Ottawa, Quebec urged to ban handguns nationally ahead of 2017 mosque shooting anniversary
Global News
The leadership of the Quebec City Islamic centre where six people were killed asked the federal government to abandon its idea of making a handgun ban a provincial decision.
Just days before the fifth anniversary of the 2017 Quebec City mosque shooting, the leadership of the Islamic centre where the tragedy occurred called for a Canada-wide ban on handguns.
They sent letters to the federal and Quebec governments, urging all sides to make sure that any new gun control legislation is applied across the country. Ottawa has signalled it wanted to give individual provinces the ability to enact handgun bans, but the mosque leaders say the problem of gun violence is national.
In a letter addressed to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Public Safety Minister Marco Mendicino, leadership of the Islamic Cultural Centre asked the government to abandon its idea of putting a handgun ban in the hands of the provinces.
“If we are writing to you today, it is to beg you to stop your efforts to absolve the federal government of responsibility for the handgun issue,” wrote Boufeldja Benabdallah and Mohamed Khabar, reminding the Trudeau government that it is the “responsibility of the federal government to legislate in this direction so that the process is implemented by you from coast to coast.”
In a separate letter to Quebec Premier Francois Legault and Public Security Minister Genevieve Guilbault, mosque representatives said the province should “not to allow the federal government to shirk responsibility for the handgun issue.”
The federal Liberal government had initially planned to give municipalities the ability to ban guns on their territories, but that bill never passed. In November, the federal government said in its throne speech it would “support the provinces and territories that want to ban handguns in their jurisdictions.”
No province, including Quebec, has expressed an interest in overseeing a handgun ban, the letter noted.
“Even if the Government of Quebec decided to ban handguns on its territory, their proliferation in the rest of Canada would continue: it would, after all, be a ban on only one of the thirteen Canadian jurisdictions,” the letter to the province read.