Swift reaction from Quebec government over gun registry

Postmedia News QUEBEC — Quebec will ask the Supreme Court of Canada to restore a judgment calling on Ottawa to turn over data from the abolished federal firearms registry on gun ownership by Quebecers.

The reaction was swift Thursday from Justice Minister Bertrand St-Arnaud, after a unanimous 5-0 Quebec Court of Appeal decision that the province has no right to its residents’ gun ownership records in the federal registry, because the law abolishing it was a valid federal law, within federal jurisdiction.

“There is a consensus in Quebec regarding the registration of firearms,” St-Arnaud said in a statement. “All parties in the National Assembly defend this position unanimously and are firmly opposed to the decision by the federal government to abolish the firearms registry.”

St-Arnaud said in addition to taking the matter to the Supreme Court, he would immediately seek a safeguard order to ensure the Quebec data are not destroyed and would remain accessible, pending the Supreme Court’s decision.

The Harper government’s Bill C-19 abolishing the registry came into force on April 5, 2012. Registry data, with the exception of data on Quebec residents, was destroyed on Oct. 31.

Ottawa appealed the judgment last Sept. 10 by Justice Marc-Andre Blanchard of Quebec Superior Court, which declared the section of Bill C-19 calling for destruction of the data was unconstitutional and ruled that Ottawa’s refusal to hand over the data was contrary to “co-operative federalism.”

The Quebec National Assembly adopted eight unanimous resolutions calling on Ottawa to maintain the gun registry, and when Public Security Minister Stéphane Bergeron presented his Bill 20 in February, to create a Quebec Firearms Registration Act, he was accompanied at a news conference by representatives of all parties in the assembly, as well as gun-control advocates and representatives of police forces and police unions.

Bergeron said then there is a “large consensus” in Quebec in favour of gun control and that police officers use the registry daily to determine whether there is a weapon in a home when they receive a call.

Bergeron then expressed confidence the Court of Appeal would confirm the Blanchard ruling.

Quebec’s Bill 20 would rely at the start on data from the federal registry, avoiding the cost of starting a new registry.