Long-gun registry could be removed in Canada next month

The head of the long gun registry program has been removed just weeks before a vote before the House of Commons on Candice Hoeppner's Bill C-391 is angering the Ad Hoc Coalition for Women's Equality and Human Rights.

RCMP Chief Superintendent Martin Cheliak, Director of the Canadian Firearms Program, was removed from regular duties in August and sent for extended language training. Last Wednesday it was confirmed that he will be replaced by the RCMP. This removal could kill Candice Hoeppner's Bill C-391 to repeal the long-gun registry that will be voted on September 22, two days after the House of Commons resumes. In May Cheliak provided evidence that the registry must stay citing public safety concerns, reduced registry costs, increased registry effectiveness, and rapidly increasing usage by police. Cheliak has turned the long-gun registry into an useful database while reducing the costs to $4.1 million during his year as Director of the Canadian Firearms Program. He was to present a major report on the effectiveness of the long-gun registry to a meeting of the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police just days after his removal. "It is strange indeed to see a law-and-order government not only ignore, but suppress information from Canada's national police force," said Ad Hoc Coalition member, Mary Scott, President of the National Council of Women of Canada (NCWC) in a press release. "This government is burying the head of the long-gun registry program weeks before a crucial vote on C-391, just as they buried the annual report from the Canadian Firearms Program before the Commons' vote last November. The report Cheliak was to make to the Chiefs of Police must be public information before any vote is taken in Parliament." On average the police consult the registry 14,000 times a day. Gun deaths have dropped by a third since the registry was implemented. In the case of domestic homicides of women that reduction has been an even larger drop. If Bill C-391 becomes law then seven million long-gun firearm records will be destroyed. That could be deadly for women. During domestic violence calls, police use the registry to check if a long-gun is on site. Statistics from the Domestic Violence Death Review Committee found firearms to be present in 47% of domestic homicides in 2007. A woman is 12 times more likely to be murdered if a gun is involved in domestic violence, and the guns most commonly used in domestic violence are long guns, not handguns, "Public safety, and women's safety, must come before politics," said Claire Tremblay, Coordinator of the Ad Hoc Coalition. "Political point scoring to win over a tiny constituency at the expense of safety is simply unacceptable."