Like Hitler

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, February 7, 2012 at 2:30 PM - 0 Comments

Larry Miller makes sure the last hours of debate on the long-gun registry don’t pass without a Hitler reference.

It appears the quote he cites is also in some dispute.

Update 4:23pm. After QP, Mr. Miller rose with the following point of order.

Mr. Speaker, earlier today in this House I was speaking on Bill C-19 and I referred to and used the name Adolf Hitler. While the references to the gun registry and what this evil guy did to perpetrate his crimes are very clear, it was inappropriate to use his name in the House and I apologize to anybody it may have offended.

Back to business

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, January 30, 2012 at 9:30 AM - 0 Comments

The House of Commons reconvenes this morning at 11am. First to be debated is John Carmichael’s bill on displaying the Canadian flag and an hour later the House will move to the government’s legislation on pooled pension plans.

Third reading of the government’s bill to eliminate the long-gun registry was apparently scheduled to take place today, but the government has apparently opted to put that off.

Finger guns

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, December 6, 2011 at 1:14 PM - 0 Comments

Conservative MP Jim Hillyer was apparently quite excited to vote in favour of eliminating the long-gun registry.

The permanent campaign continues

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, November 28, 2011 at 12:43 PM - 0 Comments

The NDP buys billboard space to attack the elimination of the long-gun registry.

The NDP message will be reinforced with the barrel of a gun. The image of a Ruger Mini-14 semi-automatic, a “non-restricted” weapon which won’t have to be registered when the long-gun registry is scrapped, sits above the tag-line “No More Safeguards. Is that why you voted Conservative?” … The three cities chosen for the billboards are notable because they are all areas where the NDP made new inroads in the 2011 election. One of the key target audiences is Conservative ridings in Toronto, but it is intended to reach a broader spectrum – and two of the target cities are in Quebec, where the NDP have new-found strength, and where support for the registry is high.

Talking to Althia Raj, Brad Lavigne explains the NDP’s mindset.

Registered division

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, November 23, 2011 at 12:35 PM - 0 Comments

The long-gun registry splits the NDP leadership contenders.

Brian Topp, the Montreal-born Toronto union leader considered by many as a front-runner, said as prime minister, he would attempt to revive the controversial program to register all long guns … Two other urban MPs seeking to replace the late Jack Layton — Peggy Nash of Toronto and Paul Dewar of Ottawa — are also in favour of bringing back the registry…

A fourth big-city candidate, Thomas Mulcair of Montreal, said through a spokesman that he wasn’t at this point taking a position on the issue. Cullen and three other candidates — Niki Ashton of the remote Churchill riding in Manitoba; Robert Chisholm of Dartmouth, N.S.; and Martin Singh of Musquodoboit Harbour, near Halifax — said they wouldn’t bring it back.

Mr. Topp says reestablishing the registry would have to be cost effective. Ms. Nash says it would have to be less onerous. Mr. Dewar says he would register weapons “in a way that consults with stakeholders and finds solutions.”

To the shredder

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, November 22, 2011 at 4:21 PM - 0 Comments

The information commissioner has concerns about the government’s commitment to destroy records related to the gun registry.

Suzanne Legault told a Commons committee Tuesday that a federal bill to scrap the long-gun registry – and delete millions of records – violates the letter and spirit of the Library and Archives of Canada Act.  “It does raise major concerns in terms of transparency and accountability in general,” Legault said. “As Information Commissioner, I have serious concerns about the impact this bill will have on government information management.”

Various members on the government side of the House laughed when the NDP’s Jack Harris raised this in QP. Otherwise, here’s the transcript of his exchange with Vic Toews. Continue…

This week in party discipline

By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, November 3, 2011 at 2:45 PM - 0 Comments

Two New Democrats—Bruce Hyer and John Rafferty—have been sanctioned by interim party leader Nycole Turmel after breaking with the party over this week’s gun registry vote. Mr. Rafferty expresses some confusion and says it’s his constituents who are now punished. Mr. Hyer posted the following on Facebook today.

I’d like to thank all my constituents (on both sides of the registry issue) for the incredible show of support for me over the last day or two. It means a lot to me that people appreciate the duty of those elected to represent the wishes of their constituents in Parliament first & foremost.

The Commons: A gun-measuring contest in the House

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, November 1, 2011 at 6:32 PM - 0 Comments

The Scene. At last the House was united.

“Mr. Speaker,” declared Alice Wong, minister of state for seniors, reading carefully from the piece of paper in front of her, “I will take no lesson from the opposition.”

Both sides variously roared with agreement and soon thereafter the farce of this afternoon’s proceedings moved from thinly veiled to unabashed. Switch “I” for “we” and the government might have an answer for everything and we might be able to pronounce closure on this entire business of parliamentary democracy for at least the next four years. Think of all the time that would free up. Not to mention the money saved on electricity bills when we no longer have to bother pretending there’s a reason to keep the lights on in here.

The hour had actually begun on a stridently serious note, at least insofar as there is surely nothing more serious than the gun. Continue…

The registry and privacy

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, November 1, 2011 at 4:32 PM - 0 Comments

Public Safety Minister Vic Toews first claimed that long-gun registry data needed to be destroyed lest it fall into the NDP’s hands. Mr. Toews then argued that destroying the data was necessary as a matter of privacy. On the latter point, the privacy commissioner seems not entirely to agree.

Jennifer Stoddart said there’s nothing in the Privacy Act that prevents the federal government from sharing the data with provincial governments. Indeed, the Privacy Commissioner said the act actually permits disclosure of personal information, provided it’s done through a federal-provincial agreement for the purpose of administering or enforcing any law or carrying out a lawful investigation.

Gun control and the Toronto Star

By Michael Petrou - Tuesday, November 1, 2011 at 2:41 PM - 0 Comments

“Tories delist sniper rifles, self-loading weapons,” says the front-page Toronto Star headline, followed by text in the body of the story claiming that such weapons will be “declassified” under the Conservatives’ bill to kill the long-gun registry.

It’s unclear exactly what the Star means here by “delist” and “declassify.” Currently, firearms in Canada are classified three ways: as non-restricted; restricted; or prohibited. Roughly speaking, most rifles and shotguns are non-restricted; restricted firearms include many handguns, and rifles or shotguns that are deemed to be too short; and prohibited firearms include automatic rifles, as well as some handguns. The Tories aren’t reshuffling how various firearms will be classified. A gun that was non-restricted previously will remain so. What’s changing is that gun-owners will no longer have to register non-restricted rifles.

The Star lists several examples of firearms its says will soon be “freed from the binding controls that now see them listed with the RCMP-run database.” It’s a little more complicated than that.   Continue…

This is the week that was

By Aaron Wherry - Saturday, October 29, 2011 at 6:39 PM - 0 Comments

Martin Singh touted himself as the pro-business candidate. Thomas Mulcair touted himself as Stephen Harper’s nightmare and a man who can say no to organized labour. Paul Dewar unveiled his urban agenda and worked the room in Toronto. And Peggy Nash joined the race with two objectives.

There was yet another reason to question the purchase of new F-35s. David Anderson tried to explain the Canadian Wheat Board with a cartoon. More emails meant more questions for Tony Clement, which Deepak Obhrai and Pierre Poilievre promptly threw themselves in front of. Stephen Harper worried about the global economy. And the government pledged to destroy all traces of the long-gun registry, while the Victims Ombudsman defended the registry’s usefulness. Continue…

Quebec refusing to destroy gun registry data

By macleans.ca - Thursday, October 27, 2011 at 12:43 PM - 0 Comments

The provincial government in Quebec says it will defy an order by Ottawa to destroy data related to the long-gun registry. Provincial Public Security Minister Robert Dutil said Wednesday the Sûreté du Québec will be told to hold onto the data it has collected over the years while the province seeks to gain control of federally-held data on Quebec gun owners. Quebec’s plan is to build a gun registry of its own to replace the federal registry the Conservatives are planning to dismantle. “We will work hard to make sure that these tools are given back to Quebec,” provincial Intergovernmental Affairs Minister Yvon Vallières said. “We helped pay for them, I don’t see why we couldn’t have them.”

The Globe and Mail

The Commons: Bonfire of the registry

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, October 26, 2011 at 6:06 PM - 0 Comments

The Scene. At its essence, this debate over the long-gun registry was always a debate about paperwork. And so it is only right and fitting that it should end now with a fight over what should be done with that paper.

For the record, Article 29 of Bill C-19, an Act to amend the Criminal Code and the Firearms Act, states that “the Commissioner of Firearms shall ensure the destruction as soon as feasible of all records in the Canadian Firearms Registry related to the registration of firearms that are neither prohibited firearms nor restricted firearms and all copies of those records under the Commissioner’s control.” And variously this much is viewed as a waste of both information and money.

“Why,” Nycole Turmel asked this afternoon, “destroy two billion dollars of accumulated information, while the provinces and the police want to keep it?” Continue…

Standing up for victims, except this once

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, October 26, 2011 at 1:37 PM - 0 Comments

A note from the office of the Federal Ombudsman for Victims of Crime.

Following the tabling of the Government’s proposed legislation to abolish the long gun registry, Sue O’Sullivan, Canada’s Federal Ombudsman for Victims of Crime, today spoke out in support of the long-gun registry, urging the federal government to maintain the registry as a tool for preventing further victimization. “Our position on this matter is clear – Canada must do all it can to prevent further tragedies from happening, including using the tools we have to help keep communities safe, like the long-gun registry,” stated Ms. O’Sullivan.

According to 2002 RCMP data, long-guns are the most common type of firearm used in spousal homicides. Over the past decade, 71% of spousal homicides involved rifles and shotguns. “Though there are varying points of view, the majority of victims’ groups we have spoken with continue to support keeping long-gun registry,” explained Ms. O’Sullivan. “I have brought that voice forward to the Government by relaying those views directly to the Minister of Justice in our most recent meeting.”

The Office of the Federal Ombudsman for Victims of Crime helps victims to address their needs, promotes their interests and makes recommendations to the federal government on issues that negatively impact victims.

The House: On weakness

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, October 3, 2011 at 1:30 PM - 41 Comments

A footnote on the meaning of Brad Trost.

Here is a question put to the government by the NDP’s Francoise Boivin last Thursday. Emphasis mine.

Mr. Speaker, women’s rights should not be open for debate, yet members of the government seem to think they are. The Supreme Court of Canada has clearly ruled that access to abortion is a fundamental right. Either the Prime Minister has lost control of his caucus or his government’s new policy is to outlaw abortion and turn back the clock on women’s rights. Which is it?

This attempt to define Brad Trost’s public stance as a reflection on the Prime Minister’s leadership is especially interesting given the party to which Ms. Boivin belongs. A year ago it was Jack Layton who was apparently failing to keep sufficient control of his caucus. Continue…

The House: 'When politicians speak to us'

By Aaron Wherry - Friday, February 25, 2011 at 10:30 AM - 9 Comments

Rather than simply lament for how little attention is paid to the institution, I thought I’d ask some smart people if they had anything to say in response to my piece about the state of the House of Commons. Over the next little while, those responses will appear here. First up, Nick Taylor-Vaisey.

Does Canada’s House of Commons matter? Well, it can matter. But that all depends on what our MPs are talking about and how they’re approaching the conversation.

Remember that debate about the gun registry? Civil it might not have been, but was it popular? You bet. People paid attention because they cared about what was at stake. It helped that Ottawa’s politicians had just returned from a summer break, and news media around town were looking for a juicy story. But people everywhere were talking about the gun registry. The House of Commons mattered. Continue…

The keeper of the flame

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, January 11, 2011 at 5:22 PM - 93 Comments

Given Larry Miller’s exalted status within the Conservative government, it is almost always worth noting his comments and concerns.

“The only good coyote is a dead coyote,” Bruce-Grey Owen Sound MP Larry Miller told about 150 people during sheep day at the 45th annual Grey Bruce Farmers Week … Miller used the debate to again state his opposition to the national gun registry. He said farmers, like himself, who once a carried a couple rifles in the truck are “afraid to bring out their guns and travel around like they used to.”

“What the MNR needs to do when it comes to unregistered guns and what have you, they’ve got to start turning their heads the same way as they do with commercial fishermen that break the law,” Miller told the meeting. “Let the farmers out there that have guns do a lot of this control.”

The Commons: 'This is about victims'

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, December 6, 2010 at 6:58 PM - 105 Comments

The Scene. After members of each party had risen to note the 21st anniversary of the murders at l’École Polytechnique, the leader of the opposition stood to add his acknowledgment and to wonder, on the occasion, why the government had once more delayed the implementation of regulations that would make it easier to track the movement of firearms.

In the Prime Minister’s absence, John Baird stood to offer the government’s response. “Mr. Speaker, I think all of us, in all political parties, each and every member of Parliament takes today to remember the tragic loss of some young women who had promising futures,” he said, quite solemnly. “That is something that I would not want to be political on.”

There was a groan from the opposition side at this.

“What I can say,” Mr. Baird continued, “is that our government is committed to making our communities safer and we are committed to working with law enforcement on meaningful gun control that actually works and makes those communities safer.”

This was not quite an answer to the question at hand, so Mr. Ignatieff tried again. When, he wondered, would the government learn from the massacre of 21 years ago and give the police what they required?

Mr. Baird responded here with pitch-perfect passive aggression: not at all a direct answer, but a series of sentences that leave just enough to interpretation as to neither reject anything nor commit the government to anything going forward. Continue…

Cost of long-gun registry is far below Tories' estimates: report

By macleans.ca - Monday, November 22, 2010 at 2:24 PM - 18 Comments

A 70-page report on proposed legislation to kill the long-gun registry found that scrapping it would save somewhere between $1.57 million and $4-million per year. The Conservative government, who was in favour of dismantling the long-gun registry, had estimated its costs in the billions. After the bill was defeated in September, Christopher McCluskey, a spokesman for Public Safety Minister Vic Toews, told the media that the long-gun registry cost $2-billion. Other Conservative MPs are on record saying that scrapping the registry would save taxpayers tens of millions of dollars per year. The contradictory report in question was commissioned by the RCMP in 2009 and became public today after the Globe and Mail received it through Access to Information rules. Peter Hall, the report’s author, concluded that if legislation to scrap the long-gun registry were passed, the firearms program would eliminate at most, 63 full-time positions and some IT costs, for a savings of $4,025,000 per year.

Globe and Mail

Where ideas are considered dangerous

By Andrew Coyne - Thursday, October 7, 2010 at 9:00 AM - 0 Comments

Ryan Remiorz/CP

“Mr. Layton charged the Conservatives’ economic plan was following “some rigid ideology,” as opposed to dealing with the reality of relatively high unemploy­ment.”—Financial Post, Sept. 16

“Bloc Québécois Leader Gilles Duceppe also took aim at Harper over the gun registry, accusing him of adopting an “ideological” stance to please his political base in the West.”—Montreal Gazette, Sept. 21

“First and foremost, we need to take ourselves seriously again, to pursue an active foreign policy informed by facts and compassion, rather than by ideology.”—Paul Heinbecker, Globe and Mail, Sept. 24

There is no more serious accusation in Canadian politics than that of having an ideology. Politicians would confess to killing their own grandmother rather than own up to such a thing: what the dictionary defines as “a body of ideas.” Possession of cocaine is a charge you can probably survive. But possession of ideas is career-ending.

Rather, practical men that they are, politicians prefer to say they live in the real world, guided, as Ambassador Heinbecker says, by facts, not ideology. “I’m not ideological,” many will say. “I just do what works.”

Continue…

In time for the vote, as it happens

By Andrew Coyne - Wednesday, September 22, 2010 at 10:17 PM - 0 Comments

We learned via the Star’s Susan Delacourt that MP Scott Simms “has a raw, recent and personal reason for his decision to support the long-gun registry in the Commons today. Simms’ father, Reginald, took his own life with a long gun in June.”

After the revelation, delivered in Wednesday’s in camera caucus meeting, “many MPs were in tears and Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff was visibly emotional.” In a separate blog post, Delacourt elaborates:

Reportedly Ignatieff choked up when it was time to take the floor again and caucus members lined up to embrace Simms.

It makes all the games and the jeering and the attacks look pretty petty.

Indeed: politics can be such a cynical game. Thank goodness, with emotions running as high as they were, somebody found the strength, and the courage, to leak the story to the Star.

The gun registry vote: a shaken MP, an unsatisfying debate

By John Geddes - Wednesday, September 22, 2010 at 7:06 PM - 0 Comments

Just before this evening’s vote on the gun registry I ran into Nova Scotia MP Peter Stoffer in the foyer of the House of Commons. He’s usually a jovial, stolid sort of guy—voted most collegial in this year’s Maclean’s survey of MPs. This evening, though, he didn’t look so good.

Continue…

Long-gun registry saved

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, September 22, 2010 at 6:54 PM - 0 Comments

As projected, the House of Commons has approved a motion of the public safety committee to defeat Bill C-391, by a margin of 153 to 151.

The Liberals and NDP have issued official responses. The Prime Minister said the following to reporters after the vote.

After 15 years, opposition to the long-gun registry is stronger in this country than it has ever been.  With the vote tonight, its abolition is closer than it has ever been.  The people of the regions of this country are never going to accept being treated like criminals and we will continue our efforts until this registry is finally abolished.

The Commons: Iggy’s sharp right hook

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, September 22, 2010 at 5:49 PM - 0 Comments

The Scene. Michael Ignatieff stood first to express his concern for the people of Newfoundland and Labrador in the wake of hurricane Igor, second to lament for the Finance Minister’s speech the other day.

“Yesterday the Minister of Finance delivered a wild partisan rant,” Mr. Ignatieff. “I assume that the Prime Minister approved this speech because, after all, he makes the rules, but what I wanted to know is whether the Prime Minister understands that this was a classic example of the politics of fear, division, envy and resentment at a time when Canadians need to hear a message of hope and unity.”

There were several bursts of laughter from the government side.

Stephen Harper stood next, first to express his concern for the people of Newfoundland and Labrador in the wake of hurricane Igor, second to half-heartedly dismiss the Liberal leader’s lament.

“As for the government’s economic policy, we are, of course, providing hope and opportunity through the economic action plan,” he ventured, “and stand strongly against the tax and spend policies of the Liberal Party.”

Various Conservatives stood to applaud. Continue…