Shooting blanks

It's no great surprise that Garry Breitkreuz' gun registry bill now looks to be a thing of the past. But what's more surprising is how that came to be - as rather than forcing the other parties in Parliament to vote and down, Breitkreuz (presumably under orders from the Cons) decided not to show up when given the opportunity to advance it:

Garry Breitkreuz, who represents a riding in rural Saskatchewan, had introduced a private member's bill in the House of Commons aimed at scrapping the controversial registry and the bill was to be debated in the House of Commons Monday morning. But Mr. Breitkreuz failed to show up for the debate and, according to rules of procedure in the House, that meant his private member's bill now falls to the bottom of the priority list. MPs have introduced more than 190 private member's bills and must count on a lottery system to have their bill advanced.
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Mr. Breitkreuz was not available for comment but an aide said that he allowed his bill, C-301, to die in favour of a similar bill, C-391, put forward by Manitoba Conservative MP Candice Hoeppner.
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As recently as March 21, Prime Minister Stephen Harper, in a speech to the Ontario Federation of Anglers and Hunters, was urging supporters of Breitkreuz's bill to pressure their MPs to get behind that bill.

Now, I've been critical of the opposition parties before for not looking to put the gun registry behind them. But with Breitkreuz' move, it looks like the Cons have managed to fritter away much of the advantage they could possibly have held on the issue.

After all, Breitkeuz has staked much of his political reputation on his supposed commitment to abolishing the registry. But by abandoning his own bill on the subject - actually failing to show up to speak to it, rather than at least doing everything in his power to push it forward and letting the opposition parties vote it down - he's leaving the door wide open for opponents to slam him as failing to stand up for either his beliefs or his constituents. Which is an extremely surprising step for a party which has otherwise been obsessed with not showing weakness, and which figures to be relying heavily on Breitkreuz' fans for fund-raising purposes.

Meanwhile, the Hoeppner bill doesn't appear likely to help either Breitkreuz or his party to regain any lost ground. Based on the opposition parties' position, the new bill won't have any greater likelihood of becoming law than Breitkreuz'. And by putting their support behind that effort as well as the Senate bill which they're happily leaving at a standstill, the Cons figure to undo whatever pretense of moderation they could otherwise have won by stopping the progress of C-301.

Now, it could be that the Cons have some strategy to at least neutralize the obvious damage done to their ability to keep pretending that they're doing all they can (or indeed anything) to act on what was once one of the core issues behind Reform's rise. But it's hard to see how the Cons plan on finessing their way out of some serious discontent - and Breitkreuz may not be the only rural MP whose future looks a lot more cloudy as a result.