MAPLE CREEK, Sask. – In the midst of a large agricultural riding facing some of the toughest economic times on record, Liberal candidate Bill Caton sums up what he thinks voters see as the key election issues.
“Farmers are going broke, prices are at record lows, the pain and depression are everywhere and the two issues I hear the most are guns and gay marriage,” says the second time candidate. “Can you imagine?”
Throughout rural Canada, they can imagine, certainly on the gun file.
More than a decade after it first played out as a volatile rural issue, the long gun registry continues to be a flashpoint, vote-determining issue, say candidates from all parties.
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Last week as part of his law-and-order announcement, Conservative leader Stephen Harper guaranteed that if elected government, the Conservatives would scrap the registry and use the savings to hire more police.
It won wide praise from police associations and victim rights groups.
On the election ground in rural Canada, it highlighted what remains a touchy debate.
“This will never be an old issue until the registry is gone,” said Macleod, Alta., Liberal candidate Bernie Kennedy the day after Harper’s announcement. “This is not an issue Liberals can win on.”
It is an issue on which rural candidates regularly are challenged and which often has candidates other than Conservatives scrambling to distance themselves from their party line.
“Let’s be honest,” said incumbent Palliser rookie MP Dave Batters, who had a victory margin of just 124 votes. “If it was not for the gun registry issue, I would not have won last year.”
Next door in Regina-Lumsden-Lake Centre, Liberal candidate Gary Anderson is promoting the idea that provinces be allowed to opt out of the registry: “I think the program has some merits but I will be fighting to see an opt-out clause as there was in the (Liberal) announcement on banning hand-guns.”
It is a particularly tricky issue for rural New Democrats, in a party led by Toronto MP Jack Layton who favours an improved and more efficient gun registry program.
Former veteran Saskatchewan MP Lorne Nystrom said he regularly explains that when in the House, he voted against the registry.
“I tell them that a number of times, I voted against this and still oppose it,” said the candidate trying to regain the Regina-Qu’Appelle seat he lost last year.
Palliser NDP candidate Jo-Anne
Dusel, who has been involved both in health-care politics and in an area women’s shelter, said she has seen first-hand the impact of gun violence on women.
“The gun registry is in place and I don’t know that we are talking of scrapping it but fixing it,” she said.
Last weekend, she scheduled a visit to a local shooting club “to let them know we don’t oppose guns of all kinds.”
After a year of deadly gun violence in Toronto, prime minister Paul Martin announced during the campaign that a Liberal government would ban and seize most handguns. Provinces were given the ability to opt out and prairie governments quickly said they would.
Still, Conservative candidates say that announcement resurrected arguments in rural areas that the real object of the long gun registry is confiscation.
