Rickford: gun registry a priority

News — 19 October 2011

By Ally Dunham

A majority government has left the ruling Conservatives in a position to abolish Canada’s long-gun registry. That’s exactly what they intend to do says Kenora MP, Greg Rickford.

Rickford says the effort will likely take the form of government legislation this time around.

“In the last session, we put it forward as a Private Members Bill. The reason we did that is because often times, Private Members Bills have a better chance in a minority of going across the floor. Most political parties generally have to vote with their government on government legislation. But on private members bills, there is a lot more freedom for us to break ranks. The Liberals whipped the last vote and it clearly divided the NDP,” said Rickford.

“We’ve been doing the consultations right now internally, making sure that the legislation is tight, and we expect that it will be tabled soon. By soon I mean this fall,” said Rickford. “Our goal is to get rid of the gun registry.”

With government legislation, there is a process that has to be followed. The Minister brings it to caucus, who puts their input into it, and goes back to the Minister’s office, proceeded by the tabling of the bill.

Once the legislation is tabled, it will then be debated in the House on first reading, and will then be moved to Committee.

“It will really just depend on Committee and how long they want to deal with this. The opposition have procedural mechanisms at Committee to debate it, but what’s different from before is that they don’t have the ability to change it now,” said Rickford. “The only mechanism they (the opposition) have now is to try and drag out the debate as long as they can.”

Rickford said, “This appears to be a fairly major wedge issue for the NDP. It will be interesting to see what they do with this. We know the Liberal’s position, that’s pretty straight forward.”

The original Bill C-68 was approved by Senate in 1995 and costs for the registry increased outrageously thereafter. Gun owners had until Jan. 1, 2003 to meet the final deadline for registering their firearms.

Bill C-391 saw Parliament in 2009 and was defeated by a second bill passed in the House of Commons, to scrap Bill C-391 in 2010 by a vote of 153 to 151. The long-gun registry would stay in place.

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