FACT FROM FICTION ON TORONTO'S FINGER-POINTING ON

C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 03 TORONTO 003314

SIPDIS

E.O. 12958: DECL: 12/21/2015
TAGS: KCRM PREL PGOV CA
SUBJECT: FACT FROM FICTION ON TORONTO'S FINGER-POINTING ON
GUNS AND APPROACH TO REGISTRATION

REF: A. TORONTO 2451


B. TORONTO 2469

C. TORONTO 2498

D. TORONTO 2966

E. TORONTO 3195

Classified By: Consul General Jessica LeCroy for reasons 1.4 (b) and (d
).


1. (C) Begin Summary and Comment: With a gun crime spike in
the Toronto area, provincial and city political leaders have
supported the Liberal party's December 8 presumed
vote-getting proposal for a nation-wide gun ban. The
existing Canadian Firearms Registry has long been supported
in Ontario, although the central registration system is
flawed and may be vulnerable to efforts by criminal elements
to gain access to its database. This message explains the
origin of and possible motivation for Toronto Mayor Miller's
and others' statements that 50% of guns used in the
commission of crimes in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA)
originate from the U.S., why limiting guns is seen as a
vote-winner in Ontario, general background on the Canadian
Firearms Registration Act, and U.S. and Canadian law
enforcement concerns about the registry system. The gun
issue has been a perennial favorite for political spin
doctors, particularly during this election season, so
separating fact from fiction for a Canadian audience
pre-disposed toward believing their problems derive from
south of the border will require tact and perseverance. End
Summary and Comment.

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The Fifty Per-Cent Solution to Our Political Woes?
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2. (C) Toronto Mayor David Miller and other city and
provincial officials have publicly and repeatedly stated that
50% of the guns seized by the Toronto Police Service come
from the U.S. The Mayor cited the 2000 Toronto Police Report
to both the Ambassador in his November 14 courtesy call and
the Consul General as the source for this figure. The text
of the report, however, claims only that "over the past 5
years it has been determined that more than 50% of all
handguns seized by the police in Ontario are not registered
in Canada" (Note: Canadian law enforcement officials claim
that many hunters in rural and western Canada have ignored
the registry requirements altogether. These officials
readily admit that guns stolen from inside Canada are a
significant problem. End note). The "spin" on this
statement of fact deflects public scrutiny away from
Toronto's ineffective efforts to stem the gun violence this
year and panders to popular anti-American sentiment that
makes it easy to blame "the Americans."


3. (C) Out of public view, the working level cooperation
between ATF and the Ontario Provincial Police (OPP)
Provincial Weapons Enforcement Unit (PWEU) is close and holds
promise for reducing the flow of illegal guns from the U.S.
to Canada. Toronto ATF reports that its Ontario law
enforcement colleagues view this as a shared responsibility
and have privately said that the recurring use of
headline-grabbing statistics by Canadian politicians is not
helpful. According to ATF, it is currently impossible to
document the number of guns from the U.S. that are used to
commit crimes in Canada. Because the actual percentage may
be more, or less, than 50%, depending upon how the statistics
are collected and tabulated, ATF recommends that U.S.
officials avoid discussing specific figures or percentages
and emphasize instead our shared responsibility and
intensified efforts to combat gun smuggling. The Consulate
has advocated that its Canadian contacts hold to this message
as well. Ontario Minister of Community Safety and
Correctional Services Monte Kwinter has also been proactive
in reminding Ontario officials of this.


4. (SBU) After Mayor Miller cited the 50% figure in a
December 8 press conference, the Consul General contacted the
Mayor on December 9 to explain that the figure was inaccurate
and that these public mischaracterizations not only hurt
bilateral relations but undermined the morale of officials on
both sides of the border who are working hard to improve
their ability to intercept any weapons illegally bought in
the U.S. and smuggled into Canada. The intervention appears
to have had some affect because in a CBC radio interview
dealing with the banning announcement later in the day, the
mayor did not mention the U.S., instead choosing to focus on
the issue of guns stolen from within Ontario, such as the
Malvern case. Similarly, the Consulate's ATF agent met with
Toronto and provincial police authorities to explain the
difficulty of gathering reliable statistics.


5. (SBU) Tight firearms controls resonate in urban Canada,
especially in Toronto where several factors converge. First,
Toronto enjoys its reputation as Canada's most sophisticated
and highly educated city. Gun ownership intrudes on that
sophisticated self-image (a registry gives people the sense
that at least something is being done --even if it is
ineffective). Second, urban areas of Canada, like those in
the U.S., have less of a hunting ethos than rural areas. In
rural Canada, firearms are seen as hunting tools; in urban
Canada, guns are often seen as tools of crime. Third, the
Greater Toronto Area (GTA) is a city of immigrants. Almost
50% of the people in the GTA were born outside Canada, and
many came from urban areas where only the police or criminals
had guns. For them, strict gun controls reinforce their
cultural and political values. Fourth, in 2005 the GTA saw
an unprecedented level of homicide-by-gun. This carnage has
transfixed the community, which has long enjoyed a very low
homicide rate compared to the U.S. (Note: non-violent crimes
are more in line with the U.S.'s; car thefts are actually
higher. End note.)

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Federal Election Campaign: Politicians Vie For The Spotlight
on the Gun Issue
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6. (SBU) On December 8, Prime Minister Paul Martin proposed
tough new firearms controls in what is widely perceived as a
pure political ploy to attract Toronto's vote. Each Canadian
Province would be "invited" to participate in Martin's plan,
however under Canadian law, provincial participation would be
strictly voluntary. Ontario has already indicated that it
will opt in. Martin,s C$325-million, five-point plan
includes:

--Banning the sale of handguns in Canada and retrieving the
handguns now in civilian hands through a buy back program
(Note: Campaigns to take firearms off the streets are nothing
new to Toronto; e.g. last month,s surrender plan in the city
yielded only 261 firearms. The offer of Raptor pro
basketball tickets collected 28 guns in March and April of

2002. In 2000 officials paid C$50 each for 1,753 weapons.
End note).

--Doubling the mandatory sentences for gun-related criminal
convictions (Note: The Canadian criminal code does not
dictate mandatory sentences for gun crimes. Only two crimes
are addressed: Using a firearm to commit an offense, and
possession of a weapon obtained in an offense. Each carries
a statutory minimum of one year,s imprisonment. Ontario
officials (Attorney General Bryant and Minister Kwinter) have
been in the forefront of aggressive lobbying of federal
officials to include tough mandatory sentences for gun
crimes. End note).

--Full compliance with existing gun registry laws (Note:
Martin answered a reporter,s question by saying that nothing
new was proposed for the 70-year-old federal handgun
registry, but that compliance efforts would be redoubled.
Ontario is unique among the provinces in supporting a
registry. End note).

--Investment in community programs that would focus on youth
at risk (Note: This would be funded by a C$50-million &Gun
Violence and Gang Prevention Fund8 and would also target
skills development programs. This provision mirrors the
well-publicized programs that Ontario and the City of Toronto
have already begun implementing. End note).

--Increasing enforcement staff, including the addition of 75
new customs officers at the border over the next five years
at an annual cost of C$8 million, and a new special customs
intelligence unit to &stop black market guns coming from the
U.S." The plan also calls for a C$45 million a year,
250-officer unit of the RCMP to work with local and
provincial governments on gun-related crime (Note: This
initiative builds on Ontario,s initiative earlier this year
to add up to 1,000 new police officers across the province.
End note).


7. (U) Opposition leaders were quick to criticize Martin's
plan. Conservative Leader Stephen Harper responded by
releasing a statement calling for a "crackdown on illegal gun
use, stopping the flow of illegal guns at our border," and
introducing mandatory minimum prison sentences. Harper's
statement called the Liberal proposals ineffective, adding
that the "liberals have done none of these things," except
during campaign season. NDP Leader Jack Layton jumped on the
bandwagon by also attacking what he termed Liberal Party
inaction on public safety. Citing a lack of money because of
Liberal-sponsored corporate tax breaks, Layton said he would
restore government funding to community and policing plans
aimed at reducing the causes and effects of crime and gun
violence.
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Historical Background on Firearms Control
--------------


8. (U) Canada has had a national firearms control and
registration system since 1934. Beginning in that year, all
handguns were required to be registered. During the Second
World War "emergency registration" was extended to all guns,
reportedly to keep shotguns and rifles out of the hands of
saboteurs. When the war ended, long guns were no longer
required to be registered. In 1977, Canada outlawed fully
automatic weapons (machine and sub-machine guns). Then, in
December 1998, when the 1995 Firearms Act was implemented,
.25 and .32 caliber short-barreled handguns were outlawed
except those used by competitive target shooters.


9. (U) The 1995 Firearms Act represented a sea change by
requiring the registration of all firearms and making owners
accountable for storage and use of their guns. It also
required licensing all firearms owners, tracking all firearms
transfers as well as imports and exports. More importantly
for law enforcement, it guaranteed police access to gun
ownership records. Since December 1, 1998, 7.1 million guns
have been registered and police have made 4.6 million
inquiries about gun ownership, according to the Canada
Firearms Centre that administers the registration program.

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A Troubled Registry
--------------


10. (U) Management of the Firearms Registry came under fire
in December 2002 when Canadian Auditor-General Sheila Fraser
revealed massive cost over-runs. In her report, Fraser
reminded the Department of Justice that it had initially said
the registry program would cost C$119 million, of which C$117
million would be offset by user fees. The Auditor-General's
report noted that in 2000, the Department of Justice
estimated that by 2004-05 it would spend at least C$1 billion
on the program and have net fee collections of $140 million.
Later in the same report, Fraser criticized management of the
Registry's information systems technology citing examples of
invalid software design assumptions, over-design of the
system based on the needs of criminal investigations that
were outside the scope of the enabling Act, and numerous
small changes that "typically took three to six months to
implement at a cost of millions of dollars." Auditor-General
Fraser made it clear that the Firearms Registry had been
seriously mismanaged.

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Are Canadian Firearms Records Vulnerable?
--------------


11. (C) Senior Canadian law enforcement officials have said
that holding the names and addresses of every legitimate
Canadian gun owner risks playing into the hands of organized
crime. Senior U.S. law enforcement officials are worried
that criminal elements could gain illicit access to these
records. Ontario has a large number of outlaw motorcycle
groups and it is common practice for these types of groups to
cultivate or coerce employees of motor vehicle divisions,
criminal records centers, and firearms registries, according
to law enforcement sources. The criminals use this illegal
access to obtain information on themselves, do "background
checks" on potential associates to make sure they are not
undercover police officers, and to trace the ownership of
vehicles they think might be used in undercover surveillance.
In the U.S. the fifty states license and register firearms.
Canada offers criminals the opportunity for "one-stop"
shopping.


12. (C) Comment: This weeks &The Economist8 article
focusing on gun crime in Vancouver and the recent
high-profile murder of a young female Montreal police officer
indicates that gun crimes are a Canada-wide urban issue.
ATF,s e-Trace system for tracing crime guns was piloted in
Ontario and the number of successful traces may have
inadvertently fueled the political rhetoric on this issue. A
victim of our own success ) we and the Canadians can live
quite well with this kind of success as we move forward with
our efforts at law enforcement collaboration.

LECROY