Bad Signs Re Upcoming Gun Registry Vote

Bad sign number 1:

Jill Fairbrother, spokesperson for Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff, said private member's bills are traditionally free votes and she does not expect this one will be any different.

Bad sign number 2:

Why is the chair of the Liberal National Caucus supporting the Harper government's Reform Party wet dream of repealing the long gun registry?

North Bay MP Anthony Rota told La Presse Canadienne today that he said he would back Tory efforts to strip law enforcement of a useful public safety tool.

You know, most of the Lib. flip-flops, the sellouts and the prevarications, haven't been terribly harmful just because the Tory's minority position has kept the stakes so small. But a successful repeal of the gun-registry, even if executed through the back door of a private member's bill, would accomplish two things: 1) the Tory base would forgive every previous transgression--the wild spending, the Que. nation stuff, and 2) the Liberal base would ask WTF? Do these people stand for anything anymore? At what point does pragmatism become intellectual and moral vacuity?

The first vote on C-391 is on November 4th.

Trost On The Long Gun Registry

If this is how the maneuvering went, then good on Jack Layton:

At first, C-301 looked like it was going to pass the House of Commons. With 143 Conservative votes, Garry’s bill needed less than a dozen votes from independent and Opposition MPs to become law. Supporters of C-301 received assurances from rural Opposition MPs that we had the necessary votes to pass the legislation.

However, two things started to happen: NDP members began to be pressured by their leadership (Jack Layton) not to vote the way they had promised; and the Bloc Quebecois brought forward a motion on the long-gun registry in the House of Commons.

While the Bloc motion supporting the long-gun registry passed the House, it only passed by five votes because of abstentions from Opposition MPs (who had previously said they sided with the Conservatives.)

I say "if" because Trost seems to be pretending that C-391 has a hope in hell with a Lib. dominated Senate, and it does not, so he is clearly prone to erroneous statements.

(PS. "Trost" is Brad Trost is the Tory MP representing the riding of Saskatoon—Humboldt.)