Quebec tables bill to reinstate gun registry
‘We’re beginning a new era,’ says survivor of Polytechnique massacre
QUEBEC For Heidi Rathjen and survivors of the Polytechnique massacre, the timing could not have been better.
“We are nearing the 26th anniversary of the shooting at École Polytechnique,” Rathjen said in a news conference with Quebec’s acting public security minister and opposition MNAs. “Every anniversary is a time to reflect on how far we’ve come in terms of gun control and during the last nine anniversaries, it was nothing but bad news ... This is the first anniversary since the nine sad ones that we’ve had good news.” “We have something to celebrate.” Rathjen was in one of the classrooms at École Polytechnique on Dec. 6, 1989 when Marc Lépine opened fire and killed 14 women. She said the tabling Thursday of Quebec’s Bill 64, the Firearms Registration Act, also comes exactly one year after Premier Philippe Couillard vowed to create a provincial gun registry.
“It’s the concrete realization of the commitment of Premier Couillard that he made exactly one year ago and it also reflects the consensus of Quebecers, very, very clearly demonstrated through polls, unanimous motions in the National Assembly ... that all firearms are potentially dangerous, that there’s a place for their legitimate use in our society but this use must be done in a way that protects public safety,” Rathjen said.
When Bill 64 becomes law, Quebecers will have 12 months to register their long guns online through the Registrar of Civil Status of Quebec, free of charge. Ninety-four per cent of guns in the province, 1.6 million guns, are long guns that will need to be registered, Acting Public Security Minister Pierre Moreau said. Gun owners who fail to register their arms, make a false declaration, or hinder police work risk getting slapped with a fine, ranging between $500 to $10,000.
Quebec estimates it will cost $17 million to set up the registry, and then $5 million annually to run it.
“It gives you an extra tool to make sure that whenever there’s a violent situation, that you will know whether or not there is a gun on the premises,” Moreau said, adding police forces in Quebec referred to the national gun registry 900 times a day.
Montreal Police Brotherhood president Yves Francoeur wrote in a press release the more stringent the control on firearms, the safer it will be for Quebecers and police officers.
Similarly, Pierre Veilleux, president of the Association of Provincial Police Chiefs, said the registry “doesn’t solve everything” but is a great start. He said registering online will make the process “much lighter and easier.”
But Canada’s National Firearms Association thinks Quebec is wasting its time. “Without the threat of criminal charge, based on the experience of the federal registry, non-compliance will definitely be the order of the day,” said Blair Hagen, NFA executive vice-president.
The bill comes after years of court battles between Quebec and Ottawa.
In 2012, the Harper government’s Bill C-19 ordered the destruction of the Canadian long-gun registry. Quebec immediately filed a request for an injunction to prevent the destruction of the data. A temporary injunction was granted by Quebec Superior Court in April 2012, saving the data until legal arguments could be heard. Three years later, in March 2015, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled that the destruction of long-gun registry records was within the constitutional power of Parliament, allowing for those records to be destroyed.
In June, a federal court judge demanded Ottawa deliver to the court an external hard drive with Quebec gun registry data. Moreau said to this day he has no idea what remains of the Quebec data: “The March decision provided that the federal government is the owner of the data. But we have discussions with the federal government, with the new federal government in order to be able to recuperate whatever is left from the national registry. And my understanding is that the federal government, if they can put their hand on data that could be used by Quebec, that they will transfer it gladly to the province,” he said.
The response from Ottawa to Bill 64 was quick and brief. “Per our commitment, we will work in partnership with the Quebec government to determine how we may best support their efforts. We will not recreate a federal long-gun registry,” said Ralph Goodale, the federal Minister of Public Safety.
It did not dampen Polytechnique victims’ celebratory mood on Thursday, on the contrary. “We’re beginning a new era,” said Nathalie Provost, who was wounded in the 1989 shooting.
Quebec’s Bill 64 will be subject to public consultations, even though there is unanimity around the idea of bringing back a gun registry, Couillard said.
Stéphane Bergeron from the Parti Québécois and André Spénard from the Coalition Avenir Québec said maybe there are ways the bill can be improved.
“We must establish a gun registry,” Couillard insisted. “I think we are in Quebec pretty much united on this point, that firearms are not ordinary objects, they need to be registered and they need to be surveilled at all times, I think there’s a strong consensus.”
Asked about possible cost overruns (former auditor general Sheila Fraser found the Canadian long-gun registry had cost over $1 billion), the premier and his finance minister said Quebec cannot afford not to have a registry.
“We’ve learned from what happened in Ottawa,” Couillard said. “The annual cost of operation will be quite small. The main challenge is to put the system in place at the right price. And we’ll be extremely tight on that,” he said.