The Reminder is making its archives back to 2003 available on our website. Please note that, due to technical limitations, archive articles are presented without the usual formatting.
Hayder Khadim is lucky to be alive. A victim of the 2006 shooting rampage at Montreal's Dawson College, Mr. Khadim was left with a bullet lodged in his neck and a lifetime of emotional scars. Now Mr. Khadim has joined others touched by gun violence in demanding federal NDP leader Jack Layton whip his caucus into voting against the third and final reading of a bill to abolish the long-gun registry. Mr. Khadim, 21, told reporters last week that six months after the shooting, Mr. Layton gave him his personal assurance that he would do all in his power to preserve the registry. If Mr. Layton sticks to his guns, so to speak, and continues to insist New Democrats are free to vote as they see fit, that's a pretty clear sign he is not, in fact, doing everything in his power to save the program. But Mr. Layton is a more pragmatic politician than often given credit. Unless he wants to further isolate his party from rural and western Canada, he knows he can ill afford to whip MPs such as our own Niki Ashton into keeping the registry alive. The long-gun registry is a stark illustration of Canada's deepening urban-rural, east-west political divide. Rural Canadians tend to see it as costly, pointless, even the first step toward outright confiscation of their recreational firearms. Urbanites often view it as a vital safety tool, even though incidents like Dawson College and bloody gang shootings in Toronto continue to transpire. The NDP, more than any other party, is in a real bind over the issue. They hold the keys to the registry's future. If they help dispatch the program, they risk infuriating core supporters for whom gun control is non-negotiable. At least two-thirds of the NDP caucus agrees with the party base, including Mr. Layton and deputy leader Thomas Mulcair, who told CBC: "I know as does Mr. Layton that to destroy the gun registry is to destroy lives, so we don't need to be convinced on this." There you have it. The top two figures in the NDP believe that abolishing the registry will literally "destroy lives." Statements don't come much more powerful than that. Thus it is with courage that Ms. Ashton has continued to stand her ground in opposing the registry based on her constituents' wishes. Even this past April, after a compromise proposal from the Liberals gave Ms. Ashton the perfect chance to reverse her position, she would not budge. "I continue to believe the registry doesn't work for our region," she said, adding that she made her opposition clear when she supported last year's second reading of the registry-scrapping bill. The third and final reading of that bill may surface this month or be delayed until the fall. It seems quite likely that some of the 12 New Democrats who wanted to kill the bill last year will flip-flop, due in no small part to the tremendous pressure exerted by Messrs. "You'll Destroy Lives" Layton and Mulcair. On a personal level, I do not feel strongly about the gun registry one way or the other. But I have no doubt that opposition to it runs high across Northern Manitoba, both in the larger communities and on the reserves. For Ms. Ashton to put her constituents ahead of her party is admirable, but we should expect no less from our elected representatives. Local Angle runs Fridays.
