MONTREAL – NDP Leader Jack Layton is showing a "lamentable lack of leadership" by allowing his MPs to vote freely on the future of the national long-gun registry, Bloc Quebecois Leader Gilles Duceppe said Monday in his opening speech of a two-day party caucus meeting.
The House of Commons will vote later this month on Tory MP Candice Hoeppner's private member bill to do away with the long-gun registry, and the New Democrats will decide its fate. The Conservatives support the bill, while the Bloc Quebecois and the Liberals are expected to vote against it.
Layton told CTV's Question Period on Sunday that he hopes the registry will be saved, but that it needs improvement "so that it can work for everybody."
"What we're doing in our party is what really what needs to happen in the whole country," Layton said Sunday. "That is to build bridges between urban Canada and rural, northern and aboriginal Canada on an important issue."
Layton added that that MPs will discuss what to do about the long-gun registry at a caucus strategy meeting in Regina this week.
The New Democrats traditionally allow their MPs to vote however they want on private member's bills. But Layton has been trying hard to convince his caucus to save the gun registry by proposing reforms that would placate angry constituents in rural and northern ridings.
Duceppe said Monday that Prime Minister Stephen Harper's Conservative government "goes completely against the values of Quebecers." His speech, however, was almost totally focused on Layton's decision to allow a free vote.
Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff has urged New Democrats to vote against scrapping the registry, saying that "right now they're lined up with Stephen Harper against the police."
The Conservatives have fought to abolish the long-gun registry, despite claims from Canada's police chiefs and the Canadian Police Association that it's a useful tool for law enforcement.
New Democrat MPs have been divided by the issue because many of them hold ridings in northern or rural areas where residents oppose having to register shotguns and rifles.
A dozen of the party's MPs voted in favour of scrapping the registry when Hoeppner's bill came up for second reading last November.
Eight Liberal MPs also voted with the Tories at second reading, but Ignatieff is promising that his caucus will vote against the bill this time. That would mean the Conservatives need NDP votes to do away with the embattled gun registry.
Three New Democrats who voted for the bill in November -- Claude Gravelle, Charlie Angus and Glen Thibeault -- recently said they will vote against it this time.
With files from CTV.ca
