Quebec won't back down on gun registry

QUEBEC — As U.S. President Barack Obama announced plans for a new gun control initiative in the wake of last week’s elementary school shooting in Newtown, Conn., the Quebec government says it has no intention of backing down from its fight with the federal government to create a provincial gun registry.

Even though Ottawa has abolished its gun registry and destroyed the data for the rest of Canada, the registry lives on for Quebec residents, thanks to a court decision Sept. 10 granting a reprieve for the Quebec portion of the registry.

Stéphane Bergeron, Quebec’s public security minister, plans to introduce a bill next year to create a gun registry for Quebec.

“Quebec is the only jurisdiction in Canada where you still have to register long guns,” Bergeron said Wednesday at the end of a weekly meeting of the provincial cabinet.

Bergeron told the assembly when he announced his intention to create a firearms registry, using data from the federal registry, that police in the province still consult the registry an average of 664 times a day, using it to determine whether a weapon is registered at the address where they have been called.

Asked what Quebec would do if it loses its court battle with Ottawa, Bergeron said, “We have absolutely no intention of losing in court.”

Asked again what the province would do if Ottawa wins the right to destroy the weapons records, the minister would only say, “We are confident of winning.”

Premier Pauline Marois was in New York last week at the time of the elementary school shooting in Newtown, Conn. She expressed her sympathy to the families and friends of the victims and reaffirmed her government’s intention to have a Quebec gun registry.

Quebec took the federal government to court after the Harper government ignored eight unanimous resolutions of the Quebec National Assembly calling for maintaining the registry and went ahead with the adoption of Bill C19.

Justice Marc-André Blanchard of Superior Court ruled the section of the federal call calling for destruction of the data was inoperative, but only for Quebec data.

The federal government has destroyed the data for the rest of Canada.

Blanchard called Ottawa’s intention to destroy the data “an abusive exercise of (federal) jurisdiction in criminal law to invade provincial jurisdiction.”

In the Canadian constitution, criminal law is federal, while the administration of justice is provincial.

The Quebec Court of Appeal will hear the case in March.

Bergeron said the Quebec registry will be created under the province’s jurisdiction over property, civil rights and the administration of justice.

The minister announced his intention to introduce a bill to create a Quebec gun registry on Dec. 6, the anniversary of the 1989 Montreal Massacre, when a gunman killed 14 women at the Université de Montréal’s École Polytechnique engineering school.

Bergeron recalled that the arms registry was created in response to the public outcry at the time over the Polytechnique killings.

Jacques Duchesneau, a former Montreal police chief who now is the Coalition Avenir Québec MNA for Saint-Jérôme, recalled that he led the police investigation into the Montreal Massacre.

“The firearms registry is a very important working tool for the police, but above all a working tool that saves lives,” Duchesneau told the assembly.

Liberal MNA Robert Poëti, a former Sûreté du Québec spokesman, said his party also agrees Quebec should have a gun registry.

Original Article
Source: canada.com
Author: Kevin Dougherty