June 15, 2010

Liberals Turn Their Backs on Rural Canadians Again

Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff has once again turned his back on rural Canadians by clearly stating he still supports the wasteful and ineffective long-gun registry. He also said he will be whipping his Liberal MPs to do the same, including the eight Liberal MPs who voted for Portage-Lisgar Member of Parliament, Candice Hoeppner’s Private Members Bill C-391 at second reading.

The Liberals are bending over backwards to secure guilty pleas from farmers and duck hunters who own long-guns, but they aren’t the criminals we need to be chasing. Our government remains committed to providing our police with the resources they need to catch the real criminals, including our recent announcement of $400 million for the Police Officer Recruitment Fund.

Ignatieff suggested that he will create a “non-criminal” offence for first time offenders who fail to register their long-guns which is fundamentally flawed on two counts.

First, the long gun registry was passed under the federal criminal law power. An offence under that legislation must be a criminal offence in order for it to be within the constitutional powers of the federal Parliament. And second, Ignatieff proposes that an offence be ‘ticketable.’ Essentially what he is saying to hunters and farmers and other law-abiding citizens is that he is going to make it easier for them to plead guilty to an offence by streamlining the prosecutions process.

We will not take any lessons from the Liberals on the wasteful long gun registry. For a decade they promised to streamline the long gun registry, but instead they turned it from a two million dollar program into a two billion dollar boondoggle.