Thank you.

I want to thank the committee for giving me the opportunity to speak today as part of its study.

My name is Heidi Rathjen. I was a student at the École Polytechnique in 1989 when 14 young women were shot and killed because they were women. Gun control is a public safety issue, but it's also a women's issue. PolySeSouvient consists of students and graduates of the École Polytechnique as well as families of the victims who support stricter gun control. Our focus is two‑fold. We want to prevent mass shootings and prevent femicides, as these both apply to the tragedy that unfolded at our school. In fact, they're often intertwined.

In 68% of cases of mass shootings in the United States over a five‑year period, the perpetrator killed at least one partner or family member or had a history of domestic violence. In Canada, many mass shootings are committed by domestic abusers. We have only to think of the 2020 Nova Scotia mass shooting.

While guns on their own don't kill, they make killing easier. Guns don't kill people. People with guns kill people. This is especially true in the context of domestic violence.

Intimate partner violence that involves a firearm is 12 times more likely to result in death than similar incidents that do not involve a firearm. Familicide in Canada consists of “a gendered crime involving primarily male accused who often target female victims, have a history of domestic violence, and commit the killings using firearms”.

From 2010 to 2018, 36% of domestic homicides where the weapon was identified involved firearms. A study in rural New Brunswick and P.E.I. found that two-thirds of the women whose homes had firearms said that knowing firearms were present made them more fearful for their safety.

At this point, I would like to take the opportunity to debunk a disingenuous talking point that is continuously used to oppose controls on legal gun ownership, including Bill C-21. The gun lobby constantly tries to minimize the involvement of firearms in domestic violence, because it contradicts their principal narrative, which is that the only problem is illegal guns in the hands of gangs or criminals. They often claim or use the slogan that “less than 1% of ALL domestic violence calls even have a firearm present at the address, let alone used or threatened”.

First, what they are doing is conflating gun-owning households with what police consider to be the “most serious weapon present” relevant to the incident. If one took the same logic and applied it to knives, then only 3% of households would have knives.

Secondly, it is completely normal to find that a small percentage of domestic violence calls involve a firearm. The threat or use of a firearm is arguably the most lethal or potentially lethal form of violence, and understandably represents a small fraction of all domestic incidents, including threats, mild physical force, physical injury, sexual assault, confinement and so on.

The gun lobby is essentially telling legislators and the public, including two people who are sitting right behind me—Tara Graham, daughter of recent femicide victim Brenda Tatlock-Burke, and Brian Sweeney, father of Angie Sweeney, who was killed a year ago in a familicide that also ended the life of three small children—that it's not necessary to systematically remove guns from domestic abusers like the perpetrators who killed their loved ones, because their murders fall within only a small percentage of all domestic violence calls to police.

In conclusion, I'd like to quote Tara, who in her brief to this committee writes that the tragic murder of her mother “highlights the urgent need to enact key new measures included in Bill C-21 aimed at protecting victims of domestic abuse....It is very disconcerting that these measures have not yet been enacted. Despite being engaged in years of abuse against my mother, Mike Burk[e] legally owned six or seven guns. If the police had been aware of the abuse, his firearms could have been removed.”

I hope this committee will heed her words and urge the government to immediately enact the relevant provisions in Bill C-21 and to direct provincial chief firearms officers to ensure their effective implementation.

Thank you.

Transcript

Discussions (0)