Tories and NDP Vie Over Who Brought Down Bill C-21 Amendments

Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre holds a press conference in the foyer of the House of Commons on Parliament Hill in Ottawa on Jan. 25, 2023. (Sean Kilpatrick/The Canadian Press)

Moments after the Liberal government announced on Feb. 3 it was withdrawing its controversial amendments to gun control Bill C-21, the Conservative Party and the NDP sought to take credit for the development.

“My Conservative team and I have forced Justin Trudeau into a temporary, but humiliating climb down today,” Conservative Party Leader Pierre Poilievre told reporters in Ottawa.

The two amendments tabled by the Liberals in late November related to introducing an evergreen definition of what they consider an “assault-style” firearm, as well as enlarging the list of prohibited firearms with rifles used for hunting.

“He is doing this because he got caught and because Canadians of all walks of life from across the country—law abiding, decent, Indigenous, Canadians, farmers, rural Canadians, who follow the law—stood up with Conservatives and forced him to temporarily pause this plan,” Poilievre added.

Poilievre insisted the backing down was only temporary, saying that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s agenda is to ban all civilian firearms ownership in Canada and that he would do so if he obtained a majority in Parliament.

When challenged on the claim by a reporter, Poilievre quoted what Trudeau said in a year-end interview with CTV.

“There are some guns, yes, that we’re going to have to take away from people who were using them to hunt,” Poilievre accurately quoted Trudeau as saying.

But Trudeau added afterwards in the interview that his government was not going after the right to hunt or after all firearms.

“We’re going to also make sure that you’re able to buy other guns from a long list of guns that are accepted that are fine for hunting, whether it’s rifles or shotguns,” Trudeau said.

“We are going at some of the guns used to do it that are too dangerous in other contexts.”

Poilievre said only a majority Conservative government can protect the rights of law abiding hunters and farmers.

He added the government’s gun control measures directed at lawful owners are ineffective at stopping crime which has climbed steadily since 2015.

NDP Also Takes Credit

Contrary to the Conservatives, the NDP supports Bill C-21, which among other things will enshrine in law the current freeze on the transfer of handguns.

But the NDP came out strongly against the amendments, for which no proper consultations had taken place and were opposed by the Assembly of First Nations.

NDP MP Peter Julian told reporters on Feb. 3 that the bill could have moved ahead easily if the amendments had not been tabled.

His colleague Alistair MacGregor said the amendments were retracted because of the NDP’s work on the matter.

He said he signalled to the Speaker of the House that the amendments were possibly “out of scope” and that he was about to table a motion at the public safety committee meeting on Feb. 3 to refer them to the Speaker.

MacGregor didn’t file his motion, as the Liberals proposed their own motion to withdraw their amendments at the beginning of the committee meeting.

“I’m fairly confident that [the Speaker] would have ruled that they were out of scope,” said MacGregor.

MacGregor said he wasn’t quite sure why the Liberals took that strategy with the bill.

“Up until today, I think their public stance had been quite firm that they were going to proceed with these amendments, I think they came to [the] realization through our signals this week that we were going to refer this on procedural grounds to the Speaker,” he said.

“I don’t know what reasoning the Liberals ultimately had for these amendments, but I definitely will underline the incompetence part of it.”

The NDP has a supply-and-confidence agreement with the Liberals to keep them in power until 2025, in exchange of investments in social programs.

‘Insufficient Consultation’

Government House Leader Mark Holland told reporters on Feb. 3 that there had been “insufficient consultation” on the amendments and said they weren’t just retracted to appease the public.

“It is not our intention to impact those that are hunting and using firearms for hunting, and we acknowledge in regret that the consultations that we undertook were not sufficient, and that there were gaps in problems in the amendments,” he said.

But he added his government his keeping as a priority to remove the “types of guns that Canadians want to see removed.”

The Liberals didn’t say whether they will move forward with another attempt to craft an evergreen definition of what they consider to be an “assault-style” rifle, but Liberal MP Pam Damoff said during the committee meeting she would be interested to hear from the gun lobby on the issue.

MP Julian did not directly answer a question on whether his party would support a new definition, instead raising the issue of proper consultations needing to take place.

The Liberals have already put a freeze on handgun transfers through regulations in the fall of 2022 and have added over 1,500 rifle models to the prohibited list in 2020.

The government’s buyback program to collect these firearms has yet to become operational and Prairies provinces have said they will push back.