UNITED AGAINST GUN CRIME
Mayors' message to federal leaders
Among the five of them, they know a thing or two about the tragic consequences of gun violence.
Two of them have had mass shootings occur in their cities, leaving scars that will never fully heal. One is a former cop, a veteran of the biker wars that raged in the 1990s when the murder rate was sky high and innocent civilians routinely got caught in the crossfire.
Two are also avid hunters familiar with the safe and responsible use of firearms.
But all of them are convinced that handguns and assault weapons have no place in a civilized society.
Five Quebec mayors whose cities have been besieged by gun crime over the past year formed a united front Tuesday, calling on campaigning federal party leaders to take a “courageous” stand on tackling this dangerous scourge.
Standing on the Quai Alexandra in Old Montreal — the scene of several recent shootouts between rival gangs — the mayors of Montreal, Quebec City, Laval, Longueuil and Gatineau said they are doing everything in their power to fight the rise in violence. Now they say it's the federal government's turn to do its part by outlawing handguns nationwide, maintaining or tightening the current ban on many types of assault rifles and taking charge of illegal weapons flowing over the U.S. border.
Montreal Mayor Valérie Plante recently invested $5.5 million to hire additional police officers and civilian staff to curb gun crime. This is on top of a new squad created to tackle firearms trafficking in Montreal. Last week, she announced $5 million in funding for community groups that work to prevent violence.
“For every gun that is taken out of the streets, there are 10 more coming in,” she said. “I cannot change the Criminal Code. They can. It's their responsibility.”
Quebec City Mayor Régis Labeaume said the federal government can pour money into cities to reduce gun crime — and they'll take it “with pleasure.” But unless there is a national strategy to tame the “Wild West” mentality on the streets, the random gunfire and frequent shootings will continue.
Longueuil Mayor Sylvie Parent highlighted her own city's bold initiative to transform its police service over the coming decade, so that half of the officers will patrol unarmed and build bridges with the community, while the other half continues to respond to emergency calls. But she said Liberal leader and incumbent prime minister Justin Trudeau's plan to give municipalities an option of outlawing handguns on their territory rather than enacting a national ban would only create an ineffective mosaic of rules.
“Variable geometry should not exist in a file as sensitive as gun control,” Parent said.
More stringent gun control may be a polarizing issue nationally, but in Quebec — a key battleground in the 2021 campaign — there is a broad consensus.
Marc Demers, the mayor of Laval and a 30-year veteran of the police force, said handguns are the firearms most frequently used in crimes, be it sexual assault, unlawful confinement or armed robbery.
He lamented the loss of Canada's national firearms registry — once a useful tool for law enforcement — under the last Conservative government. Even through legal means, he said, powerful weapons fall into the wrong hands. Such was the case with the mass shooters at Dawson College in 2006 and the slaughter at a Quebec City mosque in 2017.
“The president of the Hells Angels in Laval used to have a permit as a gun collector. He had enough guns in his house for a third world war. I had to go in because there was a shooting in there. I only had a handgun,” Demers said. Gun control is “a matter of law; it's a matter of safety. I don't see any downside to it if the law is well made and people can still go hunting.”
Maxime Pedneaud-jobin, the mayor of Gatineau, denounced the “confusion” sown by those who have tried to pit the rights of law-abiding hunters against the concerns of urbanites calling for stricter gun control measures. He said he comes from a long line of hunters and is currently initiating his own child. The sport “has nothing to do with assault weapons or handguns,” Pedneaud-jobin said, adding it's a false dichotomy.
The sharpest criticism, however, was aimed at Conservative Leader Erin O'toole over his pledge to review the classification of 1,500 types of military-style assault weapons recently banned by the Trudeau administration. This is even a softening of the Conservative party's earlier promise to repeal the restrictions outright.
“The weapons on that list killed 14 women, shot people at Dawson, they were used at the mosque. I can't believe that there is a party that wants to reopen that regulation that restricts those weapons,” said Plante, evoking the legacy of the Polytechnique massacre in 1989, as well as more recent slayings, which loom large over Montreal and Quebec society. “For me, that's a step backwards.”