A Quebec Superior Court judge has extended the life of the federal long-gun registry and its 17 years of data for at least another week.
In an April 13 judgment, judge Marc-André Blanchard extended a week-long moratorium on destroying the data at least until the end of next week.
He is expected to rule then on whether to extend the moratorium into the summer, when the Quebec government plans to wage a full court battle to obtain gun registry data dating back to 1995 so the province can create its own long-gun registry. The province is challenging the constitutionality of the federal legislation to destroy the registry data.
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The federal government says it will appeal the April 13 extension of the moratorium.
The New Democratic Party opposition in Ottawa immediately praised the court extension of the moratorium and called on the government to give up the fight and allow the gun registry data to be retained.
Legislation to end the long gun registry passed through Parliament April 4 and was proclaimed into law April 5.
The federal Conservatives insist the data will disappear with the registry.
Quebec is the only province that wants to create its own gun registry and insists it has a right to the data collected from Quebec gun owners.
Ottawa says Quebec has the constitutional right to create its own registry but it will not help by transferring data from the federal regime created by the Liberals in 1995 in the wake of a killing rampage against women at a Montreal school years before.
Until the dispute with Quebec is resolved, the registry officially exists, although long gun registry requirements are not being enforced.
