Harper govt mocks Canadians on gun laws
whitebread
what does the Harper government do? . . . . . .
The Harper criminals will toe the party line and vote for the bill - it's the LIBERAL and
NDP members who will be the ones to watch and note who votes against the will of the
majority of Canadians.
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Gunning for the Gun Registry
a.. November 2, 2009 4:32 PM
According to my own informal survey of rural opposition MPs, it looks like Candace
Hoeppner's bill to abolish the long gun registry is well on its way to becoming law.
The vote on second reading is scheduled for Wednesday, Nov. 4.
And because C-391 is a private member's bill, it'll be a free vote. That means MPs are
freed from the usual requirement of voting along party lines.
Despite holding almost all of northern and rural Quebec, a spokesman for the Bloc
Quebecois says every one of its MPs will vote against Hoeppner's bill.
But a number of Liberal and NDP MPs from rural ridings say they're in favour of ending the
registration of all shotguns and hunting rifles, as well as destroying the records of
roughly seven million people who had previously registered their non-restricted weapons.
Among those supporting Hoeppner's bill are New Democrats Nathan Cullen, Dennis Bevington,
Charlie Angus, Niki Ashton, and Carol Hughes, and Liberals Larry Bagnell, Wayne Easter and
Anthony Rota.
Even so, the Conservatives have targeted several of those "friendly" opposition MPs
through an agressive lobbying campaign.
New Democrat MPs James Rafferty and Bruce Hyer were among the first politicians to
publicly support Hoeppner's bill, tabled last spring. Nevertheless, the two Thunder
Bay-area ridings have been swamped with 10-percenters (seen below) -- flyers on any topic
that MPs can mail to any riding in Canada -- with the postage paid by taxpayers -- as long
as they aren't sent to more than 10 per cent of the households in the riding.
Then there are the radio ads. This has led some, such as Wendy Cukier of the Coalition
for Gun Control, to theorize that Hoeppner's private member's bill is "private" in name
only, and is actually coming straight from Prime Minister's Office.
The rationale is that the private member's bill has a greater chance of success as a free
vote when MPs to vote with their concience or on behalf of their constituents.
Cukier has also done her own math and come to the same conclusion about the Wednesday
vote. In a news release that all but begs for support, she asks how the gun registry
could be scrapped just months after a majority of MPs supported a BQ motion to defend the
registry. In answering her own question, she credits the polls, four vacant seats in the
House of Commons and the Conservative ad campaign in rural Canada.
Cukier says firearm deaths such as suicides and murders of women have declined with the
registry. She also points to unwavering support of the registry from the Canadian Chiefs
of Police as well as the Canadian Police Association.
On the flip-side, anti-registry advocates say the database has been a waste of money, done
little to reduce crime and needlessly targets hunters and farmers.
If Hoeppner's bill passes on Wednesday, it then goes to committee. However, unlike
previous attempts to ditch the registry, this bill is very simple. The opposition will
find it hard to alter the bill without changing the spirit of the proposed law -- under
parliamentary rules, amendments must respect the original intent.
Once through the Commons, the bill would then move to the Senate, home to the goverment's
official gun registry bill, S-5 or the "Long-Gun Registry Repeal Act."
It was introduced on April Fool's Day 2009, and is almost identical to Hoeppner's bill.
Introducing S-5 in the Senate initially appeared to be a mystifying strategy -- after all,
the Conservatives never cease to complain about the "Liberal-dominated Senate."
But by January, after a new round of retirements, the Senate will be the Red Chamber in
colour-scheme only.
That means C-391 or S-5 will likely receive royal assent, sometime in 2010.
whitebread
November 02, 2009
Susan Delacourt
Coalition for Gun Control president Wendy Cukier is nervously monitoring Tory member's
private bill.
LUCAS OLENIUK/TORONTO STAR FILE PHOTO
OTTAWA-Gun-control advocates say they are horrified and fearful that Canada's long-gun
firearms registry is on the verge this week of being scrapped because the Conservatives
may have enough support from the opposition to kill it.
Wendy Cukier, president of the Coalition for Gun Control, says her organization has been
monitoring the progress of a Conservative private member's bill to abolish the registry
and is now bracing for it to clear an important vote in the Commons on Wednesday.
"It is astonishing, just a few months after the opposition parties voted for a Bloc
Qu�b�cois motion that reiterated support for the firearms registry and against efforts to
repeal it, that many of the same MPs will support this Conservative bill," Cukier said
Sunday.
"It not only eliminates the need to register rifles and shotguns but requires that the
information contained on seven million registered guns be destroyed."
Cukier's fears are confirmed by NDP MP and justice critic Joe Comartin, who believes that
it's almost an "inevitability" that the private member's bill known as Bill C-391, put
forward by Manitoba Conservative MP Candice Hoeppner (Portage-Lisgar), will have enough
support from the opposition to squeak through approval in principle at second reading.
Liberal MP Mark Holland (Ajax-Pickering) said he's not ready to concede defeat yet on
killing the bill, but he acknowledged it's going to be tight and it means that a lot of
pressure is going to be placed on individual Liberal MPs over the next few days to block
the legislation.
"This is deeply concerning. The implications of dismantling the long-gun registry are very
serious," Holland said, noting Toronto Police Chief Bill Blair was only last week hailing
the registry as instrumental in the seizure of a 58 -guns. All the Conservatives need are
between seven to 10 MPs from the opposition benches to support the legislation, and
Comartin says he's reasonably certain Conservatives have secured that number from his own
caucus and from Liberal ranks.
Wednesday's vote isn't a death warrant for the registry - it still has to be examined by a
Commons committee, pass again in the Commons and then in the Senate.
But if the bill passes on Wednesday, it means the registry's abolition will have been
approved in principle in this minority.
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Canadians don't want gun registry scrapped: poll
Prime Minister Stephen Harper will have a tough time convincing Canadians it's time to
completely scrap the country's expensive gun registry program, a new opinion poll
suggests.
OTTAWA - Prime Minister Stephen Harper will have a tough time convincing Canadians it's
time to completely scrap the country's expensive gun registry program, a new opinion poll
suggests.
The Ipsos Reid survey, conducted for CanWest News Service and Global National, indicates
two out of three Canadians believe the government should revamp the gun registry system.
''There's nothing ambiguous about this,'' said John Wright, senior vice-president at Ipsos
Reid.
''The concept of a gun registry has taken root across the country. There's a majority, 67
per cent, that's not a small majority, who believe that Stephen Harper shouldn't be doing
away with all gun registries.''
The poll of 1,001 Canadians was conducted May 9 to May 11, with a 3.1 percentage point
margin of error, 19 times out of 20.
The survey comes on the eve of a report to be released Tuesday by Auditor General Sheila
Fraser showing how the gun registry system created by the Liberal government was
mismanaged.
Harper is expected to use the findings to start dismantling the program, which has been
targeted by core Conservative supporters for years as inefficient and unnecessary.
Although opposition to the registry is strongest in the Western provinces, a majority of
people in Alberta, British Columbia, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba are now in favour of more
gun control, suggests the poll.
In Alberta, 51 per cent of the people surveyed indicated the government should keep a
registry system in place.
The support is strongest in Ontario and Quebec where 71 per cent and 76 per cent of
respondents respectively said they were in favour of maintaining a gun control system.
In 2002, Fraser revealed the program's costs had skyrocketed to $1 billion, from $119
million when it was created in 1995. Her new findings on Tuesday, are expected to reveal
that many of the problems persisted up until 2005, CanWest reported last week.