Supreme Court will hear Quebec appeal to preserve gun registry data

The Supreme Court of Canada has given the Quebec government one last chance to preserve provincial data from the otherwise defunct federal long-gun registry.

The high court has ruled that it will hear a Quebec government appeal in the long-running saga.

Quebec turned to the Supreme Court to hear the case after losing at the Quebec Court of Appeal this past summer.

As usual, the justices gave no reasons for deciding to hear the appeal.

The province wants to force Ottawa to keep data related to the federal long-gun registry and wants police forces to continue to have access to the information.

Opponents of the registry, which was scrapped by an act of Parliament in 2012, say it is wasteful, intrusive and irrelevant in stopping crime, while some police organizations call it a valuable law-enforcement tool.

Public Safety Minister Steven Blaney said in a release that the Conservative government “will vigorously defend our legislation, adopted by Parliament, in front of the Supreme Court.”

“We will continue to bring forward measures to keep our streets and communities safe, and to respect hunters, farmers and sport shooters,” said Blaney.

Quebec Justice Minister Bertrand St-Arnaud said the decision by the country’s top court to hear the case is good news, noting that there’s a consensus in the province to maintain the registry.

Quebec’s government has argued that the data, long since paid for, should be preserved to form the basis for its own registry — rather than having the province start from scratch with a new registry at great cost to taxpayers.

“We’re very, very happy that this case, which is important for us, important for Quebecers, which was the object of eight unanimous motions in the national assembly, will be heard in the coming months by the Supreme Court of Canada,” St. Arnaud said in Quebec City.

“It’s good news for all Quebecers.”

The Quebec justice minister said he hopes the case will be pleaded in 2014, but added that it could take a year between the pleading of the case and when a final judgment is rendered.

Public Security Minister Stephane Bergeron added that Quebec is the only jurisdiction in Canada where the registry of weapons and data continues to be collected.

“For the moment, we’re satisfied with the situation and we’re preparing for the eventual creation of a Quebec arms registry,” he said.

The Coalition for Gun Control, formed after 14 women were gunned down at Montreal’s Ecole Polytechnique in December 1989, also held out hope the Supreme Court will eventually preserve the Quebec registry data.

“The decision of the court reaffirms the fact that there is public interest in studying Quebec’s request for an appeal on the decision to destroy the records on 1.6 million rifles and shotguns registered in Quebec,” coalition president Wendy Cukier said in a release.

Ottawa confirmed last November that it had successfully destroyed the data on more than five million individual rifles and shotguns from all provinces and territories — with the exception of Quebec.

At the time, the Canadian Sports Shooting Association told its membership to “rest assured, we are the envy of international firearms advocates everywhere” because Canada is almost alone internationally in rolling back gun control laws.

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