From owner-cdn-firearms@sfn.saskatoon.sk.ca Mon Dec 9 22:07:32 1996 From: "David A. Tomlinson" Subject: Presentation on Regulations This paper is for those who are making presentations to the House subcommittee on the Nov 96 Regulations. Download, print, copy, use, plagiarize freely. STORAGE, DISPLAY, TRANSPORTATION AND HANDLING OF FIREARMS INDIVIDUAL REGULATIONS 1 says: "'muzzle-loading firearm' does not include a handgun." That is not a definition; it implies that a sewing machine is -- or may be -- a "muzzle-loading firearm." Terribly amateurish! 2 grants broad exemptions to "peace officers." The writers have apparently not noted that the term "peace officer" is currently defined by the Criminal Code as including the reeve of a village and various other minor characters, and is not redefined by Bill C-68. 2(3) uses the words "in the course of" certain activities to grant exemptions to the regulations. That is hopelessly vague. Is the person "in the course of" the act of "hunting" when: (a) seeking game in the hunting field, (b) moving from vehicle or camp toward the area where game will be sought, (c) eating a meal in close proximity to where game has been or will be sought, or (d) sleeping in a tent after one, before one or between two periods of seeking game in an area or areas where game may be actively sought? There are serious problems with obeying the regulations while camped in a hunting area or shooting at a target shooting range. Fortunately for the individual trapped by this sort of vaqueness, sections 3 to 13 [which invokes FA s. 109, invoking a penalty of up to five years imprisonment] appear to stand in violation of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, according to the persuasive precedent set in the Supreme Court of British Columbia in the _R_v_Smillie_ case, as amplified by the Supreme Court of Canada in the earlier _R_v_Finlay case. Briefly, the rfegulations are regulatory law, and therefore a defence of due diligence must succeed if the Crown cannot prove a lack of due diligence. In _Smillie_, the judge noted that the _purpose_ of the law is public safety. He then noted that there were many ways of creating the degree of public safety that would prove due diligence, ways not set forth in the Regulations. Therefore, when the law makes it an offence to store, handle, display, etc. in any other way than that chosen by the author of the regulation, a defence of due diligence must necessarily fail if the accused has stored, handled, displayed, etc. in some fashion not approved by the author of the Regulations, but equally good at safeguarding public safety. Since the result of that is to negate the defence of due diligence and convict an accused who has done nothing wrong -- particularly where the the penalty involves up to five years imprisonment -- the regulations offend the principles of fundamental justice. Any charges based on regulations 3 to 13 inclusive are likely to suffer the same fate as the three charges lodged against Mr. Smillie: quashed without a hearing. Copies of _Smillie_ and _Finlay_ are available from NFA, Box 1779, Edmonton AB, T57 2P1. A donation of $3 or more is requested to cover the cost of providing each copy. Also available is a five-pack of five (including those two) persuasive and instructive decisions, with the complete arguments from one of them, for which a donation of $15 is requested. Dave Tomlinson, NFA It would help of the Department of Justice did not take the attitude that any judgement that their Minister dislikes is a mistake made by the judge.