(Ottawa) The Liberals won the support of the New Democratic Party (NDP) and the Bloc Québécois for the adoption of their gun control bill. Unsurprisingly, the Conservatives who opposed it from the start voted against it.
Of the 333 MPs currently making up the House of Commons, 207 voted in favor and 113 against. A few minutes before the vote, the Conservatives had tried a last minute maneuver to send the bill to parliamentary committee and avoid the vote at third reading, without success.
“It is the most important legislation [en] a generation,” responded Public Security Minister Marco Mendicino in a video posted on Twitter after the vote. “It will strengthen the national ban on assault weapons, it will put in place a national freeze on handguns and, ultimately, the introduction of red and yellow protocols to better protect women and girls. »
The “red flag” and “yellow flag” measures will respectively allow anyone to ask the court to confiscate firearms for security reasons or to suspend the license of the holder.
Minister Marco Mendicino added that he hoped the Senate could pass Bill C-21 “as soon as possible”. Second reading debate in the Upper House is due to begin the week of May 29.
The leader of the Conservative Party of Canada, Pierre Poilievre, has again accused Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of wanting to ban hunting weapons using C-21s. “It’s not the Saguenay hunter who is shooting downtown Toronto,” he said in a scrum. […] They are criminals and they are arms dealers, so we the Conservatives are going to put resources into reinforcing the border to prevent the importation of arms and we are going to put real repeat criminals in prison to protect the citizens. »
Bill C-21 sparked controversy last fall when the Liberals tabled last-minute amendments to ban assault weapons. This was already the subject of a ban by decree. The legislation was originally intended to impose a freeze on handguns.
The amendments sought to enshrine the ban on assault weapons in legislation to prevent it from being easily overturned by a future Conservative government, while adding more models of weapons that would be prohibited. One of these amendments included a list of more than 300 pages of models that would be banned, including certain weapons used by hunters and Aboriginal people, which caused an outcry.
The Liberals had withdrawn these amendments a few months later before submitting new amendments which were the subject of a broader consensus and thus obtained the support of the NDP. Leader Jagmeet Singh, who had to dispel doubts about his party’s position on the ban on assault weapons, did not react on Thursday.
“We voted in favor of this imperfect project, of course, but at least we contributed to its improvement,” said Bloc Québécois MNA Kristina Michaud, who managed to make several gains during the study of the project. bill in parliamentary committee.
Among these, the removal of the words “shotguns” in the French version of the definition aimed at prohibiting assault weapons and that of the long list of prohibited weapons. “We went to unanimously pass amendments on the need to have a valid possession and acquisition license to buy a charger,” she added.
The PolySeSouvient group highlighted in a press release the progress that C-21 represents in protecting victims of domestic violence against armed violence, but it deplores in the same breath that the ban on assault weapons in the legislation will only apply to new weapons that will enter the Canadian market, not those that are already in circulation. A definition of prohibited weapons and a list would have made it possible to remove existing assault weapons and prevent them from being marketed.
PolySeSouvient called for a more robust ban on assault weapons in order to avoid new mass killings like that of the École Polytechnique in 1989.
The story so far
May 2022
Public Safety Minister Marco Mendicino introduces Bill C-21 on gun control.
November 2022
The Liberals are tabling two amendments aimed at banning assault weapons while the elected officials who are studying the bill in committee have just finished hearing from the groups during their consultations. The arms lobby demands that the government back down and succeeds in mobilizing many hunters.
December 2022
The Assembly of First Nations opposes Bill C-21 and calls for guns used by Indigenous peoples for subsistence, such as SKS, to be removed from the list of prohibited weapons.
February 2023
The Liberals withdrew controversial amendments, including the long list of prohibited assault weapon models, and submitted new, less contentious amendments a few months later.