PARLIAMENT HILL—Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s Conservative government is set to destroy massive records on owners of rifles and shotguns to appease “tin-foil hat” elements of the gun-owning community, says a prominent human rights lawyer.Ottawa lawyer Paul Champ, who represented a Parliament Hill journalist in a long court battle getting access to government records, said the government, which plans to destroy the records after a bill terminating the long-gun registry clears Parliament, told The Hill Times on Thursday the government is likely trying to “pander” to rifle and shotgun owners who fear a successive government may try to use the data base, containing records on seven million firearms, to seize the guns.
Mr. Champ said the claim by Public Safety Minister Vic Toews (Provencher, Man.) that the aim is to prevent another government from reinstating the registry is not believable, since by then, with 2015 the earliest possible time a different government could be elected, the information would be out of date and unreliable.
Any new registry would have to be started essentially from the ground up.
“I think the federal government is trying to pander to the tin-foil hat set, who think there is going to be some grand government conspiracy to seize guns and impose some kind of world socialist government,” Mr. Champ said.
“This is the kind of thinking that you see in the United States in the National Rifle Association, and that kind of NRA thinking is very popular among some of the core supporters of the Conservative party,” he said. “They have these conspiracy theories that the government is some day going to seize all their guns and subject us to some kind of dictatorship, that’s what the fear is and you’ve seen it on all kind of blogs and web sites, that’s who I think the government is really trying to pander to here.”
Mr. Champ made the comment as he was explaining how a recent Federal Court ruling, which was highly critical of Library and Archives Canada for failing to fully disclose historic documents it had related to RCMP spying on former NDP leader Tommy Douglas, likely prompted the government to override document-protection provisions in the Library and Archives Canada Act and the Privacy Act in a bill calling for destruction of the gun registry records.
Mr. Champ represented journalist Jim Bronskill, who won a Federal Court case ruling forcing Library and Archives Canada to disclose information in response to an Access to Information request Mr. Bronskill had filled. In writing the decision, Federal Court Judge Simon Noel emphasized the duties Library and Archives Canada has to protect all government records.
“The Library and Archives Canada Act and the previous National Archives Act have been around for about a hundred years, but you can only find about five references to them ever in Canadian court cases and I think that many people across government forgot about some of the provisions of that act, to be quite frank, and they forget sometimes the power that Act has and the responsibility that Library and Archives has to ensure the preservation of government records,” Mr. Champ said.
Mr. Champ said the provision to override the Privacy Act and the Library and Archives Canada Act in order to destroy the gun records is unprecedented.
The provision calling for record destruction in Bill C-19, which will terminate all registration of rifles and shotguns and then compel the federal firearms commissioner to destroy the records, came as a surprise and has drawn widespread criticism.
Quebec, which wants to use the records to maintain its own long-gun registry, has hinted at legal action. Leaders of lobby groups that sprung up after the 1989 shooting deaths of 14 female students at Montreal’s L’Ecole Polytechnique, which eventually inspired the creation of the long-gun registry, have also called on the government to reverse its decision, some saying destruction of the records could spark an explosion in rifle black-market sales once transfer controls in the Firearms Act are eliminated.
Mr. Toews has remained adamant that destruction of the gun records will go ahead, telling the House of Commons the day he announced the bill as the NDP criticized the plan: “Let’s be clear, the only reason the NDP wish to retain these records is to reinstate the long-gun registry whenever they’re in the position to do so. What we said, we will, we will abolish the long-gun registry once and for all.”
A spokesperson at Library and Archives Canada said head legal counsel for the agency did not want to comment on the bill, while the legal department at Privacy Commissioner Jennifer Stoddart’s office had not yet reviewed the bill. A spokesperson for Information Commissioner Suzanne Legault, whose responsibilities could also be implicated by destruction of records, said Ms. Legault would make any position known as the bill goes through Parliament.
The government used its majority in the Commons to cut short debate on the bill, and plans to send it to committee next Tuesday. It was the fifth time Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s (Calgary Southwest, Alta.) government has used time allocation or closure, in the case of back to work legislation for Canada Post workers last June, to limit debate on key bills. It also used time allocation on a budget bill last June, but with consent of the opposition parties.
Several of the bills including the gun registry legislation and an omnibus crime bill with stiffer penalties and new mandatory minimum sentence provisions for drug offences and other crimes, fulfilled promises Mr. Harper and his Conservative Party have made to party’s base of right-wing support over the past four elections.
Mr. Champ said it doesn’t make sense that the government plans to destroy the records out of fear a future government—a Liberal government established the registry in 1995—would reinstate the registry.
“I don’t think that’s a realistic explanation because if any other government wanted to reinstitute the firearm registry, obviously these kinds of records would be out of date and there would have to be some kind of new process of verification or validation about who possesses firearms,” he told The Hill Times.
Origin
Source: Hill Times
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