I know enough pixels and paper have already been wasted on the long gun registry so I’ll try to make this one worth your time.

Is it just me, or has anyone else noticed that the Conservatives seem to have something against the term ‘long’. Is this odd? If nothing, I find it a bit alarming. First, was the concerted move straight from the Prime Minister’s Office to scrap the long-form census. This important aspect of Canada’s national census was seen by the Prime Minister as intrusive, invasive and unnecessarily. Indeed, an unnecessary invasion into the homes and the lives of Canadians. Ultimately, the decision was met with chorus upon chorus of protest particularly from people we refer to in layman’s terms as experts. People who knew what they were talking about, who opposed dismantling our national survey.

The Conservative’s second attack in their campaign against all things long is the long gun registry. For strikingly similar reasons, a private member’s bill put forward in the House of Commons, and supported roundly by the Conservatives, aims to scrap the registry and do away with the registration program. Simply put from the governing party, it’s too intrusive and unnecessary. And, in what feels very much like a scene from Groundhog Day, the Conservative decision is opposed by experts. Experts like the R.C.M.P., like the Canadian Chiefs of Police, and like Nurses—who are apparently experts on gun control? Yeah, I don’t know about that last one.

Still, the point remains and the similarities are eerie. But we’ve been through all of this before. There are plenty examples of the Conservatives snubbing expert opinion in favour of their collective gut—these two instances are merely part of the bigger pattern. I don’t think I need to say how wrong it is to rely on anecdotal information over expert testimony. How ridiculous it is when the only supporter of the long gun registry that the local news can find to interview is a member of the local gun club who argues that they, “can’t imagine how the gun registry keeps people safe.” Followed up by a Toronto police officer (an expert) who explains that she personally queries the registry over a hundred times a day to check a house for registered firearms before she dispatches officers to the scene of a call.

But, I digress.

This is the story of the long gun registry that could. Introduced by a bungling Liberal government at an estimated cost of $2 million to tax-paying Canadians, the actual cost of the registry has ended up being somewhere around a bazillion dollars, give or take a few hundred million. It’s been expensive, and it shouldn’t have been. The registry was mishandled and mismanaged by the same Liberal government who saw themselves entitled to govern, entitled to power, and the same Liberal government who would shortly find themselves embroiled in the now-famous Sponsorship Scandal.

As soon as it was introduced, the Conservatives began their fight to scrap it.

Billing it as intrusive, expensive, and unnecessary that same fight, which has raged off and on since, is what all the talk is about today. But, like the long-form census, the long gun registry has it supporters. And like the long-form census, the registry isn’t a black and white issue—there’s plenty of room for compromise.

Harper argued that the long-form census was too intrusive and threatened Canadians will jail time and fines if they didn’t fill it out. Several compromises were immediately presented including revamping the questions to make them less intrusive and eliminating the provisions which dealt out jail time and fines. These compromises were largely ignored. In today’s case, Harper argues again that the long gun registry is threatening the privacy of Canadians as well as being too expensive and unnecessary. I think we can all agree that the ballooning cost of the registry is ridiculous, but it can be brought back under control with proper management. And, I think we can all agree that a compromise on the privacy side is possible too. If the questions or the information gathered by the long gun registry is too personal, ask less.

But the Conservatives seldom see compromise as a necessary or even a possible solution, and why should they.

Our short story—which is by now growing quite long—has a whole host of characters, but I think it’s time that I introduced one particular group of people in a little more detail. They’re called the Liberal Party of Canada and they’re important in our tall tale.

See, the Conservatives, even in the tenuous minority position that they’re now governing from, have had a easy time of things. They’ve been able to walk around and do pretty much whatever they’ve liked. They’re rued the opinion of experts, they’ve thumbed their nose at the popular consensus of Canadians, and they’ve been slipping just about their entire agenda through the House of Commons unopposed. For a government that requires the support of opposition parties to actually work and govern, this has been pretty incredible. But it’s not without reason.

As the governing party, the Liberals did most things right. They were a decidedly centrist party, playing their politics right down the middle. Their agenda was to compromise, to give Canadians, all Canadians, almost exactly what they wanted by moving and shifting the pieces around; by pandering to both special and general interests. And amazingly, they made it work.

Following the Sponsorship Scandal, the same scandal that rocked Canadian politics around the time of the long gun registry, the Liberal party found itself in absolute tatters. The party that had been trusted with tax-payer money and tax-payer votes had let the tax-payer down. The natural party seemed to see itself as a little too natural and immune, perhaps, from mistake. When Jean Chretien, the father of modern Canadian politics, retired his post and walked out he left an enormous black hole in the party. And the party that seemed to just govern naturally for as long as anyone could really remember fell apart.

Factions formed—and, in fact, had been forming for a long time in the party—and there were those aligned with the old blood and those supporting the idea of bringing in something new. Out of all the ruckus we got Paul Martin, a leader who was far more similar to George W. Bush than Stephen Harper ever was. Here was a leader who was above policy, who governed through a system of guess-and-check and, like Bush, was above everything else interested in pleasing a father who had enormous ambitions for him. Perhaps we can argue that both fathers were left disappointed.

At any rate, Martin bungled things up and the next leader of the Liberal Party delivered out of the mess was what’s his name, with the glasses, and like Martin, his tenure is also forgettable.

Enter Michael Ignatieff, Iggy, who was heralded as the champion we’ve been waiting for. (If nothing else, he’s kept us waiting still.)

A gentleman and a scholar, Ignatieff made a triumphant return to Canada (from teaching university in the States) and took the reigns of the Liberal Party in an effort to bring it back up out of the dust. Immediately, and rather inexplicably, comparisons were drawn to our most famous and beloved Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau (the same Pierre Trudeau who, I would argue, nearly split the country in two). Iggy was billed as the next Trudeau, the next tough-taking, take-no-prisoners, down and gritty politician. The next intellectual, political heart-throb. After an incredibly shaky start, Ignatieff has spent this past summer essentially trying to rid himself of this reputation, instead trying to bill himself as the every-man; his cross-country tour on the so-called Liberal Express is this attempt.

It might be working. Polls for the Conservatives are down, pretty dramatically, and support for the Liberals are up. But is it really support for an Ignatieff government or is it angst at the Conservatives attempt to dismantle all long things in Canada? It’s impossible to say.

What we do know is that the story of the long gun registry isn’t the story of an isolated incident. It’s an event in a long chain of events, propelled by the Conservatives mistrust of expert opinion and allowed by an opposition party that’s still trying to find its feet years after a messy scandal and break-up. What we also know is that without a strong opposition, without a real damper on Conservative power, this story’s going to get a lot longer. If polls are to be trusted Canadians might be ready to let Iggy have a go at it. While that’s an issue for another article—that’s another story altogether—it will certainly be interesting to see how this next chapter unfolds. The registry is in peril but it looks like enough opposition votes will be mustered up to save it from the chopping block. If the opposition is finally ready to start opposing I wonder what kind of chain of events that might set in motion.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 21st, 2010 at 9:25 pm and is filed under Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.