Canada Torn Over Gun Registry

TORONTO—As Canada’s Parliament gets ready to resume after a summer break, a political battle over the long-gun registry that has been brewing all summer will finally come to head.

That battle became more heated on Tuesday over allegations the U.S.-based National Rifle Association was influencing the debate.

The registry requires every gun owner in Canada to register all firearms they own with the government, including handguns and rifles. The law was brought to force by a previous government, under the Liberal Party, appealing to urban voters concerned with gun crime in Canada’s major cities.

But the now-ruling Conservative Party has backed a bill that would overturn the registry, which has long been decried as intrusive by the party’s rural supporters. Canada with its vast wilderness and abundant wildlife, provides for many communities hunting that is a part of the culture and many families hunt as a way to supplement meal budgets.

A media report on the country’s national broadcaster, CBC, on Tuesday claimed the NRA was influencing the gun registry debate and supporting Canadian groups lobbying to have the registry scrapped. Right-leaning media in Canada have criticized the report for using information from 2001, suggesting it is inaccurate.

In Canada, where standing up to U.S. political and economic influence can be used to score political points, any suggestion that a political party is being supported by an organization as iconically American as the NRA can be damaging. While Canadians are divided over the long-gun registry, there is no indication of controversy over the rest of the country’s gun laws, which are far more restrictive than those in the United States.

Canada has had laws restricting the ownership and use of handguns for decades, but the additional requirement to register long guns like rifles and shotguns was introduced in 1993. Canada still prohibits many firearms including fully automatic weapons and short-barreled handguns.

When the Conservatives came to power in 2006 they began offering amnesty to long-gun owners facing prosecution for failing to register their rifles and shotguns, but stopped short of repealing the registry.

While the Conservatives’ base supporters in rural ridings back the move, many in Canada’s urban centers, which see frequent reports of gun-related slayings, want the government to exercise stricter control over firearms in general. With the Conservatives currently holding less than half the seats in Canada’s Parliament, and three other left-leaning parties—the Liberals, Bloc Quebecois and New Democrats—holding the majority, it would be difficult to get the votes needed to pass a bill to repeal the registry.

That is why the normally obscure practice of introducing a private-members bill has proved noteworthy in this case. Rather than introducing a government-sponsored bill, an individual Conservative member of Parliament introduced a private-members bill, few of which attract much attention and even fewer pass.

While the Liberals have whipped their members, forcing them to vote against the bill repealing the registry, and the Bloc Quebecois voting uniformly against the bill as well, the New Democratic Party has allowed its members to vote freely on it.
That has made the NDP, which holds fewer seats in Parliament than any other party, the deciding factor in this debate.

When Parliament resumes later this month, the bill will face its final vote. On the last vote, 8 Liberals and 12 NDP voted in support of the bill, but with the Liberals now all forced to vote against it, those few dissenting votes in the NDP will decide whether the registry is scrapped or kept.

NDP leader Jack Layton has been pressuring those eight MPs in his party to vote against the bill and save the registry, and has claimed he now has enough votes to do so.

The NDP is facing pressure from Liberals for allowing its members a free vote with the Liberal Party’s youth wing being the latest to speak out.

“Mr. Layton is letting down Canadians by not demonstrating the necessary leadership to save the long-gun registry,” said YLC President Samuel Lavoie. “We are demonstrating at his office to make sure [his] constituents … are aware of the responsibility the NDP currently hold in whether the long-gun registry is saved. We believe they will feel the same way we do, the registry saves lives and should be continued.”

The most recent poll on the issue conducted in late August showed 35 percent of Canadians wanted to keep the registry and 44 percent wanted it gone.