Posts Tagged by women voters
Police & Liberals Support the Gun Registry
| 5/6/2010 | Posted by Patti under Canadian Politics |
A couple of weeks ago, at a meeting of Police Chiefs, Ignatieff committed to a whipped vote on the Conservative gun registry bill. The bill is a private members bill and as such it is unusual for any party to whip (require a vote on party lines). It is also rather unusual for a bill that is part of a party’s platform to be brought to the house as a private members bill.
The bill has previously passed Parliament but had died on the order paper when Harper prorogued the House in December to avoid the detainee issue. The bill had passed the House in part as the result of 8 Liberal MPs giving it support in a free vote. The MPs had been targeted by the Conservatives as vulnerable to the issue. That doesn’t necessarily make it a free vote when the MPs in question vote as the result of political pressure.
The Canadian Association of Police Chiefs opposed the elimination of the gun registry. The consider it an important tool in fighting crime, something that the Conservatives claim as being their committed forte. In response, Conservative MP Garry Breitkreuz dismissed their call to leave the registry alone as the chiefs being out of touch with the frontline officers on the street.
Guess what, the Canadian Police Association (the frontline guys), has now stepped up to call for the registry to be left alone. That sounds like a pretty loud plea from those who are sworn to serve and protect to leave this tool for police work alone. Do the Conservatives listen?
Of course not, that would be way too far off their ideological path. Government in Canada these days is not about the will of the people, it is about what Conservative ideology demands.
Ignatieff should have seen through the Conservatives ploy the first time round when they introduced the bill as a private members bill. He’s seen it now, he hadn’t better waver.
Conservatives claim that women in Canada want less crime. Apparently women voters haven’t bought that assumption of what we supposedly want, the latest poll shows a 10 point gap between the men and women who would vote Conservative.
Maybe women are more concerned about the huge cost of the Conservative’s plans for mandatory sentencing while at the same time seeing so many woman’s groups having their funding cut. Those groups meet needs in this country which work towards true equality between men and women, something Conservatives appear to be quite willing to impede.
As for this woman, leave that gun registry in place. The more tools the police have to work with to prevent serious crimes, the less we’ll pay later while the criminal lingers in prison. Prevention is way cheaper than cure.
UPDATE: Just after making this post I came across this link: Top 10 Myths About the Canadian Firearms Registry. An eye opening read.
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