Shooting from the hip

Federal Liberal leadership candidate Justin Trudeau may have learned a costly lesson this week about shooting from the hip.

Last weekend, he called the long-gun registry a failure. This sent a few shock waves reverberating through the land, as the Liberals naturally had been in favour of the registry they themselves brought in. Asked to elaborate, Trudeau said his position wasn’t a flip-flop, and he said he was always behind the registry and continues in principle to support it. It’s just that the thing is much too divisive to revive, he said.

But then, still staggering from the recoil, he fired off another round. He added that he’s in favour of Quebec’s attempt to restore it in la belle province, where it is not a divisive issue.

Everywhere else, it seems, it’s a “failed” kind of policy.

“I voted to keep the firearms registry a few months ago, and if we had a vote tomorrow, I would vote once again to keep the long-gun registry,” Trudeau said, adding that the registry’s divisiveness resulted in the fact that “it no longer exists.”

Out here in the West, Trudeau’s original statement didn’t ring quite true anyway. It sounded too much like a ploy to win back support after his antiAlberta remarks from a couple years back surfaced during the federal byelection in Calgary Centre and were blamed for helping to sink Liberal candidate Harvey Locke.

Trudeau is increasingly becoming known as someone who says one thing in Quebec while speaking in French and the opposite elsewhere while speaking in English. He needs to remember, translation services are widespread, as is bilingualism.