A salesman holds up a rifle at an Ottawa hunting store on Tuesday, May 16, 2006.JONATHAN HAYWARD
Hot: Candice Hoeppner. The Manitoba Conservative MP - with a little help from her friends on the Liberal and NDP benches - scores big as her private member's bill (PMB) to abolish the gun registry passes second-reading. Ms. Hoeppner, 45, a former political consultant is a rookie MP from the class of '08 and a popular member of caucus. (In fact, she was Stephen Harper's Manitoba campaign manager for his 2004 leadership bid.)
Ms. Hoeppner had a little help from other friends, too. Her colleague Gary Breitkreuz is really the driving force behind this, helping her craft her bill and pushing it along. Some opposition ridings were targeted with ads and other publicity. Still, it is astonishing that a PMB of this consequence has made it so far. Usually, PMBs die on the order paper.
House of Commons statistics show that since 1994, 43 PMBs have received royal assent, including several substantive ones, such as former prime minister Paul Martin's successful attempt in 2006 - he was a backbencher then - to resurrect the Kelowna Accord. Former NDP MP Svend Robinson also was successful with his PMB on hate propaganda.
Generally, however, the ones that are successful are non-controversial - declaring lacrosse our national summer sport and hockey our national winter sport or the declaration that the the beaver is the "symbol of sovereignty of the Dominion of Canada." There is also a legendary PMB put forward by a young, rookie backbencher in 1964. Its aim was to change the name of Trans-Canada Airlines to Air Canada. The MP was Jean Chrétien.
Not: Seniors and Michael Ignatieff. Frank Graves's new EKOS national opinion poll shows that Canadian seniors - 65 and older - love Stephen Harper and his Tories. Mr. Graves was surprised to see that more than half - 51.2 per cent - of seniors support the Conservatives compared to 26.5 per cent for Mr. Ignatieff's Liberals.
In an interview this morning, Mr. Graves said that this "age affect" is an important change for the Tories, especially because seniors will come out to vote. He said this "very strong performance" is "not typical" and figures it is because this group is comfortable with the Harper government's performance on the economy.
You can read the full EKOS data here.