The federal Conservative government has introduced legislation to end the controversial long gun registry, unleashing what is expected to be a fierce parliamentary battle.
The government says once the registry is abolished, the records collected over the past 16 years since it was established will be destroyed.
The New Democratic Party opposition has signaled its opposition and the Quebec government will be opposing the measure. Gun control proponents also are vowing a strong extra-parliamentary fight.
The Liberals, who have some MPs opposed to the registry, said the registry should be retained. Leader Bob Rae called it another ideological decision by the government that is not supported by facts.
The legislation, C-19, was introduced to Parliament Oct. 25 by public safety minister Vic Toews as fulfillment of a longtime Conservative promise to rural Canadians.
It came less than 24 hours after C-18 to end the Canadian Wheat Board monopoly, another longstanding Conservative promise, was approved in principle by a majority of MPs.
At a news conference on a farm in Richmond, south of Ottawa, Toews and his parliamentary secretary, fellow southern Manitoba MP Candice Hoeppner, said it was an important initiative.
“This is a very proud moment for me and my colleagues,” said Toews, a former Manitoba attorney general.
Hoeppner, whose private member’s bill to abolish the registry failed in the last Parliament by two votes, said C-19 fulfilled a promise to rural Canadians to try again.
“Today is a defining moment for our government.”
She said the government will keep in place “effective” rules that control restricted and prohibited firearms, require police background checks for people trying to buy guns or ammunition, require firearms safety training and safe storage and the registering of weapons such as hand guns. Licenses for firearms owners also will be required.
But it will not require legally owned long guns to be registered.
“The long gun registry has been totally ineffective and wasteful.”
Toews said bluntly that the accumulated records of registered long guns will be destroyed so they can’t be used by a future government to bolster a reinvented registry.
“It is clear in terms of what the NDP’s plan is,” he told the news conference. “They want to retain those records in order to re-create that registry as soon as possible. We won’t have these records loose and being capable of creating a new long run registry if they ever have the opportunity to do that.”
