Suzanne Legault seeks court order to preserve Quebec gun data

The federal information commissioner has filed apreservation order with the Federal Court in an effort to keep the Conservative government from destroying more contested gun registryrecords.

Suzanne Legault wants Public Safety Minister Steven Blaney toeither hand over the remaining long-gun registry data from Quebec tothe Federal Court or have the court prohibit its destruction.

• Quebec vows to create its own long-gun registry
• Harper government tries to kill all traces of long-gun registry
• Gun registry access law change could set precedent, watchdog warns
• Information commissioner's report on ATI and the long-gun registry

It's all part of Legault's bid to have a judicial review of theHarper government's actions in relation to the destruction ofmillions of long-gun registry records for the rest of Canada.

And it ups the ante in yet another nasty brawl between theConservatives and an independent officer of Parliament.

At issue is the application of the Access to Information Act over which Legault has jurisdiction to government records.

The latest Conservative omnibus budget bill includes measures toretroactively rewrite the application of that access law in aneffort to erase the RCMP's mishandling of records from the now-defunct registry back in 2012.

Legault recommended two months ago that charges be laid againstthe Mounties for their role in withholding and destroying registryrecords, which were subject to an active access-to-informationrequest, before Parliament had passed the law ending the long-gunregistry in April 2012.

But instead of Justice Minister Peter MacKay moving on therecommendation to lay charges, the Harper government rewrote the lawand backdated the changes to the day legislation proposing to endthe registry was first tabled in Parliament in 2011.

The Ontario Provincial Police have since begun an investigationof the RCMP actions after receiving the file from the Office of thePublic Prosecutor.

In a special report to Parliament late last month, Legault calledthe government's move a "perilous precedent" that sets the stagefor retroactive cover-ups of more serious government wrongdoing,including electoral fraud and spending scandals.

The government has responded with derision, insisting thatParliament is supreme and that there's nothing wrong with rewritingthe law retroactively to absolve the RCMP of an alleged crime.

Blaney has repeatedly described the amendments as technical,saying they simply close a "bureaucratic loophole" in the originallaw to end the gun registry.