As the Sun Sets on Canada’s Long-Gun Registry, Quebec Seeks to Preserve Registry Data
Edward Pierz 04.04.12
On Tuesday the government of Quebec filed an injunction in the Quebec Superior Court in order to prevent the Canadian federal government from destroying the federal long-gun registry (officially the Canadian Firearms Registry) data under bill C-19. The Canadian Senate is preparing to take a final vote to end the federal long-gun registry, which would include the destruction of all records of long-guns and their owners. However, this decision has been criticized by Justice Minister Jean-Marc Fournier and the Liberal Party of Canada. As a result, Minister Fournier announced that he would be taking steps to challenge the constitutionality of the decision to end the long-gun ban.
According to Fournier, over one million long-guns will become untraceable for law enforcement in his province, Quebec, once the registry has ended. The Quebec government believes that this is unacceptable, and it wants to maintain its own registry independent of the federal registry. This will be impossible if the registry data is destroyed. In defense of his action, Fournier said that it would simply be too costly for Quebec to create its own long-gun registry without the use of the federal data.
Quebec’s politicians believe that they have a constitutional right to the registry data because much of it was collected in their province. So far the Conservative Party of Canada-controlled federal government has refused to hand over any of the long-gun registry data to the province.
