Farm leaders say they want federal election candidates to talk about industry issues: research investment, farm support programs and trade promotion.
However, rural Ontario New Democrat and former agriculture critic Charlie Angus said the Conservatives won’t be playing to agricultural issues when they campaign against him.
He was one of the rural New Democrats who voted last year to keep a reformed long gun registry after campaigning against it.
Conservatives, using southern Manitoba MP Candice Hoeppner as a lead player, plan to target rural New Democrats and Liberals who allowed her 2010 private member’s bill to abolish the long gun registry to be defeated.
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“Of course they’re going to run on guns, they’ve run on nothing else in the riding,” Angus said March 25, moments after the government fell and an election became inevitable.
“People know where I stand. I go back to them to get my job back and it’s up to them.”
The three-term MP won more than 50 percent of the vote in 2008.
The Conservatives will also be targeting veteran MPs such as Liberal Wayne Easter, who opposed the registry but joined his party’s compromise position to support the registry with changes.
“I’m in an interesting fight because I have the dean of the Atlantic Veterinary College running against me and they are pumping a lot of money into my riding to challenge me,” he said.
British Columbia New Democrat Alex Atamanenko, a rural MP who voted against abolition of the gun registry, said his vote will be used against him but support of the registry has been his position all along.
“The Conservatives will raise this but it really is a side issue, not really what voters want to talk about,” he said.
The Conservative attempt to use the long gun registry issue against incumbent MPs likely will focus on New Democrat rural seats won for the first time in 2008 in northern Ontario and rural Liberal seats like Easter’s and veteran Yukon MP Larry Bagnell.
The Conservatives, in search of a majority, will promise an end to the gun registry if elected.
