Is Churchill MP Niki Ashton on the same page as her boss when it comes to a long-gun registry?
It’s a fair question in light of statements by NDP Leader Tom Mulcair and Ashton’s response to them.
“I think that it is possible to provide the police with the tools to better protect the public and themselves by making sure they’re able to follow every gun, and it doesn’t have to be the registry as it was before,” Mulcair told media outlets last December. “But it does have to be a form that allows the governments, federal and provincial, to keep track of those guns. That’s our bottom line.”
With that, Mulcair summed up his party’s position: “We will bring in something that allows the police to track every gun in Canada.”
Recently, The Reminder asked Ashton whether she, like Mulcair, wants the police to track every firearm in Canada.
“The NDP does not support bringing back a long-gun registry,” she replied. “As the MP for Churchill I have been clear about our region’s position and our province’s opposition to a long-gun registry.”
Fair enough. Ashton did vote with the Conservatives to abolish the now-defunct long-gun registry (and later voted to keep it when the Tories also wanted to destroy all data from the registry against the wishes of Quebec).
But how on earth can our MP oppose “a long-gun registry” when it would be impossible for Mulcair to “track every gun in Canada” without a registry of long guns?
Are we to believe Mulcair has some telepathic means of letting the police keep tabs on all firearms? Are we to believe that when he says “every gun in Canada” he really means “every gun except rifles owned by law-abiding hunters”?
The long-gun registry is a touchy issue for the NDP. On the one hand, supporting it damages them in rural Canada; on the other, not supporting it hurts them in urban centres and Quebec where their true strength lies.
I am neither a firearm owner nor a hunter, nor do I have particularly strong feelings about the long-gun registry one way or the other.
But I do believe in getting answers that make sense – that do not conflict – from those hoping to represent me as MP and my country as prime minister.
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