Gunter. Trudeau’s gun ban about to get worse
GUNTER : Here's how Trudeau's gun ban is about to get worse
Author of the article:Lorne Gunter
Publishing date:Nov 07, 2020 • Last Updated 19 hours ago • 3 minute read
Canada is about to get an “evergreen” gun ban.
Does that mean police officers will bring arrangements of pine boughs and ribbons when they come to seize firearms and all confiscation notices will be printed on spruce-scented paper?
No.
“Evergreening” is a term from the software industry. It refers to automatic updates that occur in the background, like when your smartphone’s operating system upgrades itself in the middle of the night while you’re in la-la land.
That might be convenient for computer technology. But when you’re talking about changes to a law that affects hundreds of thousands of Canadians, it’s undemocratic to say the least.
When your cellphone updates at 3:00 a.m., there is no chance you’ll wake up a criminal because of it.
But with the “evergreen” ban promised this week by Public Safety Minister Bill Blair, it’s possible to go to bed a fully law-abiding citizen and wake up in possession of illegal firearms.
And you will be given no advance warning. Nor will there be any debate or vote in Parliament.
Under Blair’s scheme, outlined at a virtual meeting of the House of Commons Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security, the May 1 list of newly banned guns (9,500 models or variants, 400,000 individual guns) will be expanded to outlaw ever more firearms – constantly, quietly, without any public discussion.
As soon as the RCMP or a gaggle of Justice department bureaucrats decide to add an additional model or models to the banned list, it will be done with no more effort (or democratic legitimacy) than pressing the “Enter” button on a computer.
Blair told the committee the government needed an “evergreen process” to keep Canadians safe “because we know that the gun industry is agile and adept at bringing forward new models and variants in order to try to get around the rules.”
Yeah, right. It’s the gun industry who are the sneaky, dishonest ones.
Just as troubling as Blair’s pledge to authorize perpetually moving goalposts in the gun ban was his promise to create a “red-flag regime.”
Red-flag laws are sometimes – sometimes – well-intentioned. They enable health professional to break patient-confidentiality rules to report a gun owner with mental health issues who is a threat to themselves or others.
But there has already been a provision in Canadian law since 1995 authorizing family or professionals to report gun owners suspected of being public-safety threats. Whenever anyone calls the national firearms centre’s toll-free line, one of the options they can select has been “report a spousal or public safety concern.”
Unfortunately, this snitch line is frequently used by a divorcing spouse to cause his or her gun-owning spouse some legal grief.
Take the example of “Kassandra” (not her real name).
According to TheGunBlog.ca, the ex-husband of the 38-year-old mother of two told police he feared she would use her guns on herself or others.
In the middle of the night, three Toronto police officers used a master key to enter Kassandra’s condo without a warrant and without knocking.
They yanked her from her bed in her nightgown, coerced her into opening her gun safe and seized her legally owned and stored guns. (It will be very hard to get them back.)
Then she was handcuffed to a gurney and transported by ambulance to a Toronto hospital for a compulsory psych evaluation.
Blair’s new red-flag law is expected to expand the power to rat-out gun owners to friends, co-workers, neighbours and members of the community at large.
In other words, if you own a gun, make sure you don’t tick anyone off.
If you thought it was impossible for the Trudeau government’s May 1 ban to get any worse, think again.
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