The commissioner of the RCMP has ordered all provincial chief firearms officers (CFOs) to end backdoor long-gun registries, now that the federal registry has been abolished.
“I instruct all chief firearms officers to ensure that the licensing conditions you impose on business records pursuant to the Firearms Act do not facilitate the creation of long-gun registries in your jurisdictions,” Bob Paulson wrote in a letter issued Friday.
Here is a link to the ruling. I summarized it here.
Among the five press releases I got early Friday morning announcing federal government job appointments, one told me four lucky people just got put on the Transportation Appeal Tribunal of Canada. You haven’t heard of it either, huh?
If you were waiting for someone finally to go after potty-mouth MP Pat Martin…
OTTAWA - New Democrat MP Pat Martin, known for his colourful and sometimes profanity-laced tirades against the Conservatives, is brushing off a defamation lawsuit against him and his party.
The charge is being laid by RackNine Inc., an Edmonton-based company that made automated calls for the Tories in last May’s election. It’s seeking $5 million in damages because of statements Martin made about the company and its CEO Matthew Meier.
In a statement to QMI Agency, Martin blew off the charge.
“They are trying to silence me more than address a legitimate grievance,” said Martin. “I have a public responsibility to defend the integrity of our democracy and our electoral system and I don’t apologize for doing so.”
RackNine says Martin went well beyond “defending” democracy and the electoral system.
The MP called the company “rascals” in a news conference and accused it of making “hundreds of thousands of phoney phone calls” that were part of a “massive conspiracy to defraud the electoral system.’
RackNine said it also objects to Martin comparing the company to Groupaction, the advertising firm caught up in the Liberal sponsorship scandal.
I had a chance to chat with former chief elections officer Jean-Pierre Kingsley Tuesday about the robocall and election fraud allegations currently engulfing Ottawa.
He called the allegations by opposition parties of a concerted pre-recorded phone campaign to mislead voters on polling stations in a bid to discourage them from voting “very serious,” and noted he’d seen nothing like it in his time heading up the agency.(The Conservatives also say they were victims of robocalls).
“It may take some time to really get to the bottom (of this),” he said. “But we need to get to the bottom of this, and we will. To find out how far it extended and if it goes beyond one person, etc.”
Kingsley also said Elections Canada usually receives about 1,000 complaints after each election campaign, many from average Canadians. Read more…
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