The topic of guns has dominated the last week of the federal election campaign. Liberals have attempted to drive a wedge between themselves and the Conservatives over a ban on “assault” style weapons, and Conservative leader Erin O’Toole backtracked on a plan to reverse that ban.
But all the parties seem to agree on one thing — gun violence is a pressing and growing issue.
“Our communities should be safe and peaceful places to live and raise children, but American-style gun violence is rising,” the Liberal platform reads.
“Too many lives have been lost in Canadian cities to rising gun crime,” the NDP platform concurs.
In a news conference Saturday, Conservative leader Erin O’Toole said violent shootings have increased since Justin Trudeau became Prime Minister.
Is gun violence rising in Canada and, if so, what do we know about it? CBC News looked into it with a fact check.
An upward trajectory
Criminal gun violence has risen in Canada — and by a fairly significant margin, according to Statistics Canada.
This includes not just discharging a firearm, but also pointing it — for example, as part of a bank robbery.
And the COVID-19 pandemic did not do much of anything to reverse the trend.
Last year, there were 8,344 victims of violent crimes which involved guns, according to a report from Greg Moreau of the Canadian Centre for Justice and Community Safety Statistics.
“This rate was unchanged compared to 2019 … Since reaching its lowest point in recent years in 2013, firearm-related violent crime has generally been increasing, with the exception of a decline between 2017 and 2018,” the report reads.
“The number of violent offences specific to firearms increased by 593 incidents in 2020, resulting in a 15 per cent rate increase.”
Jooyoung Lee, an associate professor of sociology at the University of Toronto who studies gun violence, says Canada has seen an uptick in homicides.
“There is somewhat of an increase, nationally speaking, especially over the last three or four years,” he said.
But the rate of homicides with firearms has broadly held steady in recent years, according to StatsCan data.
Though the absolute number of homicides by firearm reached its highest level of the past five years in 2020 at 277, the proportion of homicides by firearm actually decreased. In 2020, 37.2 per cent of homicides involved a gun, compared with 40 per cent in 2017.
Jooyoung Lee, an associate professor of sociology at University of Toronto, says it’s a mistake to focus on homicide when thinking about gun violence as an issue. (CBC)
Lee said that while guns can be deadly, they’re often not.
“Homicide is really like the tip of the iceberg when it comes to violent crime,” he said. “That’s not taking into account non-fatal shootings, which are the overwhelming majority of shootings.”
Suicide, another aspect of gun violence that’s fatal, is much more common than homicide in Canada — but it has not shown a sustained increase over the past 20 years. After peaking in 2015 at 4,405 suicides, there were 3,540 in Canada in 2020, according to Statistics Canada.
As gun violence increases, the public is making its concern known.
According to public opinion research on firearms by Public Safety Canada, 47 per cent of Canadians feel that gun violence is a threat to their community.
An Ipsos poll in 2020 reported that an overwhelming majority (82 per cent) of those surveyed supported Bill C-21, the legislation aimed at banning a range of “assault-style” weapons.
A Leger and Association for Canadian Studies survey in 2021 reported that about two thirds (66 per cent) of respondents favoured stricter gun control in Canada. Only 10 per cent favoured looser regulations, while 19 per cent favoured the status quo.
Christian Pearce, a criminal defence lawyer based in Toronto who is also author of Enter the Babylon System, a book about gun culture, says that while gun violence is a serious issue, he thinks public concern about it is overblown.
“It has a dimension that invites fear,” he said. “Fear not only of gun crime itself but of the other — because of who the gun problem is stereotypically connected with.”
“I don’t think the problem that we have is of a magnitude that justifies a lot of the knee-jerk responses that we end up getting.”
What can be done?
Seizing on public consciousness of the issue, the parties have put forward policy proposals they say will reverse the trend.
The Liberals, for example, would introduce a buy back program for banned firearms and would set aside $1 billion for provinces and territories which ban handguns. The Conservatives have proposed hiring more police officers. The NDP have proposed funding for community anti-gang projects — and this sample is not close to exhaustive of the platforms on the issue.
But both Lee and Pearce say they’d like to see a more community-driven, proactive approach to address the roots of gun violence.
“People don’t really want to look at the larger problem that underlies gun crime, which is not really about guns but is about economics, classism, cumulative disadvantage,” Pearce said.
Lee concurs, and would like to see efforts to protect and deter the most vulnerable before tragedy strikes.
“We have to create a society that shields the most at risk from going down that path, and that takes a real bold vision. It takes thinking outside the box and not just constantly responding to the latest uptick in shootings,” he said.
“That’s the current model in a lot of cities, unfortunately.”
Good policy to address gun violence is being held back by a lack of good data, Lee says. Specifically, researchers don’t have a good enough idea of where illicitly-obtained firearms are coming from, which could inform efforts to curb the rise.
For now, Lee is skeptical that measures like more police and bans on certain types of guns will achieve much good.
“The notion of a ban makes everybody think, ‘OK, these guns won’t be here anymore, and they won’t be used in crime.’ But if the patterns now mirror those of the past, something like that probably won’t have that big of an impact.”
VANCOUVER – Contract negotiations resume today in Vancouver in a labour dispute that has paralyzed container cargo shipping at British Columbia’s ports since Monday.
The BC Maritime Employers Association and International Longshore and Warehouse Union Local 514 are scheduled to meet for the next three days in mediated talks to try to break a deadlock in negotiations.
The union, which represents more than 700 longshore supervisors at ports, including Vancouver, Prince Rupert and Nanaimo, has been without a contract since March last year.
The latest talks come after employers locked out workers in response to what it said was “strike activity” by union members.
The start of the lockout was then followed by several days of no engagement between the two parties, prompting federal Labour Minister Steven MacKinnon to speak with leaders on both sides, asking them to restart talks.
MacKinnon had said that the talks were “progressing at an insufficient pace, indicating a concerning absence of urgency from the parties involved” — a sentiment echoed by several business groups across Canada.
In a joint letter, more than 100 organizations, including the Canadian Chamber of Commerce, Business Council of Canada and associations representing industries from automotive and fertilizer to retail and mining, urged the government to do whatever it takes to end the work stoppage.
“While we acknowledge efforts to continue with mediation, parties have not been able to come to a negotiated agreement,” the letter says. “So, the federal government must take decisive action, using every tool at its disposal to resolve this dispute and limit the damage caused by this disruption.
“We simply cannot afford to once again put Canadian businesses at risk, which in turn puts Canadian livelihoods at risk.”
In the meantime, the union says it has filed a complaint to the Canada Industrial Relations Board against the employers, alleging the association threatened to pull existing conditions out of the last contract in direct contact with its members.
“The BCMEA is trying to undermine the union by attempting to turn members against its democratically elected leadership and bargaining committee — despite the fact that the BCMEA knows full well we received a 96 per cent mandate to take job action if needed,” union president Frank Morena said in a statement.
The employers have responded by calling the complaint “another meritless claim,” adding the final offer to the union that includes a 19.2 per cent wage increase over a four-year term remains on the table.
“The final offer has been on the table for over a week and represents a fair and balanced proposal for employees, and if accepted would end this dispute,” the employers’ statement says. “The offer does not require any concessions from the union.”
The union says the offer does not address the key issue of staffing requirement at the terminals as the port introduces more automation to cargo loading and unloading, which could potentially require fewer workers to operate than older systems.
The Port of Vancouver is the largest in Canada and has seen a number of labour disruptions, including two instances involving the rail and grain storage sectors earlier this year.
A 13-day strike by another group of workers at the port last year resulted in the disruption of a significant amount of shipping and trade.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 9, 2024.
The Royal Canadian Legion says a new partnership with e-commerce giant Amazon is helping boost its veterans’ fund, and will hopefully expand its donor base in the digital world.
Since the Oct. 25 launch of its Amazon.ca storefront, the legion says it has received nearly 10,000 orders for poppies.
Online shoppers can order lapel poppies on Amazon in exchange for donations or buy items such as “We Remember” lawn signs, Remembrance Day pins and other accessories, with all proceeds going to the legion’s Poppy Trust Fund for Canadian veterans and their families.
Nujma Bond, the legion’s national spokesperson, said the organization sees this move as keeping up with modern purchasing habits.
“As the world around us evolves we have been looking at different ways to distribute poppies and to make it easier for people to access them,” she said in an interview.
“This is definitely a way to reach a wider number of Canadians of all ages. And certainly younger Canadians are much more active on the web, on social media in general, so we’re also engaging in that way.”
Al Plume, a member of a legion branch in Trenton, Ont., said the online store can also help with outreach to veterans who are far from home.
“For veterans that are overseas and are away, (or) can’t get to a store they can order them online, it’s Amazon.” Plume said.
Plume spent 35 years in the military with the Royal Engineers, and retired eight years ago. He said making sure veterans are looked after is his passion.
“I’ve seen the struggles that our veterans have had with Veterans Affairs … and that’s why I got involved, with making sure that the people get to them and help the veterans with their paperwork.”
But the message about the Amazon storefront didn’t appear to reach all of the legion’s locations, with volunteers at Branch 179 on Vancouver’s Commercial Drive saying they hadn’t heard about the online push.
Holly Paddon, the branch’s poppy campaign co-ordinator and bartender, said the Amazon partnership never came up in meetings with other legion volunteers and officials.
“I work at the legion, I work with the Vancouver poppy office and I go to the meetings for the Vancouver poppy campaign — which includes all the legions in Vancouver — and not once has this been mentioned,” she said.
Paddon said the initiative is a great idea, but she would like to have known more about it.
The legion also sells a larger collection of items at poppystore.ca.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 9, 2024.
