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The head of Canada’s largest gun lobby has raised the spectre that unhappy gun owners — long considered loyal supporters of the Conservative party — may stay home on election day if they don’t start getting what they want.
“I think our members are critical thinkers and I think they are looking for deeds, not words,” said Sheldon Clare, president of the 75,000-member National Firearms Association.
As the Conservative government courts gun owners in advance of the expected October election, Clare cited the example of Kim Campbell, the last Conservative prime minister to run afoul of gun owners. Campbell, who advocated tighter controls, lost the 1993 election.
“I remember another Canadian prime minister who acted against the interests of Canadian firearms owners; the situation that she faced in that subsequent election is where large numbers of otherwise supportive voters chose not to support that party and in many cases they just didn’t vote,” said Clare.
“If anyone thinks the firearms issue was not part of her defeat, they are very, very mistaken. I know I worked very hard at that time to make sure that her summer job would end quickly and I’m pleased to say it did.”
Clare said his members are watching closely what the Harper government does with two proposed bills. Bill C-42, otherwise known as the Common Sense Firearms Licensing Act, and Bill C-51, the government’s anti-terrorism legislation, are both flawed and gun owners want change, he said.
Bill C-51 has an appearance “of being a sort of creeping police state bill” that has raised concern about privacy and oversight of intelligence agencies, Clare said. Bill C-42, on the other hand, doesn’t go far enough to support gun owners, he said.
Introduced in early October, Bill C-42 was supposed to be debated on Oct. 22, the day Michael Zehaf-Bibeau shot a soldier at the National War Memorial, then stormed Parliament Hill. Instead, it was sent for second reading a little more than a month later, and it is unclear when it will clear committee.
Manitoba MP Robert Sopuck, chair of the Conservative hunting and angling caucus, blamed the “legislative process” and crowded docket of pending legislation for the delay, but said the government is committed to passing C-42. He said it has widespread support from associations of hunters and anglers across the country.
“There’s an old saying in legislation: the perfect is the enemy of the good. Our government has to balance the rights of hunters and firearms owners with the important requirement to protect public safety. I’m confident this bill does that,” said Sopuck.
The NFA is particularly concerned that C-42 doesn’t sufficiently loosen restrictions on the transportation of firearms, and that gun owners can’t challenge the tests to secure licences.
The politically active association is also circulating petitions demanding changes to gun classification, and says it is waiting for the government to repeal provisions of bills C-17 and C-68, unpopular with gun owners. C-17 changed requirements for acquiring a firearms licence, introducing waiting periods and mandatory training while increasing penalties for some gun-related crime. Bill C-68 created harsher penalties for gun crime, introduced a new licensing system and created provincial firearms officers.
“We were expecting more. I’d be misleading you if we said we weren’t disappointed in the lack of effort in a number of areas,” Clare said of the Conservative government’s nine years in power.
“It’s been a long time putting up with bad law.”
Sopuck, however, said the Conservative party has to “govern for all Canadians.”
“I think (Bill C-42) does move the ball in a significant way; on the other hand balancing the need for public safety is very important,” said Sopuck. “There is no way that any government, with any piece of legislation, will make everybody happy.”
Jeremy Laurin, press secretary for Public Safety Minister Steven Blaney, said in an email that the government “is standing up for law-abiding hunters, farmers and sport shooters. That’s why we introduced the Common Sense Firearms Licensing Act to reduce needless red tape while keeping Canadians safe.”
Clare said the gun lobby has serious concerns about the agendas of the other political parties, “which are clearly unfriendly to gun owners. There is a bit of a combination of a need to see real change, coupled with a need to make sure that change doesn’t go in the wrong direction,” he said. "Far be it from me to tell people how to vote, but I think people are looking very closely at who their friends are and who their friends are not and those who claim to be their friends.