A Conservative proposal to kill the controversial long gun registry while keeping licensing and gun safety training rules in place is raising the usual divisions in Parliament.
However, the Conservative MP sponsoring the bill is hoping its limited scope might attract enough rural MPs from other parties to see the bill passed.
“I want to challenge and encourage the leader of the Liberal party and the leader of the NDP to allow their members to vote freely on this bill,” Candice Hoeppner of Manitoba said in the House of Commons Sept. 28 during the first of two hours of debate on her bill, C-391.
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“We are being watched and we will be judged on how we handle the issue of the long gun registry, an issue that affects Canadians from every region of the country.”
Speakers from Liberal, NDP and Bloc Québécois caucuses quickly ridiculed what they consider the Conservative obsession with the issue.
“From the very beginning, what consistently frustrates me is the lack of willingness on the part of those who are opposed to the gun registry to deal with facts rather than emotion, to deal with the gun registry on a factual basis rather than as some kind of iconic devil out there that has been perpetrated by prior Liberal governments against hunters, farmers and people who enjoy hunting,” said Ontario New Democrat Joe Comartin.
The minority Conservative government as well as individual MPs have tried to get anti-gun registry legislation through Parliament.
This time, because the new bill is more focused than previous efforts and deals only with the long gun registry while leaving other restraints in place, the government hopes a dozen or so rural opposition MPs will “listen to their constituents.”
However, the current Parliament will have to exist for months if the bill has any hope of coming to a vote.
Private members’ business takes up just one hour each parliamentary day and after the first hour of debate, a bill drops to the bottom of the long priority list.
However, MPs sometimes work out deals to trade places so bills can be dealt with faster than the strict schedule would normally allow.
Hoeppner has the support of the Saskatchewan Police Association and the Saskatchewan Federation of Police Officers, but national police associations and chiefs of police support the registry.
