By Paul Weinberg
TORONTO, Mar 20 2004 (IPS)

After being lectured by U.S. officials and politicians about their allegedly lax immigration, refugee and drug policies, Canadians are hitting back with questions about inadequate regulation of guns by their southern neighbour.

With police reporting that at least 50 per cent of guns found after gang-related killings in Toronto originated in the United States, the new mayor of Canada’s largest city, David Miller, has urged Ottawa to press Americans "to have gun control on a national level".

Miller was reacting earlier this month to two murders and three shootings in an eight-hour period in the suburban Toronto community of Scarborough.

To date, the federal government has not formally responded to the mayor’s call, but the ‘Toronto Star’ reports that the U.S. agency that tracks illegal firearms – the bureau of alcohol, tobacco, firearms and explosives – has opened an office in this city, a two-hour drive from the Canada-U.S. border.

Following the Sep. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks in New York City and Washington, "the Canadian government has been bending over backwards to reassure the Americans that we don’t pose a threat to them," says Wendy Cukier, who heads the Coalition for Gun Control and is a professor of justice studies at Ryerson University in Toronto.

Those moves include passing new anti-terrorism laws in the months that followed 9/11, developing a co-ordinated response to refugees that arrive in North America, along with a "smart border" strategy that includes U.S. security officers working in Canada, and negotiations to establish a Canadian role in U.S. President George W. Bush’s proposed continental missile defence shield.

"Both sides are working a little harder on this because you never know if that gun is going to be in the hands of a terrorist, let alone just a bad guy," says Christopher Sands, director of the Canada Project at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies.

But senior policy makers in Washington and Ottawa have gone in different directions over the guns issue.

Ottawa has strengthened the registration and licensing of firearms and gun owners. In contrast, the Bush administration has blocked efforts to regulate civilians’ use of guns, because of its philosophical belief (rooted in the U.S. constitution) that citizens have the right to own and bear arms.

The ‘Vancouver Province’ newspaper recently reported that in the neighbouring U.S. state of Washington, it is possible to purchase 10 firearms at a gun show by simply showing a valid driver’s license.

Canada is not alone in facing a flood of U.S. guns, Cukier told IPS.

"Eighty per cent of the guns in Mexico, almost all of the guns in Jamaica, even 30 per cent of the guns as far away as Japan, certainly a large percentage of the guns in the hands of the Irish Republican Army that they are trying to decommission, originated as legal guns in the United States," she said.

While handguns are most commonly used in murders on the streets of big Canadian cities like Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver, citizens of this country might be seeing more AK-47 rifles and Uzi machine guns used in local crimes, added Cukier.

The U.S. ban on the civilian use of military assault weapons is scheduled to expire later this year, and "the indication is that Bush will not renew the ban".

Without international controls on the illegal gun trade, it is difficult for a single country like Canada to stop the flow of guns across its borders.

Because of the huge traffic in people and vehicles across the Canada- U.S. border, it is virtually impossible for customs officials to stop more than a fraction of incoming illegal guns, which generally arrive in small quantities, says Toronto Police Detective Sergeant Randy Smith.

"You would have to search every vehicle," adds the officer, who is in charge of the weapons enforcement unit for the Province of Ontario, which includes Toronto.

Canadian police add that the trade in illegal guns into this country is tied to the illegal drugs trade.

Despite the flow of U.S. guns across the 8,000-km border, stronger gun control legislation appears to be working in Canada, Cukier says.

Gun deaths in robberies, murders and suicides "are the lowest they have ever been", she adds.

That was confirmed by high-profile Canadian criminal lawyer Clayton Ruby in a recent analysis published in the ‘Globe and Mail’.

Ruby quoted Statistics Canada, which found that guns were involved in about one-quarter of Canada’s 582 homicides in 2003, ‘the lowest rate since statistics were first collected in 1961".

Canada-wide, "there has been a drop in gang-related killings – but not in Toronto", Ruby added.

With Canada and the United States diverging politically and socially in various areas, including gun control, Canadians will resist looser controls on cross-border traffic being pushed by business groups here, which advocate some form of North American customs union, says James Laxer.

Despite that, predicts Laxer, author of ‘The Border: Canada, the U.S. and Dispatches from the 49th Parallel’, moves to create an external tariff and security perimeter for all of North America and ease controls on border traffic ultimately means, "the American gun culture is going to be imported increasingly into Canada".

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