It came down to only two votes, but Portage-Lisgar M.P. Candice Hoeppner's private members bill aimed at scrapping the long gun registry has been stopped. During a very late Wednesday afternoon vote a motion introduced by the House of Commons public safety committee to stop Hoeppner's bill was passed 153-151. This means our Member of Parliament's bill is dead.

Hoeppner says the outcome is not a huge surprise.



Hoeppner believes there will be a price to pay for those M.P.'s who have stated for years they would scrap the registry when given the chance, but chose to vote to keep it when their vote really mattered. Some of the opposition M.P.'s who reversed their support include Peter Stoffer, Glenn Thibeault, Claude Gravelle, Malcolm Allen, Charlie Angus, and Carol Hughes. She says it's clear the Liberals and N.D.P. joined together to stop her bill, and the Conservative party is the only party that's been committed and remains committed to ending the long gun registry.

She says, at this point in a minority government, it wouldn't really help to introduce any government legislation aimed at ending the registry.



Looking ahead, to whenever the next Federal election may occur, Hoeppner believes the long gun registry and what happened Tuesday in the House of Commons will be an issue.



Last November when Hoeppner's bill last came up for second reading in the House of Commons, twenty-one opposition M.P.'s supported it. That figure was made up of eight Liberals, twelve N.D.P., and one independent. In the months since then, Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff announced he would whip his caucus into voting against Hoeppner's bill, and the Bloc Quebecois also announced it would vote against it too. The balance then laid with the N.D.P. of which a handful did vote Tuesday to scrap the registry including Churchill M.P. Nikki Ashton. At the end of the day though, it wasn't enough.

The long gun registry was initially implemented by the Liberals in 1995, and since then has been a contentious issue that's seen battle lines drawn in a very historical Western versus Eastern Canada way. Western Canadians have predominantly been opposed to the registry.