New KnifeNews article about Canadian law

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Jul 6, 2013
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Hey everyone! As the title says, KnifeNews just put out an article regarding the situation with Canadian customs prohibiting essentially any knife that opens with one hand.

I have been vocal in the past few days about this issue and have mentioned more than once for fellow Canadians to email and call their MPs about it. Nothing will happen of we don't make or displeasure known.

http://knifenews.com/canada-border-services-agency-seizing-one-handed-opening-pocket-knives/

I recommend looking at the link to the appeal in question as well.

Get the word out!
 
There are a bunch of other threads on BF regarding this as it has been discussed for a week or two, but thanks for posting this article.
 
You canadian? Me and the guys I know all were extremely disappointing to see this happen, however not surprised at all as this was the way things were heading.
 
I am Canadian, yeah. Extremely dissapointed is a nice way to put it.
I've worried that this may one day happen, but I didn't expect it to happen in one swift kick, so to speak.

What dissapoints me most is that there really is no sound logic to the new law. Though that's not really a surprise either when it comes to Canadians and knives.
 
This is essentially what happened in Australia at the end of @2012 and where the horror stories about seizures etc relating to here come from. Thankfully it ended up being so entirely unworkable and far more effort than anticipated the Customs Regulations were reversed at the end of 2015. But you need to keep the pressure on !
 
Does this put the Canadian knife dealers out of business?
 
So anyway for the 500th time this happens. Stuff gets seized.

The purpose of that tribunal is not to make law but to re-affirm any seizure made at the border. Think about that for a sec, they're not there to admit they were wrong and give you your stuff.

If something gets seized bounce it back to the shipper, even if it costs you money or pride. If you try to do the smarted guy in the room thing with this panel you're gonna have a bad day.
 
I contacted my MP. Not too sure if it puts Canadian knife dealers out of business, I think it says if the dealer has a business firearms license then they can import the knives.
 
So anyway for the 500th time this happens. Stuff gets seized.

The purpose of that tribunal is not to make law but to re-affirm any seizure made at the border. Think about that for a sec, they're not there to admit they were wrong and give you your stuff.

If something gets seized bounce it back to the shipper, even if it costs you money or pride. If you try to do the smarted guy in the room thing with this panel you're gonna have a bad day.
Agreed, but the issue I see is that the shippers aren’t gonna ship. Why take chances or even bother?

If I was a knife manufacturer or retailer outside of Canada that sold knives that meet the CBSA criteria, I wouldn’t ship to end users in Canada under the current uncertainty. If a Canadian retailer can guarantee they are legally allowed to bring in these now “banned” knives, that’s a different story. Otherwise, no thanks.
 
I contacted my MP. Not too sure if it puts Canadian knife dealers out of business, I think it says if the dealer has a business firearms license then they can import the knives.

Not sure exactly how lenient the CBSA will be with regards to enforcing this moving forward, but given that if they seize a shipment of say, flipper knives at the border, the CBSA is doing so because to them, those knives are now considered prohibited weapons, just like autos and balis are currently. In order to clear customs, whoever or whatever entity is trying to take possession of them would likely have to have a licence that allows for the possession of prohibited weapons rather than just any old PAL or RPAL.

This is obviously conjecture on my part, but this chain of events would seem to make the most sense (although any fellow Canadians who are even vaguely familiar with our firearm laws would know that sometimes common sense and what bureacrats and politicians think is common sense are sometimes worlds apart).

Being truly honest though, this is just something that us Canadians will likely only be able to truly get a better grasp of and understanding of how this will work in practice through the passage of time, and as others have said, in the meantime, if you're unhappy with this new decision, contact your MP and make them aware of your displeasure.
 
so if im a legal knife dealer.....in canada....i cant import kershaw skylines or anything the govt org thinks is one hand opening/illegal.....correct? so basically im only selling canadian made folders?

if i got that right wow........
 
I have noticed that some knife dealers in Canada since this CBSA notice 18-01 have received flippers. So maybe not all hope is lost.
 
I don’t comment here much anymore because law is my day job. If you look back on some of the old threads you’ll see extensive discussions with extensive quotations and citations showing how the law in Canada is, with all due respect, ridiculous. The customs and import decisions are really based on an old and bad Supreme Court of Canada case which was an appeal from a decision of the Quebec Court of Appeal that had, quite sensibly, determined that a butterfly knife ( bali to us ) is NOT a prohibited weapon because it isn’t automatic and doesn’t open by gravity alone. But in a two second oral decision read by Justice LaForest the Supreme Court said, paraphrasing from the French, “ tough merde, we agree with Justice Beauregard who dissented in the Court below and, surprise you’re guilty! Have a nice day.” For Monsieur le Justice Beauregard, whose immortal decision I’ve reproduced below with some bolding, he doesn’t care if there’s a bar or safety. He doesn’t care if you have to be a ninja to open it one handed. The purpose of the law is to keep ninjas and the switchblade menace off the streets. Subsequent decisions have used this rewsoning to ban knives abused or adjusted so that then open with a good whack or wrist flick even though they aren’t designed for it on the same logic that, hey, a criminal or a ninja could turn it into a gravity knife just like I did. I have no idea what mythical menace they think they are eliminating but the switchblade hysteria was always more than a little stupid, with all due respect. Anyways, this is what we are up against. You have to assuage the authorities’[ concerns for now and that is surely something that can be discussed. But eventually you either need smarter government ( good luck with that) or another split decision in a Court of Appeal so you can get back to the Supreme Court of Canada on a good case to get something a little more sophisticated intellectually and fair for the vast majority of people who use knives responsibly.
You might note the comment at the end regarding mens rea and possession


Regina v. Vaughan

60 C.C.C. (3d) 87 ( Que. C.A. )
Reversed 69 C.C.C. (3d) 576 (SCC) [Dec 10, 1991 ]

Beauregard J.A. (dissenting) (translation): The appellant appeals from a judgment of a judge of the Court of Sessions of the Peace (Montreal, November 3, 1986, Gerard Girouard J.), who found her guilty of having been in possession on May 31, 1986, of a prohibited weapon contrary to ss. 82(1)(b) and 88(1)(a) of the Criminal Code, R.S.C. 1970, c. C-34.

The act of possession is admitted and the principal question in issue is whether the weapon in question is one of those described in s. 82(1)(b).

According to this section, the following are prohibited:

(b)

Any knife that has a blade that opens automatically by gravity or centrifugal force or by hand pressure applied to a button, spring or other device in or attached to the handle of the knife...

According to the indictment and the police officer who testified, the knife which the appellant had in her possession was a ''butterfly knife''. When the knife is closed, the blade is contained in a handle which also serves as its carrying case. The handle is divided longitudinally into two parts. At their base, these two parts are joined by a pin which also holds the blade to the two parts of the handle. It should be added that at the head of these two parts of the handle there is a small bar or clip used to keep the two parts of the handle closed. When the knife is open, the same bar keeps the two parts of the handle together; but, the bar is not really necessary because the two parts of the handle are held by the hand and fingers of the person using the knife. One can obviously open the knife with his two hands but it can also be done with only one hand. It suffices to easily open the bar then, holding one of the two parts of the handle, to apply a centrifugal force which frees the blade. However, the centrifugal force also frees the second part of the handle and the user must raise his fingers in order for this second part of the handle to meet the first part; this necessitates some dexterity.

Despite the fact that it is necessary to first raise the bar of the case and the fact that the user of the knife must then bring the two parts of the handle together once the blade has come out of the knife by the centrifugal force, the trial judge concluded that the knife in question was a knife that had a blade which opened automatically by centrifugal force.

In my humble view, the meaning of the word ''automatically'', found in s. 82(1)(b) is elucidated by the expressions ''by gravity'', ''centrifugal force'', ''by hand pressure applied to a button'', ''spring'' or the more general expression ''other device in or attached to the handle of the knife''. In the present case, the automatic character in the opening of the blade is brought about by the application of centrifugal force.

The appellant submits that the trial judge erred in this regard. She admits that the knife blade can be opened by centrifugal force but she submits that the two additional operations necessary for that (raising the bar of the case and joining the two parts of the handle) make it so that the knife does not open automatically. The appellant also notes that the purpose of these provisions in the Criminal Code is to prevent a person from being able to transform a penknife into a knife in no time at all.

Despite his impeccable work, counsel for the appellant has not succeeded in convincing me that the trial judge erred. The existence of a bar is not relevant. This bar can be opened in the wink of an eye with the tip of a finger or by passing the head of the handle over one's clothes. The blade of the knife can then open automatically by centrifugal force and the fact that at the same time the user of the knife is obliged to bring the two parts of the handle together does not, in my view, eliminate the automatic nature of the opening of the blade by centrifugal force. Counsel for the respondent referred as to a judgment of Catliff J. of the County Court of Vancouver in R. v. Giroux, No. CC860313, May 6, 1986 [summarized 16 W.C.B. 501], who, in the case of knife of the same type, came to the same conclusion as the trial judge.

Counsel for the appellant in the alternative submits that the trial judge did not ask himself whether the appellant had a guilty intent.

A proof of guilty intent results in the present case from evidence of possession of the knife. Possession was not contested. From this possession, which was not otherwise explained, the judge could deduce that the appellant had the intent to possess the knife.

As a result, I would dismiss the appeal [Emphasis added – hjk]”


[
 
Don't you love how ignorance of the law is no excuse even when a decision as to how to define said law and create a new criminal definition of an incident is only made after the incident has already happened?

How the heck was she supposed to know that owning a butterfly knife was illegal if it was only defined as illegal as a result of her being taken to court and charged?
 
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Don't you love how ignorance of the law is no excuse even when a decision as to how to define said law and create a new criminal definition of an incident is only made after the incident has already happened?

How the heck was she supposed to know that owning a butterfly knife was illegal if it was only defined as illegal as a result of her being taken to court and charged?
This is a problem with our law and appellate system generally. In complex commercial litigation and tax litigation you can wait ten years for cases to work their way all the way up the food chain for their Lordships to make new law on some point or other overturning what other courts, lawyers and businessmen thought was the law. and turning deals and reasonable reliance and expectations on their head, all for the legal fiction that you are deemed to know the law and that judges don't make they merely interpret the law. The problem is that in our system this is a necessary fiction. In Court when you make submissions and when you write scholarly articles you can get a little traction from the "uncertainty" argument and this is the main reason why our appellate courts stick to the doctrine that postive covenants don't run with real property ( trust me on this ) but that doesn't go over well in criminal law which is ironic since retroactive changes by legislation are limited, Askov limited the prejudice of procedural delays but substantive judicial change remains untouched because the fiction is so central.
 
This is a problem with our law and appellate system generally. In complex commercial litigation and tax litigation you can wait ten years for cases to work their way all the way up the food chain for their Lordships to make new law on some point or other overturning what other courts, lawyers and businessmen thought was the law. and turning deals and reasonable reliance and expectations on their head, all for the legal fiction that you are deemed to know the law and that judges don't make they merely interpret the law. The problem is that in our system this is a necessary fiction. In Court when you make submissions and when you write scholarly articles you can get a little traction from the "uncertainty" argument and this is the main reason why our appellate courts stick to the doctrine that postive covenants don't run with real property ( trust me on this ) but that doesn't go over well in criminal law which is ironic since retroactive changes by legislation are limited, Askov limited the prejudice of procedural delays but substantive judicial change remains untouched because the fiction is so central.
So in all honesty, how the heck are you supposed to know what the law is?
 
If your tired of seeing these threads, don't post in them. Or keep complaining about them in the thread. That sure stops the next thread from happening!
So anyway for the 500th time this happens. Stuff gets seized.

The purpose of that tribunal is not to make law but to re-affirm any seizure made at the border. Think about that for a sec, they're not there to admit they were wrong and give you your stuff.

If something gets seized bounce it back to the shipper, even if it costs you money or pride. If you try to do the smarted guy in the room thing with this panel you're gonna have a bad day.

I for one can see why this is bring brought up again and again. It's important and should be circulated to bring it to as many Canadians attention as possible.
 
If your tired of seeing this threads don't post in them.. or complain about them in the thread. That sure stops the next thread from happening!


I for one can see why this is bring brought up again and again. It's important and should be circulated to bring it to as many Canadians attention as possible.
One of the problems though, is that most Canadians don't care if we get our knives. They see the CBSA as protecting them from scary weapons entering the country to end up in the hands of bad guys. This tribunal ruling is not being reported in the news at all, and if it was most people would not care and would not see it as an infringement on their liberty or even realize the legal ridiculousness of the situation.
 
One of the problems though, is that most Canadians don't care if we get our knives. They see the CBSA as protecting them from scary weapons entering the country to end up in the hands of bad guys. This tribunal ruling is not being reported in the news at all, and if it was most people would not care and would not see it as an infringement on their liberty or even realize the legal ridiculousness of the situation.
Even more reason to spread the word and educate people, to me anyway. I completely understand how frustrating it is when people are more fearful than logical.
 
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