Gun registry plea gets cool reception

TOBI COHEN
Postmedia News

In what’s quickly becoming routine business on matters of criminal justice, another member of the Quebec legislature arrived on Parliament Hill Thursday to appeal to the better judgment of the Conservatives — this time on their plan to scrap the long-gun registry and to ditch the data.

Quebec Public Security Minister Robert Dutil appeared before a Commons committee Thursday to ask the government to keep the registry and simply decriminalize non-compliance.

At the very least, he argued, the government should remove the clause that calls for the destruction of data because Quebec would like to use it to set up its own registry.

“If the unrestricted long-gun registry saves just one life, we are morally justified to continue our efforts to maintain it,” he said.

Dutil later joined police and other gun control advocates, including a Dawson College student and British Columbia psychiatrist, at a news conference to highlight their concerns.

The cost of having to create a new registry from scratch, he said, would be “prohibitive” and pointless since Quebecers, like all Canadians, have already paid for this data.

Quebec, Dutil said, ultimately wants to reach an agreement with the federal government on the matter and won’t “do anything illegal” to get its hands on the records independently while they still exist.

While the government has vowed to plow ahead with its plan, Dutil said he isn’t ready to consider what’s next if the bill passes and he maintains hope the Tories will be open to dialogue.

But Maxime Bernier, the Quebec Conservative for Beauce riding, offered little hope his party would bend.

“I’m here to reiterate the position of our government that has always been very clear – that we will abolish the long-gun registry because we believe it unfairly targets hunters and farmers, rather than real criminals,”he said.

“When we said we would destroy the registry, the registry is comprised of data — and that data is what we’re going to destroy because it is the registry.”

Bernier also argued the data, according to a 2006 report by the auditor general, was incomplete and inaccurate and that transferring such information to another government would be like “giving them a gift of poison.”

Earlier this month, Quebec Justice Minister Jean-Marc Fournier appeared at another Commons committee to urge the government to reconsider aspects of Bill C-10, the omnibus crime bill that cracks down on young offenders, drug dealers, sexual predators and Canadians in foreign prisons.

He said Quebec wouldn’t pay for the provisions that favour incarceration over rehabilitation.