Quebec wants to hang on to gun registry info

KEVIN DOUGHERTY
Postmedia News

QUEBEC — Quebec Premier Jean Charest said Thursday the federal government’s plan to destroy the records in its arms registry is “unacceptable.”

Answering questions from Parti Québécois leader Pauline Marois, the premier said police tell the government the registry helps them in their work.

“We will work together to see it happens,” Charest said, adding that his Liberals would support a PQ motion calling on Ottawa to hand over the records.

Charest said he would use “all resources available” to see that happens.

“It makes no sense,” Charest said of the federal decision to not only abolish the gun registry, but to destroy the records as well.

Marois raised the question, recalling the origins of the registry, created after the Dec. 6, 1989, massacre, when 14 women were murdered by a gunman at the Universite de Montreal’s Ecole Polytechnique engineering school.

The Quebec and federal governments are facing off over the federal long-gun registry’s Quebec data.

Quebec Public Security Minister Robert Dutil vowed Wednesday in the provincial legislature that “we will oppose, with all of Quebec society, that this data be destroyed and which would prevent us from re-creating our own registry.”

Michael Patton, the spokesman for federal Public Safety Minister Vic Toews, said there is no room for debate.

“All the data belongs to the federal government and is collected as part of the Firearms Act of Canada,” Patton said.