Juno News - October 05, 2022


Conservative MPs challenge Marco Mendicino over Liberal gun buyback scheme

Topics
police resources crime violence gun buyback effectiveness
Mentioned
Bill C-63 Dancho Lloyd Chair
Canadian media freak out over new Italian Prime Minister Poilievre and Trudeau spar over planned carbon tax increases

Episode Stats


Length

8 minutes

Words per minute

179.86

Word count

1,551

Sentence count

103

Harmful content

Misogyny

1

sentences flagged

Hate speech

1

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

Learn English with Honourable Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness, Ms. Dancho. She is the Minister responsible for the Anti- Guns and Gangs Fund, which provides support to domestic law enforcement agencies across the country, including the Toronto Police Service, and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP).

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
Topics generated with Qwen2.5-3B-Instruct.
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00.000 Minister, I know that you've gone across the country, as have I, and met with police forces.
00:00:04.000 What I'm hearing is that they are stretched quite thin.
00:00:06.620 Are you hearing the same thing?
00:00:11.340 Thank you, Ms. Dancho.
00:00:13.080 There's no doubt that we need to support law enforcement, domestic law enforcement,
00:00:16.960 and that's one of the reasons why we have created an anti-gun.
00:00:22.780 Sorry, if I could just complete the answer.
00:00:25.120 What I'm asking is if you have heard that police forces, their resources are stretched quite thin.
00:00:28.700 They're having challenges keeping up with the crime that we're seeing.
00:00:32.160 That's what I have heard.
00:00:33.020 Do you agree?
00:00:34.400 I was trying to complete my answer, Ms. Dancho, and I think I'm being responsive to your question,
00:00:39.520 which is that I acknowledge that we need to support domestic law enforcement,
00:00:43.420 which is what we are doing through our anti-guns and gangs fund.
00:00:47.680 Those resources are being transferred to provincial and territorial partners,
00:00:50.280 which in turn filters through to domestic police, and we'll continue to do that.
00:00:53.840 Thank you, Minister.
00:00:54.560 So I would take that as a tacit yes.
00:00:56.240 You would agree that police resources are stretched thin, and they require more resources.
00:01:01.220 We're also seeing violent crime has increased over the past seven years by 32 percent.
00:01:05.020 Are you familiar with that statistic?
00:01:07.080 I'm alarmed by it, which is why we can't accept the status quo.
00:01:10.080 The violent crime severity index is also up 18 points,
00:01:12.840 and there were more than 124,000 additional violent crimes last year than in 2015.
00:01:17.700 Are you familiar with that as well?
00:01:19.260 I am, which is why we presented Bill C-21.
00:01:21.480 The vast majority of gun crime is caused by gangs and criminals using illegally obtained firearms.
00:01:26.640 Do you agree?
00:01:27.620 Which is why we've got new tools in Bill C-21 to combat organized crime.
00:01:31.540 According to Toronto Police, guns smuggled in from the United States represent upwards of 9 out of 10 handguns used in crime.
00:01:36.840 Do you agree?
00:01:37.560 Which is why we invested $321 million since last year and seized a record number of guns last year at the border.
00:01:43.360 During the 2019 federal campaign, the Liberal platform stated that your confiscation regime of firearms would cost between $400 and $600 million.
00:01:51.080 Recent estimates put it upwards of $5 billion.
00:01:54.660 That's considerably more money than you're investing in additional border protection.
00:01:58.840 Is that correct?
00:02:00.100 Well, I would begin by saying that assault-style rifles have no place in our communities,
00:02:04.560 which is why we want to implement a buyback program to get them out once and for all.
00:02:08.000 I think it is very concerning that we're seeing a rise of gun violence in our cities.
00:02:12.140 And as I've outlined, and you seem to have agreed that the problem certainly is gun smuggling,
00:02:17.040 but you're investing considerably less money in border enforcement and considerably less money in community protection,
00:02:22.620 although you've acknowledged that that is the primary source of gun violence in our country.
00:02:26.920 I do want to switch gears a little bit and talk about firearms owners.
00:02:29.340 I am a firearm owner.
00:02:30.580 Minister, I'm quite concerned of recent news that your government will be redirecting police resources,
00:02:35.780 which we've outlined today in our conversation, are stretched quite thin,
00:02:39.480 dealing with a 32 percent increase in violent crime since your government's been in office.
00:02:43.720 You're planning to redirect RCMP resources and possibly other police resources to your confiscation regime.
00:02:50.940 Can you comment on that?
00:02:52.140 Well, I think that it's based on some false assumptions, which is that—
00:02:55.380 So you won't be redirecting RCMP resources?
00:02:57.120 Well, again, if I could just be permitted to answer your question, which is a thoughtful one.
00:03:01.380 Ensuring that police services who operate within provincial boundaries have the resources necessary to enforce laws to keep our communities safe
00:03:13.160 is not mutually exclusive to buying back assault-style rifles, and the reason is simple.
00:03:19.000 Those guns were designed with one purpose in mind, and that is to kill.
00:03:22.300 And so we believe that by taking them out of our communities, we'll provide that program with fair compensation.
00:03:28.460 If I may just conclude, I would urge you to reconsider redirecting police resources to your confiscation regime.
00:03:33.820 I think it is reckless and will further endanger our communities.
00:03:36.800 Minister. Thank you, Chair.
00:03:38.080 Minister, I have an engagement paper that was sent out by your department in October of 2018
00:03:42.360 that directly states under the heading International Experience that, quote,
00:03:45.860 In all cases, the data does not conclusively demonstrate that these handgun or assault weapon bans have led to any reduction in gun violence, end quote.
00:03:55.160 Your own ministry recognizes that there isn't data to support your buyback argument.
00:04:00.100 Why are you wasting billions of dollars on a scheme that hasn't worked?
00:04:04.380 Before I begin, I wonder if I could be permitted to actually complete an answer.
00:04:08.400 If you're not interested and you would just like to read from your sheet, you can do that.
00:04:11.860 But I'd like to be able to finish.
00:04:13.880 Is that okay?
00:04:15.860 We took the decision to ban assault-style rifles because they were designed to kill.
00:04:21.080 We looked at some very careful standards around the definition, which is contained in the order in Council,
00:04:29.300 and we are now setting about the launch of a buyback program so that we can get these guns out of our community
00:04:35.980 because we owe it to the victims to make sure there isn't another tragedy or mass casualty.
00:04:40.480 The fact is, you don't have any studies that demonstrate that this is going to enhance public safety.
00:04:44.720 Minister, since you believe that a gun buyback for law-abiding firearms owners will enhance public safety,
00:04:50.160 as you just said, why are you also not launching a gun buyback for illegal firearms possessed by criminals?
00:04:56.500 Well, in the first instance, we've put in place a national handgun freeze and a ban on importing additional handguns into the country,
00:05:04.820 which is a measure you oppose.
00:05:07.340 I'm talking about buybacks, though, Minister.
00:05:09.240 Well, if I could just be permitted to finish, Mr. Lloyd.
00:05:12.140 You also oppose our national ban on assault-style rifles, and you would propose to make them illegal again,
00:05:17.940 which we think is fundamentally wrong.
00:05:18.460 You're not answering the question, Minister.
00:05:19.880 You're dancing around the question.
00:05:21.300 Why don't you have a program to buy back illegal firearms from criminals on the street?
00:05:26.460 Why aren't you putting a program like that in place?
00:05:28.360 Well, we've taken a very concrete and tangible step forward to addressing handgun violence
00:05:34.220 through the introduction of a national handgun freeze,
00:05:37.220 and we're also going to get assault-style rifles out of our communities in collaboration with our partners.
00:05:42.120 Minister, wouldn't you agree that it'd be more beneficial for public safety
00:05:45.060 to get a buyback and a legal firearm off the street
00:05:48.000 rather than buying back a firearm from a sport shooter in Barrie, Ontario?
00:05:51.520 Well, the first thing I would say, Mr. Lloyd, and I've said this before,
00:05:56.040 is that I respect law-abiding gun owners.
00:05:58.860 But then why do you have a program that only targets them?
00:06:01.520 Why don't you have a program to get illegal guns off the street by buying it back from criminals? 0.74
00:06:06.120 Well, you and I disagree about that, but I do respect law-abiding gun owners.
00:06:08.460 You don't think that a buyback program for criminals would be effective?
00:06:11.600 We've taken the judgment that when it comes to assault-style rifles
00:06:15.060 that they have no place in our communities,
00:06:16.640 and we've also taken the largest step forward,
00:06:19.620 probably in a generation with C-21, 0.97
00:06:21.980 by putting in place a national handgun freeze
00:06:24.380 so that we can reverse the trend
00:06:26.280 and the growth of a universe of a type of gun
00:06:29.600 by about 45,000 to 55,000 new registrations every year.
00:06:32.680 Minister, my next question is,
00:06:34.280 you're seeking to cap magazine size to no more than five rounds.
00:06:37.300 Is that correct, yes or no?
00:06:38.400 Yes.
00:06:39.320 Will this apply to all long guns or only semi-automatics?
00:06:42.800 Well, what we have proposed is certainly with regards to…
00:06:47.620 Will it apply to all long guns?
00:06:49.620 No.
00:06:50.760 No.
00:06:50.820 Okay, so will it…
00:06:53.180 Do you understand the Lee-Enfield rifle is a commonly used hunting rifle?
00:06:56.660 It has 10 rounds in the magazine.
00:06:58.340 You're aware of that?
00:07:00.300 I have heard that.
00:07:01.780 Is the Lee-Enfield rifle, because it has 10 rounds in its magazine,
00:07:05.280 on the list of things that will be regulated?
00:07:08.320 Let me take a step back and tell you why it is that we've put these standards into the bill.
00:07:14.860 We think that by doing so that we will reduce gun violence.
00:07:18.140 See, the important thing, Minister, is that these firearms are predominantly used by Indigenous people
00:07:23.100 to fulfill their traditional treaty hunting rights.
00:07:26.280 And if you are limiting their ability to use a Lee-Enfield because of C-21,
00:07:31.240 you're limiting Indigenous rights.
00:07:32.700 This violates Section 35 of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
00:07:35.740 How is this not colonialism, Minister?
00:07:37.420 Well, we're consulting with Indigenous communities, and we have and will continue to consult on Bill C-21.
00:07:44.760 Good.
00:07:45.260 And we're listening very carefully to Indigenous leaders to make sure that for those who hunt as part of their tradition,
00:07:52.800 or who hunt to eat, that this bill will be consistent with those principles of reconciliation.
00:07:59.180 And I assure you, those conversations are ongoing.
00:08:01.600 Thank you.
00:08:07.420 Thank you.