Conservatives gut Liberal gun bill in committee voting

Thestar.com
April 9, 2019
Tim Naumetz

Two independent senators sided with the Conservative opposition in a Senate committee Monday to strip the government’s long-debated firearms bill of nearly all its key public safety and gun control measures.

But the victory for Andrew Scheer’s Conservative party won’t last long.

Two independent senators sided with the Conservative opposition in a Senate committee to strip the government’s long-debated firearms bill of nearly all its key public safety and gun control measures. However, the changes are not expected to be adopted by the Senate.

The raft of amendments must be adopted in the Senate.

A senior Conservative senator acknowledged after the final committee stage for Bill C-71 in the Senate national defence and security committee that the opposition party does not have the numbers to overcome Liberal and Independent senators in the Senate House.

Voting and discussion over amendments consumed nearly three hours of voting and motion debate for the Conservatives and the two Independent senators to get the bill through clause-by-clause voting.

Conservative Sen. Don Plett objected to a statement Independent Senate Group (ISG) Sen. André Pratte wanted to add to the committee’s report sending the bill back to the Senate. Pratte had emphasized that Conservative amendments “gut the bill” and run counter to public safety considerations under the bill that was important for the government’s agenda.

Plett accused Pratte of proposing that senators should vote the way the government wants them to in the Senate.

“At the end of the day, the government will decide what amendments they want to accept,” said Plett, once a president of the Conservative Party under former prime minister Stephen Harper.

“Nobody came into this meeting today with their eyes closed,” said Plett. “They know there would be amendments. This is not over; this bill is still going to the Senate.”

As the voting continued, ISG Sen. Marilou McPhedran failed to get support even from fellow ISG members for a clause she wanted to add that would prohibit nearly all legally owned handguns in Canada. McPhedran’s motion was defeated as Pratte and another ISG senator abstained in the vote, while Conservative senators opposed it.

The Conservative senators, supported in most votes by ISG Sen. Diane Griffin and New Brunswick nonaffiliated Sen. David Richards, stripped out clauses of the bill that would: bring in lifetime background licence checks for gun licence applications and renewals; compel retailers to keep details of gun sales records for at least 20 years; require permission to transfer restricted handguns and rifles to gunsmiths; and eliminate cabinet’s authority to override RCMP firearm classifications for restricted and prohibited semi-automatic rifles.