Police put Tory credibility on the firing line

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This week's interventions by leading police officers on the long-gun registry could create a bit of concern in the Prime Ministers Office. For the first time, the government appears to be losing the upper hand in this debate. Here's why.

Abolishing the registry was a winner for the Conservatives when it touched two powerful chords: the idea that Liberals love to create more government than we really need and that the Liberal government in this case took a simple idea and turned it into a sinkhole for public money.

The Conservatives made a meal of it and along the way caused a number of rural MPs from centre-left parties to look squeamish -- and in some cases abandon their defense of the registry.

But recent events are altering the context for the gun-registry debate. The dominant narrative about the government this summer has been about two things:

» The Harper government, like those that came before it, is entirely capable of spending huge amounts of money without tight control. Tory street cred as fiscal managers is not so solid.

» The Prime Minister may from time to time be tempted to use ideology over information, data and expert opinion to form the agenda for the country. Centrist voters like Stephen Harper a lot more when they think he is smart, practical, logical or at least more than ideological.

This new context, (and the fact that the Government seems shaken in its ability to set the communications agenda), has changed the way people interpret events like the transfer of the senior RCMP officer just before he was due to give a speech on the long gun registry.

Today, it seems less a story about government pursuing a sound idea despite bureaucratic foot dragging and more like government unwilling to tolerate or listen to reasonable points of view that are at odds with Conservative ideology.

This week, Canada's police leaders have been scoring points against the government's plan to abolish the registry, at will and with precision. Last week's reassignment of the RCMP official seemed only to give more oxygen to the story and more credibility to the opposition.

» Senior police officers from places as different as Toronto and Edmonton both weighed in against the Conservative plan to scrap the registry, undermining any notion that registering long guns is a lefty/central-Canadian idea imposed on the West.

» In making their case, the police leaders used concrete examples, points that will likely make some voters pause. Learning that as many as 500 homes in Edmonton have more than 20 weapons in them, for example, might make some voters who have generally been against the registry wonder if they have considered all the angles.

» Abolitionists say the registry is useless, but now we hear that police access it more than 10,000 times a day. Will voters assume that the police are wasting time, or that critics of the registry are distorting the reality? One of the senior officers coming out of the meeting delivered a powerful blow to this government's currently exposed solar plexus, noting that "our position is not based on ideology, but public safety".

» If, as reported, it's true that the annual operating cost of the registry is about $4-million per year, this might cause some voters to consider whether it makes sense to discard something that so many officers use so often, that so many police leaders support and that costs such a tiny fraction of the federal budget. Alongside the $9-billion the Conservatives want to spend on new prison spaces, the operating cost (now that the original bloated investment has been spent) of the long gun registry is probably a better argument for keeping, than abolishing it.

Depending on the steel in the spine of those in the opposition ranks who supported the long gun registry in the past, but have been more tentative of late, there may be more politics yet on this file -- and more challenges ahead for the Harper government.