The Gun Registry: A Vote to Take Back Canada

It was a beautiful day in the Great White North. The kind of early fall day I love. When the wind is cool and fresh, and my Canada so peaceful and beautiful.

But all I could think about was the clock on this sinister Con site, ticking down to the vote on the gun registry.

And how I wish I could get the news it had been saved, while sitting under a tree at this monument in Montreal to the murdered women of the École Polytechnique.












Or sitting in the gallery of the House of Commons with the amazing woman whose battle to try to extract good out of tragedy has helped make Canada safer.

“The gun registry is the one good thing that came out of the Montreal tragedy,” Laplante-Edward said. “It is a monument to our daughters.”

“We did not do this for ourselves – our loss is permanent. We worked so that others would not have to live through the hell we experienced – and still do.”

I support the gun registry because it works, and I believe it contributes to saving the lives of police officers, women, and all kinds of other Canadians.

But I feel so strongly about it because to scrap it would be to dishonour the memory of all those women murdered on that terrible day.

Long past midnight the police spokesman came in and told us, in French: “We have 14 dead. They are all women.” I turned to Marie-Claude Lortie, a colleague from La Presse, and we hugged, briefly and silently, to try to ease our pain.

The pain of parents and survivors of Marc Lepine’s murderous rampage brought us the long-gun registry.

And because killing the registry would deal a brutal blow to the gentler, less violent society, that so many people like Laplante-Edward have worked so hard for so long to create.

Far too many gun lovers too lazy, dumb, or paranoid to fill out a form, seem to have forgotten where they live. In a country called Canada not Amerika. Where guns are a privilege not a right.

Five years later, the Supreme Court beat back a bid to establish that Canadians have the same constitutional right as Americans to possess and use firearms. Not so, the court ruled. It said gun ownership is not a right in Canada. It is a privilege and, properly, a heavily regulated privilege.

Unfortunately some of the craziness called America has leaked across the border. Some of our gun nutters are now no more than teabaggers.Who love their guns more than they love our values.

Which is why today's vote is really a vote about the kind of country we want to live in.

And a test for the opposition.

The vote will not precipitate an election; it is a private member's bill, after all. But it will set the tone for the fall. It will signal how hard the Harper government will try to push Parliament — and how far Parliament will consent to be pushed.

We have been pushed long enough. Those foul Con bullies think that we are weak because we are decent. But we are only weak because we are divided.

And now is the time to unite and push back. 

Starting with the gun registry vote today, we will begin to take our beautiful country and its values back from the death grip of Stephen Harper and his Con thugs.

And at the same time send a message to the gun nutter teabaggers.

“Guns kill not only bodies but also souls.”

We don't want to live in your kind of country. We want to live in Canada not Amerika.

We will defeat you.

And we will REMEMBER...