower mainland B.C. there may be other measures that can be put in place that would make these firearms far less accessible to diversion into the hands of people who would commit crimes with them,” he said.

“So it isn’t something as, quite frankly, as blunt as an outright ban, but I believe there are appropriate restrictions that should apply everywhere in Canada, and there may be some additional regulatory restrictions that could be put in place tailored to the local circumstances of a jurisdiction that wants to do more.”

Blair did not say how much a buyback of those kinds of weapons could potentially cost the federal government, but owners who bought their firearms in compliance with current law should be “fairly compensated” if Ottawa were suddenly to ban them, he said.

The $1.5 billion to $2 billion estimate for a handgun buyback was based on a loose estimate of 1 million handguns registered in Canada.

Federal sources estimated there is “probably” twice that number of illegal, unregistered handguns in circulation.

The RCMP-led Canadian Firearms Program says 861,850 handguns were registered to individuals in Canada as of Sept. 30, 2018.

The Mounties say those handguns are registered to 292,701 licensed gun owners.

On top of that, according to the federal government, there are about 100,000 other non-handgun firearms --usually rifles and shotguns --legally owned and registered in Canada.

Blair led cross-country consultations after Trudeau asked him last summer to examine “a full ban on handguns and assault weapons in Canada, while not impeding the lawful use of firearms by Canadians.”