The outcome of the upcoming vote in parliament on the long gun registry matters to the NDP because the party has been suffering from a "What do you stand for" problem.
People with long memories know what the NDP has contributed to Canadian life. Medicare tops the list, followed by public auto insurance in a number of provinces, the championing of social programs, including decent pensions, and access for everyone who qualifies to post-secondary education. Once upon a time, the NDP fought for Canadian control of the Canadian economy, pushed for the creation of a publicly owned national petroleum company, Petrocan, opposed NAFTA, and even discussed the idea that wage and salary earners should someday own and control the enterprises for which they worked.
The CCF-NDP was established during the Great Depression to provide a sweeping program for the re-construction of Canadian society and the economy to replace capitalism with a broadly egalitarian alternative. Some called it the cooperative commonwealth, others social democracy and still others socialism.
The premise that drove the party and movement for decades was clear: by its very nature capitalism is an exploitative system that can never deliver true equality. The vision of a new kind of society motivated tens of thousands of Canadians to devote their lives to building the party.
I don't think it's a stretch to say that the ideas and values alluded to above have very little to do with today's NDP. If I were to tell a class of my students that the NDP currently stands for the transformation of Canadian society, they'd look at me with the smiles one reserves for those who ought to hang up their skates and give others a little ice time.
For the past quarter century, those who run the federal NDP have been dedicated to the proposition that the party should position itself close to the centre of the political spectrum, and should advance proposals that are pragmatic and practical. If fully implemented, the current NDP platform might slow the widening of the wealth and income gaps in Canada. That's not a bad thing. But the party has trashed the vision thing. For those who believe that capitalism is a fundamentally flawed system, that Canada is unwise to put all its eggs in the basket of the American Empire, or who think that we have little time to halt the onset of irreversible environmental catastrophe, the NDP offers very little. Today's New Democrats are liberals who are not even in much of a hurry.
That's why the long gun registry vote matters so much to the federal NDP.
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Once upon a time, the CCF did have a genuine base in rural Canada. When Tommy Douglas led the Saskatchewan CCF to office in 1944, the central plank in his platform was to protect a farmer's home quarter section of land from foreclosure by the banks. Since then, the farm base of the NDP has steadily eroded as family farms have disappeared to be replaced by agribiz. Today, the NDP's rural base is centred in regions where mining and forest products are the dominant sectors. Plenty of people in those regions own long guns and hunt.
For years, the gun lobby in Canada has propagated the idea among rural gun owners that there's a basic difference between registering a car and a gun. Unlike the case of a car, registering a gun, the lobbyists say, is about freedom. The state ought not to know how many guns you have in your possession. Even if you make the registration free, and reduce the penalty for failure to register a fine of one dollar, they will object. For them, this is an issue of principle.
The principle, of course, has nothing to do with the Canadian experience. It is an outgrowth of the American Revolution and the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which the U.S. Supreme Court interprets as giving individual Americans the right to bear arms.
Pushing the Second Amendment north into Canada is exactly what the gun lobby wants. This is a game for Tea Party wannabes, such as the Harperites. It makes no sense for New Democrats to be sucked into this maelstrom. Even if some members of the NDP are prepared to play games about the validity of registering long guns, the party cannot win a battle about who is prepared to serve up the biggest Tea Party.
Let the Harperites occupy that ground. As the facts come out, it becomes ever more clear that the long gun registry is a worthwhile and quite inexpensive law enforcement tool that saves lives. Plenty of people, it turns out, use long guns to assault other people and to take their own lives. Weapons need to be registered.
The flip side in urban Canada is also clear for the NDP.
If NDP votes in the House of Commons make the difference in killing the long gun registry, the Liberals will never let urban voters forget it. It will be their rallying cry in the cities in the next election. They will say that a vote for the NDP is a vote for Harper.
The last time that tactic worked big time for the Liberals was in 1993. I canvassed in Spadina in Toronto for the NDP during that election. At the door, I met people who were quite well disposed to the NDP but who were desperate to boot out the Conservatives. They planned to vote Liberal to get the job done. The fear of Harper's dictatorial and irrational policies has been growing all summer. The desire to boot out Harper and to use whatever instrument is available to get the job done is on the rise.
The NDP, a party that doesn't seem to have stood for much for a long time, is in danger of watching its votes slip away to the Liberals. And the clincher could well be the gun registry, an issue that is both substance and symbol. If the NDP can credibly be blamed for the demise of the registry, plenty of people in the cities will use that as their rationale for voting Liberal.
Watch out Jack.
Even the Liberals have figured this out. They are enforcing caucus unity on the upcoming vote, even though this is a Conservative private member's bill. Iggy can see that there is no point competing against Harper for Canada's rural right wing, and that winning government in the future will depend all the more on solidifying urban/suburban support.
The Libs realize that they have to start projecting a more coherent notion of themselves to the electorate. On this issue (and most others), the NDP has abandoned not only principle but also strategy, and is left tactically chasing support on the fringes of its natural and potential base. Given that the NDP's prospects of forming government - absent a coalition of some sort - are zip, and given that the most useful role they can play is all about projecting a principled alternative program and analysis, it is hard to understand where they think they are taking themselves but it sure isn't working.
I have to admit that I am not familiar with the ins and outs of the long gun registry.
Personally,I am not threatened by those who enjoy hunting and own a .303...I'm sure in rural regions hunters or farmers protecting their livestock from outside wildlife, have a valid reason to own a long gun.
However,why would registering a firearm be any more expensive,time consuming or inconvenient than registering one's driver's lisence?
I am a born and raised city slicker...In the city,there should be NO question about a gun registry..This is not a rural region,there is no need to have a firearm in your possession.
Again,if you hunt,the registry should come automatic with a hunting lisence..That seems reasonable and inexpensive.
As for the Canadian NRA members....My brother lives in Michigan...He and his wife went to a yard sale in their neighbourhood and to the shock of my Canadian brother,they were selling hand guns...No registry,no lisence,no background checks,no nothing.
And then people are shocked when some nut goes on a shooting spree every second month in the U.S.?
But guns don't kill people...People kill people because we all know that guns were meant to be necessary and harmless appliances one would need for their home like a refridgerator or a television...And when was the last time your television killed anyone?
But the NDP,including Jack himself,have been back pedaling from and abandoning alot of issues...It's almost as if they are willing to bankrupt most of their principles in an attempt to appeal to a small percentage of Canadians who think Stephen Harper is the second coming and would NEVER,EVER in a million years vote NDP.
It would be nice to see a party besides the Reform/CRAP/Canadian Alliance/Tea Baggers/Republican Harper Conservatives with a clear and unwaivering platform.
I think millions of Canadians want a clear and real alternative...The opposition must WAKE UP!
So this is all about a "gun lobby" trying to fool us in to adopting foreign U.S. values?
I certainly don't believe the hard-line opinion that the government wants to take everyone's guns away. That said, if any party is promoting that conspiracy theory, it isn't the NDP. I question what the Liberals were thinking when they chose Allan Rock to introduce the registry - a minister who in 1994 said "I came to Ottawa with the firm belief that the only people in this country who should have guns are police officers and soldiers."
Seriously.... what sort of reaction did they expect? It seems to me this was poisoned by the Liberals even before the Tories.
I support the principle of gun registration. But the oft-repeated line that registering a firearm is the same as registering your car is false. Here is the application form for a license to acquire firearms:
http://www.rcmp-grc.gc.ca/cfp-pcaf/form-formulaire/pdfs/921-eng.pdf
Read question 16, in particular parts d) and f).
I have never had to answer questions like those in order to get a driver's license. Does it make sense to ask a lay person to honestly answer questions about addiction and depression that should properly be assessed by a professional? Lots of people lose their jobs, end relationships or go bankrupt everyday; hardly any go on a rampage because of it. To single out things like that as markers for violent behaviour is just fishing, and in my opinion does not balance out the stigma and the invasion of privacy, especially when that information may be available to police who are neighbours. It is bad information-gathering, and it damages what would otherwise be a much stronger security tool.
Applicants for a driver's license don't get asked if they think they are drunks, even though more people are killed and injured by cars. The fact is it would never fly, because most Canadians don't make wild assumptions about car drivers, and most of us see how pointless and offensive it is to ask such a question.
In any case, I support the NDP decision to not whip their caucus. Especially given the gulf of understanding on this issue, and especially given that this bill is being used by the Tories and Liberals to attack the NDP, the principle of respecting the will of the electorate is just as important as the principle of trying to maintain the registry.
"For years, the gun lobby in Canada has propagated the idea among rural gun owners that there's a basic difference between registering a car and a gun."
If you let your driver's license lapse, you can simply put your car in the garage, and possibly leave it to your kid. If you let your Posession and Acquisition License, or Posession Only License lapse (or never got one, even though you legally purchased firearms under the old Firearms Acquisition Certificate regime), the police will use the registration data to look you up, enter your home WITHOUT A WARRANT, confiscate your firearm[s] and possibly charge you with illegal possession of a firearm--something that can land you a five year jail term. This is what happened to people in Toronto, some of whom were elderly war vets, during a recent blitz by your favorite thug Chief Blair. This is at the same time the Toronto Police Force is awash in a serious gang-related gun problem, which they've been impotent to stop because of political correctness, a catch-and-release judiciary and--surprise!--the fact that criminals never bother to legally acquire or register their guns.
The Firearms Act and Gun Registry never was about public safety at any cost. The Chretien government disbanded the Ports Police, refused to arm border guards and planned to close two RCMP crime labs for cost reasons, yet blew $2B on the Firearms Centre. This is because Registry IT contractors like CGI and Honeywell donated handsomely to Chretien's campaign coffers. The NDP supports the Registry, because PSAC is fighting to prevent about 200 employees from having to look for real jobs. And Coalition for Gun Control maven Wendy Cukier is another story. She ILLEGALLY receives nearly $400,000 in grants from then-Justice Minister Allan Rock's office, to act as a government lobbyist. Cukier's company Telecon Consulting also has IT contracts related to the registry with the RCMP and several police departments and Provincial governments. The Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police (again, headed by your favorite copper, Chief Blair) is funded by Registry IT contractor CGI--a gross conflict of interest position. Money, plain and simple, is what's behind the fight to save the Registry.
The Registry's supporters have not been able to cite a single instance where their beloved porkbarrel public work program has either prevented, or solved a crime. The old RCMP handgun registry (after 1935) had a similarilly dismal record. Instead, registry supporters toss about the inflated stat of "11,000 hits per day"--something that is the result of automated police computer searches, on queries ranging from fender-benders to jaywalking citations.
Along with making the likes of Wendy Cukier rich, the Registry does have another purpose: firearms confiscation. When the Campbell government outlawed <105mm barrelled and .32, .25 handguns, the old handgun registry was used as a confiscation list. Allan Rock made no secret of his belief that civilians should be prohibited from owning firearms, and powerfull corporate interests (e.g., George Soros) are proponents of civilian disarmament. BTW, the Handgun Registry, like it's counterpart in Britain, was intended to keep commies, anarchists and other subversives from owning guns. Ironic, really, that 'Red Diaper Baby' James Laxer shares that view.
The recent RCMP 'report' on the Gun Registry's 'cost-effectiveness' should raise serious red flags. Somebody cooked those books. There is NO WAY it 'only' costs $4M annually to operate. The costs of the 200-odd staff PSAC is fighting to save the jobs of, employed on the long-gun registry's bureaucracy (not the Restricted/Prohibited registries, or licensing) would cost many times that amount, not taking into account IT support costs, or the planned replacement of legacy computer systems. Remember that this is a government department that once claimed $13.5M in travel expense, IN ONE YEAR. The Auditor General seriously needs to have a look at some of the, um, 'creative' accounting procedures at the RCMP.
It's time to admit that the experiment in gun control begun in 1977 has been a collossal failiure, According to customs records, at least HALF of legally-bought (under the FAC system and before) long guns have never been registered--a massive level of non-compliance. People are increasingly refusing to renew their PALs and POLs. School shootings, like those perpetrated by Gamil Gharbi (AKA, 'Marc Lepine'--the product of an abusive father's Muslim-indoctrinated mysogeny) and Kimveer Gill are common. Tragedies like the Jane Creba shooting--perpetrated by Kingston's gangland diaspora, bulk-imported into Canada--and gangs like the un-PC named Fresh Off the Boat Killers are a problem in Canadian cities. What's needed is a redirection of resources to law enforcement, an end to revolving door sentencing (Creba's killers were on parole), an abandonment of Spockian liberal-permissive parenting and a major overhaul of the immigration system.
Like Tony Blair's New Labour, Jack Layton's NDP has turned on its blue collar and agricultural base, casting its lot with a motley base of latte liberals, business lobbies and ethnic vote blocs. This was painfully apparent when Layton refused to get involved in the case of a crane being built in Esquimalt, using taxpayers' money and IMPORTED CHINESE LABOUR, despite the pleas of the Ironworkers' Union. The NDP has refused to address the massive loss of Canadian manufacturing and forestry to Chinese interests, and even took Harper to task for "lecturing China over human rights." Just as Layton sold Canadian workers out to his Chinese business connections, his party prefers to follow the dictates of corporate lobbyists (CGI, et al.), rather than listening to his party's constituents.
Thanks, Jim, for stating the obvious. Doesn't mean anyone will listen... but it's worth trying anyway.