A Conservative MP says she's close to having enough opposition support to kill
the long-gun registry in a vote on her private member's bill Wednesday.
Candice Hoeppner says she has
commitments from eight Liberal and NDP MPs to vote in favour of legislation that
would end the decade-old registry and destroy existing data in the system on
about seven million shotguns and rifles.
"I probably have eight (opposition)
members who have indicated they'd support the bill," the Manitoba MP said
Tuesday. "I would like to have 12 to really make sure it passes."
A parliamentary vote in favour of
Bill C-391 on second reading Wednesday won't make it law, but will send it to
the next stage of legislative approval and make it that much more difficult to
derail at a later stage.
Repealing the long-gun registry would
still leave registration of hand guns and restricted weapons intact, and rifle
and shotgun owners would still require gun licences.
While massive cost overruns led to
the long-gun registry costing taxpayers almost $1 billion through 2005,
according to Auditor General Sheila Fraser, the ongoing cost of the long-gun
portion of the registry system is modest - between $2 million and $5 million
annually.
That's led some critics of the
registry cost overruns to question whether it makes sense, now that the budget
has already been blown, to scrap the costly system.
"We might feel the same way about the
construction of a new bridge that caused a huge financial scandal, but
demolishing the bridge would not fix anything," Bloc Quebecois MP Serge Menard
argued during earlier debate on the bill in the House of Commons.
Private members' bills are
traditionally free votes in the Commons, meaning MPs don't have to toe the party
line. However every Conservative MP in the minority government is expected to
support killing the gun registry, and the Tories have also targeted a number or
rural opposition ridings with ads and flyers in a bid to influence the local
MP's vote.
MP Dominic LeBlanc, the Liberal
justice critic, accused the government of "playing political games " to divide
rural and urban Canada and pit region against region.
Still, he insisted that votes on
private members' business should be free, even if he and Liberal Leader Michael
Ignatieff strongly support maintaining the registry.
"What I can tell you is the leader
and I, as justice critic, have continually supported - as do the police chiefs
across the country, as do many provincial attorneys general - the gun control
registry," said LeBlanc.
"It is an important part of public
safety."
NDP Leader Jack Layton also supports
the registry, but said his MPs are free to vote as they see fit after consulting
with their constituents.
Only Bloc Leader Gilles Duceppe
seemed sure that all his party's MPs would vote against repealing the gun
registry.
The issue is particularly explosive
in Quebec.
The long-run registry was brought in
by the former Liberal government in response to the 1989 slaughter of 14 women
at L'ecole Polytechnique in Montreal.
Now, with the 20th anniversary of
that carnage just weeks away, the mother of one of those slain Montreal students
has issued a public appeal imploring MPs to keep the gun registry going.
"I am disheartened that the
Conservative party of Canada, which claims to be the party of law and order, is
ignoring police, ignoring victims and ignoring the vast majority of Canadians to
appease the gun lobby," Suzanne Laplante-Edward said in the statement this week.
Her daughter Anne-Marie Edward was
among the Polytechnique victims.
"Last April 22 (...) Mr Ignatieff and
Mr Layton (...) assured me personally that they would prevent Stephen Harper
from getting his way," said the grieving mother.
Conservatives say the registry does
nothing to deter criminal acts, but rather makes criminals out of otherwise
law-abiding gun owners.
Hoeppner said the long-gun registry
"is targeting the wrong people.
"We need to focus on criminals and
criminal activity, not law-abiding citizens."
If the registry dies, long-gun owners
will still have to pay for licences, complete with background checks and safety
training.