Moratorium still in place in Quebec | Fight revolves around Ottawa’s plan to destroy data collected in the province
Despite a Quebec court order that the long-gun registry data bank must remain in place for the province into the summer, Ottawa insists that the federal registry is dead.
“It’s abolished outside of Quebec,” said Manitoba MP Candice Hoeppner, parliamentary secretary to public safety minister Vic Toews.
“We can’t start to destroy the information, and inside Quebec the registry continues to be law, but outside of Quebec, there is now no requirement to register an unrestricted firearm.”
Bill C-19 to end the registry was approved by Parliament and signed into law April 5.
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It ends the registry established in 1995 and calls for destruction of all the registry data.
The Quebec government wants to create its own registry and immediately went to Quebec Superior Court to appeal for a moratorium on destroying the Quebec data until a full hearing is held in June.
Judge Marc-André Blanchard agreed to the request and imposed a moratorium on data destruction until the case is heard in the summer.
The Quebec court judgment created confusion about the status of the Conservative drive to kill the registry and the database, while keeping in place rules requiring acquisition certificates, firearms safety course obligations and safe storage rules for firearms.
Ottawa will argue in June that the database is the essence of the gun registry, and while Quebec has the constitutional right to create its own registry, the data collected for the past 17 years in the federal registry is outdated and subject to federal control.
Meanwhile, northwestern Ontario New Democratic Party MP Bruce Hyer, who campaigned against the registry and broke party ranks in Parliament to vote to end it, left the NDP caucus last week to sit as an independent MP.
The Thunder Bay-Superior North MP said the registry and new leader Thomas Mulcair’s vow to reinstate it if elected prime minister helped trigger his defection.
