News

The House of Commons dealt a major blow to the federal long gun registry last night as 20 Liberal and NDP MPs broke ranks with their leaders to endorse a Conservative bill that would bring the program to an end.

The vote exposed clear splits among Liberals and New Democrats along rural and urban lines, as the 12 NDP and eight Liberal MPs who voted with the Conservatives were primarily from rural ridings.

Many of them had been the target of an aggressive Conservative lobbying campaign that flooded their ridings with anti-registry pamphlets from Tory MPs, as well as Conservative Party radio ads.

"I was just blown away by the support we got," said Conservative MP Garry Breitkreuz, who led the battle against the registry while in opposition. He helped write the private member's bill that won approval last night to be studied by a committee. "I'm relieved after 15 years, finally we get some action on one of the biggest boondoggles in Canadian history."

Both Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff and NDP Leader Jack Layton gave their MPs a free vote, even though both party heads officially support the registry.

After the vote, the two parties were sharply criticized by Wendy Cukier, president of the Coalition for Gun Control, who was in the House of Commons.

"It's appalling," she told reporters yesterday evening. "It wasn't even close. You had urban MPs not stand up for gun control. ... Many Canadians are going to wake up [today], I predict, and will be absolutely horrified."

Conservatives expected the vote to be close. They were clearly surprised by the size of the 164 to 137 win.

Earlier in the day, Mr. Ignatieff said he supported decriminalizing the federal long-gun registry.

In the highly polarized debate that has raged in Ottawa for years, Mr. Ignatieff said his party is working on a proposal that would find a middle ground.

One of the main criticisms of the registry is that law-abiding hunters could, in theory, become criminals for failing to properly fill out the registry paperwork.

Neither Mr. Ignatieff nor his staff would offer further details, but past advocates of decriminalizing the registry have suggested the criminal provisions could be replaced with non-criminal fines.

"It's not the end of the registry tonight," Mr. Ignatieff said yesterday, dismissing the vote as "mischief" on the part of the Conservatives. "The fundamental issue is to make sure that we get a system of gun control which works both for rural Canada and for urban Canada."

Yesterday's close vote was triggered by a private member's bill from Conservative MP Candice Hoeppner, who took up measures proposed earlier by Mr. Breitkreuz. The bill is essentially the same as a Conservative bill introduced in the Senate but not moved for debate.

If further debate on Ms. Hoeppner's bill moves quickly, the Conservatives' efforts to scrap the long-gun registry could succeed before Parliament's summer recess in June. The bill's future will also depend on whether Prime Minister Stephen Harper fills upcoming vacancies in the Senate so that the Conservatives outnumber the opposition in 2010.

The bill, if passed, would eliminate the requirement to register hunting rifles but would maintain the registry for prohibited or restricted weapons such as handguns.

Many rural opposition MPs bristled in recent weeks at the attacks from Conservatives in their ridings, but still voted for the Tory bill.

One Tory flyer mailed into the Timmins-James Bay riding, held by NDP MP Charlie Angus, pictured Mr. Ignatieff, Mr. Layton and Bloc Québécois Leader Gilles Duceppe above a heading stating: Attacking Farmers and Hunters.

Mr. Angus was among the 12 New Democrats who sided with the Conservatives yesterday.

"Every day, people bring [the flyers] into my office and say, 'Tell these guys to stop using our taxpayers' dollars to lie to us,' " Mr. Angus said.

***

No pair

Bloc Québécois MP Claude Guimond wore a face mask in the House of Commons last evening because he feared he was coming down with H1N1 and did not want to infect his fellow MPs.

Bloc spokesman Carl Boisvert told The Globe and Mail that his party twice approached the Conservatives to "pair" Mr. Guimond's vote so the ailing MP from Montmorency-Charlevoix would not have to attend. "They refused both times."

Pairing is a Parliamentary tradition in which two parties on opposing sides of an issue agree to have one MP each abstain.

According to the Conservatives, all of their MPs were too eager to be on record for such an important vote. Criticizing the federal long-gun registry has been a central theme of Conservative campaigns for years.

"We had no member to pair with," said Prime Minister spokesman Andrew MacDougall. "All our members were present to vote."

Mr. McDougall said the government agreed to move up the timing of the vote so that Mr. Guimond could leave sooner.

Bill Curry