Polytechnique massacre survivor renews calls for stricter gun control in Canada after Uvalde school shooting

A survivor of the 1989 massacre at Montreal’s Ecole Polytechnique is renewing calls for stricter gun control measures in the wake of yet another fatal school shooting in the United States.

It also follows a month of gun-related incidents in Montreal.

An attack in Uvalde, Texas this week left 19 children and two teachers dead in a fourth-grade classroom. It was the deadliest school shooting in the U.S. in nearly a decade.

Heidi Rathjen, who was a student at Polytechnique when a gunman killed 14 women, says incidents are not isolated to the United States.

“We’re not immune,” said Rathjen, who is also the co-founder of prominent gun-control group PolySeSouvient. “Not only have we had our own mass shootings, but gun violence has gone up year and year after year – except once – since 2013.”


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Rathjen believes what happened in the U.S. could happen in Canada if gun laws aren’t tightened.

“Nothing has been done about handguns since the 1990s when they banned the short handguns like the Saturday night specials (inexpensive, small-calibre handgun). But since then the number of handguns has exploded.

“In Canada we have over a million handguns in the hands of private citizens, despite the fact that the vast majority of Canadians want to see handguns banned.”

Rathjen says Canada hasn’t made much progress in terms of stricter gun legislation.

The federal government has banned a list of assault weapons and promised a buy-back plan two years ago – but that plan has yet to be rolled out.

“Remember that these assault weapons, the fact that they’re prohibited, does not mean that Canada has a ban on assault weapons,” she said. “We have a list of assault weapons that are prohibited, but we have many assault weapons that are still out there that are totally legal and new assault weapons coming on the market since these weapons were prohibited in May of 2020.”

WATCH: Calls for stricter gun laws on anniversary of Quebec City mosque attack (Jan. 29, 2022)

Shortly after the shooting in Uvalde, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said his government will announce new steps related to gun control. That announcement is expected to come Monday.

The prime minister would not say if a full handgun ban across the country is on the table, despite increasing pressure from some mayors and gun control advocates.

“We’ve been working with them and some of their concerns over the past while because we understand there is a range of opinions and views,” Trudeau said.

Gun-control advocates like Rathjen say the gun problem in the United States is dire and that lobbyists have a lot of power to influence decisions.

Rathjen believes Canada is heavily influenced by the U.S.

“I mean, this ideology is spreading,” she said. “And luckily, most Canadians still strongly support gun control. But you have to wonder how powerful the gun lobby is when 30 years after a mass shooting, we’re still fighting to ban assault weapons.”

“We would really like to retire our gun-control work and we would really like to move on and turn the page. But we can’t do it until we achieve this very concrete legacy in memory of the victims that we want to be a country that doesn’t allow civilians to own weapons that are designed for mass shootings.”

Rising gun violence in Montreal

A rise in gun violence in Montreal has been an issue for some time now.

A daycare in Rivière-des-Prairies was left riddled with bullets after a shooting last week. Nobody was injured. The week before, shots were fired at a nearby home.

The beginning of May was especially violent for the greater Montreal-area, including five separate shootings in a 72-hour period where there were several victims.

Montreal Mayor Valerie Plante has repeatedly asked Canada to legislate a ban on handguns. She’s calling on provincial parties to support her demand.

“Across the country, the source of crime, guns, they vary,” said Rathjen. “In the western provinces, most crime guns are domestically sourced. In Quebec, 80 per cent of crime guns are rifles and shotguns, not handguns. So it’s a mixed bag.

“And it just supports again the notion that we need to fight both the legal market and the illegal market. You can walk and chew gum at the same time. There’s no reason these two have to be mutually exclusive.”

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