April 8, 1997 Mr. Mike Duffy Sunday Edition Sent via fax: (613) 224-4035 Dear Mr. Duffy: Re: Panel Discussion on Gun Control - Sunday Edition - April 6, 1997 First, I would like to thank you for bringing the gun control issue back into public debate over the last couple of weeks. The volume of mail you received should no doubt convince you to keep your viewers fully informed. I will point out, however, that the reason a gulf is developing between urban and rural types is because people like Lowell Green spout off their own personal views on gun control which have no basis in fact. For example, Mr. Green said on your show that the police support gun registration. The fact is police chiefs and union chiefs support gun registration, but the police on our streets and highways do not. People hear what the political and media elites say, but "rural types" give more credence to the police who work and live in their communities. Here is a brief summary of the police opposition to Bill C-68: - 91% of the RCMP in Saskatchewan - 85% of the RCMP in Alberta - 100% of the 19 Chiefs of Police in Saskatchewan - 95% of the city police in six Saskatchewan cities - 73% of the police in the Saskatchewan Federation of Police Officers - 72% of the delegates of the Ontario Provincial Police Association - Justice Ministers of Ontario, Sask, Manitoba, Alberta, Yukon & NWT Your viewers deserve the facts from your panelists, not personal rants. Millions of Canadians with more common sense than Lowell Green know that putting more police on the street is a more practical alternative for reducing crime than tying up police time registering guns owned by millions of responsible firearm owners. I hope there is some way you can set the record straight. Yours sincerely, Garry Breitkreuz, MP Yorkton-Melville Secondly, your story categorically stated that police support the new gun control laws. This is simply not true. A majority of Chiefs of Police support the bill but a vast majority of police on the street do not. Here is a brief summary of the police opposition to Bill C-68: - 91% of the RCMP in Saskatchewan - 85% of the RCMP in Alberta - 100% of the 19 Chiefs of Police in Saskatchewan - 95% of the city police in six Saskatchewan cities - 73% of the police in the Saskatchewan Federation of Police Officers - 72% of the delegates of the Ontario Provincial Police Association - Justice Ministers of Ontario, Sask, Manitoba, Alberta, Yukon & NWT I was so impressed with the views and opinions expressed by you and your political panel after Bill C-68 was passed. That's why I was both surprised and disappointed with your story on the new gun control laws forced through Parliament against the wishes of the majority of the people of Canada, except of course for people living in Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver. You started your story showing an icon and a series of clips of people shooting handguns which implied to your viewers that the new Liberal gun registration plan was about handguns. You must now correct this misperception by informing your viewers that the new laws are about registering every rifle and shotgun in Canada. Handguns have been registered since 1934 and neither the government nor the RCMP has been able to produce any empirical evidence showing that this costly mandatory registration system has reduced handgun crime, improved public safety or saved lives. In fact, the criminal use of handguns has increased in the last 60 years and the RCMP have been unable to give us even one example of how the Restricted Weapon Registration System has helped police solve even one crime. The Solicitor General refused to allow university researchers to conduct a survey of RCMP officers in British Columbia and suppressed the results of the two straw polls taken by RCMP officers themselves in Saskatchewan and Alberta. Finally, your story's comments on cost-effectiveness were not fairly presented because they concentrated mainly on those unsubstantiated comments of Wendy Cukier of the Coalition for Gun Control and not on the facts. Dr. Gary Mauser of Simon Fraser University has found that Canadians use firearms to defend themselves against human threats about 32,000 times annually and against animal predators about 36,000 times a year. Dr. Mauser has concluded that firearms are used about twice as often in self-defence as they are in criminal activity. A major study conducted in the USA by a team of 38 doctors has arrived at similar conclusions finding, "As many as 65 lives are protected by guns for every life lost to a gun. For every gun tragedy sensationalized, dozens are averted by guns but go unreported." Dr. Taylor Buckner of Concordia University in Montreal offers this supporting evidence, "It's hard to see how the involvement of thousands of police officers keeping track of millions of households that have informed the police they have guns, is an effective deployment of police resources. Of the eight million guns in Canada, only 1/20th of 1 percent will be misused in homicide, suicide, accidents or by being stolen in a given year. That is to say that 99.95% of the police effort will be wasted. Realistically, if there were no firearms at all, probably fewer than 100 lives a year would be saved." The Metropolitan Toronto Police reported that the new Firearms Acquisition Certificate (FAC) screening procedures introduced by Bill C-17 in 1991 require six hours to process just one application for a FAC. In Metro Toronto during the time it takes to process one FAC, there are an average of: 17 burglaries, 18 assaults, 2 sexual assaults, 4 robberies, 46 reportable traffic accidents resulting in 14 injuries and/or fatalities and 202 other Criminal Code offences. A retired councillor for the Town of Dauphin, who appeared before a group of Senators touring the province of Manitoba last November, estimated that by the year 2003, the Town of Dauphin would have to hire two more RCMP Constables and two police clerks to handle the additional workload to implement the registration provisions of Bill C-68. He testified, "The ratepayers of this town will have to budget a minimum expenditure increase of $200,000 per year. While I in no way intend to state that my assumptions apply to all areas of Canada, it is interesting to note that if these costs are at or near average, then the total cost to the lower levels of government in Canada for firearms registration would be around $540,000,000 per year." You owe it to Canadians and your viewers to present all the facts in your stories not just the unsubstantiated claims by paid lobbyists for both sides in this debate. There are a number of firearms experts out there and I am disappointed that you didn't tell your producer to go out and interview them for this story. I hope you will use your considerable influence to present a more accurate presentation of the facts at some point in the future.