Was the United Nations the catalyst of gun control measures in Canada?

BY PAUL JUNOR

Attention has been focused on the federal government in Canada for its attempts to implement gun control measures in the last few years.

An article released on April 15^th, 2023, raised an important question, “Were Recent Gun Measures in Canada Initiated By the United Nations?” The article focuses on the role of the United Nations Office for Disarmament Affairs (UNODA), which has one of its initiatives to keep records of the various actions taken by member states.

The  UNODA’s website notes, “Every two years, states submit national reports on their implementation of the UN Programme of Action (PoA), and its International Tracing Instrument (ITI).” The website lists four main units of the UNODA:

Weapons of mass destruction
Support to multilateral disarmament and non-proliferation efforts with respect to weapons of mass destruction (WMD)

Conventional arms
Focusing disarmament and arms control efforts on all weapons  not considered WMD, including small arms and light weapons (SALW)

Regional disarmament
The enhancement of global disarmament and international peace and security through the support and promotion of regional disarmament efforts

Transparency and confidence-building
Confidence building measures are meant to prevent, or reduce the occurrence of ambiguities, and suspicions to improve international cooperation in disarmament and arms control

Other disarmament issues are connected to UNODA’s involvement in: education, youth, gender, multilateralism, information security and outer space.

The article postulates that this above-described specified initiative essentially amounts to global gun control efforts. The Order in Council presented on May 1^st, 2020, by the Government of Canada has added a subsection to the Criminal Code Act. One of the subsection questions, “Has your country set national targets relating to the implementation of the PoA and ITI?” It does seem that the Order in Council was directed at ensuring that Canada complies with the PoA and ITI.

The fact that the Government of Canada is reporting its progress in terms of its  implementation of PoA and ITI  can be seen in Bill C-21, which was presented to the 2nd session of the 43rd Parliament in 2021, and was reintroduced again in 2022.

Further progress reported to the UNODA has to do with the law that businesses must keep records of all gun sales for a minimum of 20 years, regardless of whether they are non-restricted.

The article lists Target 16.4 of the UN. Sustainable Development Goals (SDGS), which states, “By 2030, significantly reduce illicit financial and arm flows, strengthen the recovery and return of stolen assets, and combat all forms of organized crime.” The article poses an important question; were these changes made because politicians believed they were the right things to do? Or were they done in order to comply with international agreements?

It has been revealed that debate over gun policy has been reduced to warring between: gun control activists, and those who are gun-carrying advocates. The debate has become deeply personal with many resorting to social media to attack the other sides.

As a reminder, the Trudeau government was elected with a promise to ban handguns and assault rifles. There has been a challenge to Ottawa’s 2020 prohibition of over 1,500 assault-style firearms. CCFR believes that because it violates the Canadians’ Charter right to: life, liberty, and security of the person, it should be withdrawn. It is incumbent that the federal government clarifies its position.