Quebec mulls legal challenge to save gun registry data from shredder

Robert Dutil, Quebec’s public security minister, will unveil the province’s response to Bill C-19 Tuesday in Quebec City. (PHOTO BY ALLEN MCINNES/POSTMEDIA NEWS)

MARIANNE WHITE
Postmedia News

QUEBEC — Quebec is considering legal action to block the federal government’s plan to destroy data in the national long-gun registry.

The province has voiced its strong opposition to Bill C-19, the Harper government’s bill to scrap the registry and destroy gun records, and has signalled it’s ready to battle Ottawa to save the records from the shredder.

Robert Dutil, Quebec’s public security minister, will unveil the province’s response to C-19 Tuesday in Quebec City alongside police officials, victims groups and public security experts.

Dutil’s press secretary said Monday the government will announce measures that could include legal action to repatriate the data relevant to Quebec.

One option would be to seek a court injunction that would block Bill C-19, but Dutil’s press secretary Mathieu St-Pierre declined to say if this is what the government will do.

Quebec Premier Jean Charest has stated that he is ready to seek a court injunction, but said he has to wait until the bill becomes law.

Dutil travelled to Ottawa last month to urge the Conservatives to back down, calling the bill “unacceptable.”

The federal government has already refused to maintain the database and hand it over to the province.

The long-gun registry has long been a political hot button — wildly unpopular in much of the West and in rural Canada but enjoying broad support in Quebec. Advocates have argued it’s a much-needed tool for police to keep Canadian communities safe while critics call it a costly intrusion into the lives of law-abiding gun-owners.

The Liberals established the gun registry in the mid-1990s but its origins date back to December 1989, when Marc Lepine walked into the engineering school of the University of Montreal with a semi-automatic rifle and shot 28 people and killing 14. He then took his own life.

The Conservatives introduced Bill C-19 October.

With their majority in both the Commons and the Senate, the Tories now have the power to ensure the bill will be passed and that the long-gun registry will be abolished.

A year ago, the minority Conservative government attempted to repeal the long-gun registry through a private member’s bill introduced by Tory MP Candice Hoeppner.

That bill was narrowly defeated once the Liberals whipped all their MPs to vote as a block against it, and when some NDP MPs who had opposed the registry previously changed their votes to help keep it alive.

During the spring election campaign, Prime Minister Stephen Harper vowed to introduce legislation if re-elected to kill the registry.

“We must stop targeting law-abiding gun owners, and instead focus our resources on real criminals,” he said in a statement while campaigning in April.

The RCMP has argued it’s an important tool used by police to keep track of firearms.

The RCMP says the registry costs about $4 million to run but it was plagued by cost overruns when it was being launched in 2002. Then-auditor general Sheila Fraser pegged the costs at $1 billion.

The end of the firearms registry means provinces including Quebec and Ontario — which have expressed a desire to erect their own long-gun registries — would have to start from scratch, as would the NDP should it ever become government and choose to reverse the legislation.