Rural Liberal MP Wayne Easter headed home to his riding for Parliament’s summer break June 18 bracing for questions about his about-face on scrapping the long gun registry.Included will be complaints from rural constituents opposed to the long gun registry and pressure from Conservatives insisting that when a vote is held in the House of Commons Sept. 21 to kill a bill that would abolish the registry, Easter should support the bill.“I expect letters to constituents, visits from Conservatives,” the MP said in an interview. “It has already started. It clearly is an issue in the riding but not an overwhelming issue.”And Easter is adamant that when a vote is held in the Commons on Bill C-391, he will vote to retain the registry despite years of opposition.Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff has instructed his dissidents to join the party in voting against the bill. He promises that a Liberal government would make the system less onerous for gun owners, including making a first conviction a ticketing rather than criminal offence.Easter said that is a reasonable compromise, a “middle ground” between opposition to the registry and support for it as a public safety tool.He predicted that all eight Liberals who initially supported the bill will toe the party line in September, leaving the spotlight on the 12 New Democrats who will not be forced to vote with the NDP majority against the registry.Last week, Manitoba rookie Conservative MP Candice Hoeppner, who sponsored the bill, said that the decision by speaker Peter Milliken to delay the vote until MPs return to Parliament Hill was good news for her cause. It will give her three months to organize pressure.“I’ll be frank, I think the longer I have to persuade NDP members and even the eight Liberals to support my bill … I think that’s probably my best scenario,” she said. “I plan on taking as much time as I can to go to different ridings to make sure that constituents in these 12 NDP ridings are aware of what’s going on.”She said the NDP MPs should make their intentions clear.“They don’t owe me an explanation but they do owe their constituents.”The Sept. 21 vote will be on a committee motion, moved by Liberal Mark Holland and supported by the opposition majority on the committee, that Hoeppner’s bill be killed.
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