The federal Conservative government last week moved on two legislative fronts aimed at appealing to rural voters.
On Nov. 15, debate began in the House of Commons on proposed legislation that would restore the federal vote to approximately one million rural people who would have lost their right to vote because of a botched decision in the last session to amend the Canada Elections Act.
And the next day, public safety minister Stockwell Day reintroduced legislation to get rid of the long gun registry.
Despite criticism from opposition MPs, the voting rule changes are expected to be approved quickly.
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However, the gun registry bill is likely to meet resistance from the three opposition parties that make up the majority in the minority Parliament.
The government proposed a bill to end the registry in the last session of Parliament but never called it for debate when it was clear it would not pass.
Last week, Day said he hopes opposition MPs reconsider their position.
“The auditor general, as you know, over two years ago now has talked about the portion of the long gun registry, that’s firearms mainly held by duck hunters and farmers, that system wastes a lot of money, resources that could have gone to the police,” he said outside the House of Commons.
“I’m hoping that the opposition will look at this bill and pass it. Whether they do or not there are going to continue to be more resources on the street to deal with the issue of crimes committed with firearms.”
Meanwhile, Regina Conservative MP Tom Lukiwski kicked off debate on the elections act amendments by admitting that changes he supported in the last session would have denied him a vote in the next election.
The changes, passed quickly through Parliament in the summer, were aimed in part at reducing voter fraud by requiring voters to show identification that included their residential address.
For many rural Canadians with rural route mail delivery or a post box or a First Nations reserve communal address but no street number, that would have been impossible.
“I am one of those disenfranchised voters,” said Lukiwski, parliamentary secretary to government House leader Peter Van Loan.
“I live in a small community in Saskatchewan called Regina Beach. We all have civic addresses. I live at 308 Sunset Drive, yet no one has a home mail delivery. We have post office boxes.”
The proposed solution in the new bill would require eligible voters to produce identification papers that have a mailing address identical to their address on the voters list, whether it is a street address or a post box.
