Quebec to get gun-registry data, court rules

A Quebec Superior Court judge has granted a permanent injunction blocking the federal government from destroying the province's portion of the long-gun registry.

In a decision released Monday, Superior Court Judge Marc-Andr Blanchardvoids two sections of the Conservative government's legislation to scrap the registry and orders it to hand over all records on Quebec-owned gunsto the provincial government within 30 days.

The ruling upholds an earliertemporary injunction granted to Quebec in April, on the same day that thebill tokibosh the gun registrypassed into law that prohibited the federal government from proceeding with the destruction ofthe data.

The federal government will have to keep registering Quebec long guns and recording transfers of ownership until it hands over the database to the province.

Blanchardwrites thata portion of the Ending the Long-gun Registry Act "impinges in a very substantial way, even exorbitantly, onprovincial powers, and there is no rational or functional justification or any necessity to do so."

The federal and provincial governments co-operated to create the registry, which gives Quebec the right to access its share of the data, he says.

"The text of the forms toapply fora firearms licence,apossession licence and an acquisition licence,andto register a firearm, as well asthe privacy protocol and the relevant agreements between Canada and Quebec, establish that the registry's recordsare not strictly 'federal,'"thedecision says.

"Itfollows that Quebec can get the records."

The RCMP's firearm registrationform, for instance, explicitly states that "federal, provincial or territorial legislation relating to access to information and privacy" applies.

No word yet on appeal

Blanchard'sdecision strikes down Section 11 of the act, which would have alloweda long-gun owner to sell their firearm without registering the transaction, andSection 29, whichmandated the destruction of all long-gun records.

The judgment only applies to the Quebec portion of the database. Quebec wants to establish its own firearms registry.

The case is expected to end up in Quebec's Court of Appeal, though federal ministerssaid Monday they are studying the ruling before deciding whetherto launch a challenge. If theConservative government fails to get the decision overturned there, it could appeal itto theSupreme Court of Canada.

The NDP's Franoise Boivin, theopposition justice criticand a Quebec MP,warned that would"waste taxpayers' money."Pursuing an appeal to the top court in the land could take years.

"Experts have sided with us, the police have sided with us and now it's the Superior Court's turn," Boivin said in a news release. "These records are an important public safety tool. Conservatives must stop politicizing this issue and start putting public safety first."

Quebec justice minister happy to have 'won fight'

The Quebec government was among several entities that were elated at Judge Blanchard's decision.

Outgoingprovincial justice minister Jean-MarcFournier said in a statement he was "very happy that Quebec won the fight,"adding that"Quebec's long-gun registry's data and its functions will be preserved in the province."

Hepointed out thatthe province's stance on the registry is shared with many police organizations, health and public safety groups and families of people who fell victim to tragedies that took place in Quebec.

The federal long-gun registry was created in the wake of the 1989 cole Polytechnique massacre in Montreal, in which amisogynist gunman shot and killed 14 women, mostly engineering students.

Attempts by the Conservative governmentto abolish it have been in the works for years. The Ending the Long-gun Registry Actfinally passedin the Commons on Feb. 15 and the Senate on April 4.It received royal assent and becamelaw the next day.

Quebec hadargued it was unconstitutional for Ottawa to delete the regional data, because the registry was a dual provincial-federal undertaking that crossed jurisdictional lines. Ottawa's position was that Quebec had the right to create its own database but could not use the information available in the federal one.

Quebec also argued that the destruction of the registry would be "unfair"to taxpayers, who contributed to creating it.

Hope for other provinces

The Coalition for Gun Controlsaidit hopes other provinces will be inspiredby Blanchard's decision to take up the fight topreserve their portions of the registry.

"The decision of the court reaffirms the fact that the data on guns is useful, that the province which contributed to collecting it is entitled to keep it and that it is in the interests of public safety to maintain it," the coalition's president, Wendy Cukier, said in a news release.

The Barbra Schlifer Commemorative Clinic in Toronto, which provides counselling and legalsupport to women who have been abused, is also challenging the Ending the Long-gun Registry Act in court and in the meantime is seeking an injunction to stop the destruction of data, similar to the one that was granted in Quebec. The clinic's case, which is being supported by the City of Toronto, will be heard in Ontario Superior Court on Sept.13.

National policing organizations are also in favour of the registry. The Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police, the Canadian Police Association and the Canadian Association of Police Boards all say that the registry helps officers prevent and investigate crimes.

According to the RCMP, 7.8 million firearms are registered in the database, 90per cent of which are non-restricted firearms.

Vic Toews, Canada's public safety minister,said he wasdisappointed with Blanchard's decision.

The "will of Parliament and Canadians has been clear," he said Monday,and people do not wish to contribute to "any form of a wasteful and ineffective long-gun registry."

Judge Marc-Andr Blanchard's decision (in French)