Wednesday Morning Links

- The Cons have apparently unveiled version 2.0 of their dirty tricks manual, featuring such cooperative and productive steps as having the chair utterly ignore any rules that have ever existed in order to prevent elected officials from voting. Stay tuned for the next step, as I'm sure all Con chairs are training to shriek "LALALALALAICANTHEARYOU!!!" for the entire length of a meeting.

- Jeffrey Simpson is absolutely right in saying that the CRTC couldn't approve Corn Cob Kory's application for a massive subsidy of Fox News North without looking ridiculous in the process. But I'm not sure how one can comment on the topic without noting the risk that the final decision will be made at the political level, where any concerns about trampling on common sense and existing rules could easily be outweighed by the desire to fund the most biased right-wing media mouthpiece yet.

- Sure, it might seem ridiculous for Sask Party MLA Dan D'Autremont to declare that his constituents have to choose between highways and health care. But let's be fair to D'Autremont: when a government is consumed with taking constant orders from the corporate sector, there's an obvious reason why there's nothing left for mere citizens.

- Getting quoted in a major newspaper: good. Getting quoted in a major newspaper alongside Paul Wells: excellent. Getting quoted in a major newspaper alongside Kelly McParland: well, two out of three ain't bad.

Aim at foot. Fire.

Shorter Garry Breitkreuz:

I'm positively mortified that some of our closed-door violent rhetoric got let out in the open.

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.
...
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.
...
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.

And this is why you think before you protest

So for the sake of embarrassing a Con backbencher slightly if at all, the Libs have handed the Cons a tailor-made "damned lefties are trying to take our guns away" story to power their rural fund-raising machine. Nicely done.

On target audiences

BigCityLib asks whether the Cons can pass Garry Breitkreuz' bill to repeal the federal long gun registry. But the real question is whether or not they want to - and the answer to that still looks to be "no".

If the Cons' actual goal was to eliminate the registry, then their path to get that done would seem to be obvious. After all, NDP MP John Rafferty has already announced that he plans to introduce a bill to the same effect. Which means that if the goal was to actually pass a bill, the Cons would be publicly working with Rafferty to try to round up additional support in Parliament and in the public.

Instead, the Cons are conspicuously ignoring the fact that Rafferty is looking to reach the same supposed goal, refusing to mention any opposition MPs by name and suggesting that they'll generally be reluctant to vote to repeal the registry. Which should serve as a strong indication that their intention is something other than to actually get the legislation changed.

That's doubly so when one looks at Breitkreuz' bill. Rather than merely repealing the registry, it also sets up what looks to me to be a highly unusual requirement that the Auditor General evaluate all gun laws every five years - without the slightest indication as to why gun laws in particular should be subject to that kind of review.

At best, that can be seen as a cynical way to keep gun issues in the news even after the main irritant is removed. But the provision might be seen as a poison pill for opposition parties - or worse yet, as an excuse for somebody to stop the bill in its tracks as requiring the Auditor General to spend money reporting even if it otherwise enjoys enough support to pass.

In sum, the real danger isn't that C-301 will eventually pass (since the Cons have essentially rendered the registry useless anyway). Instead, the greatest risk is that it will allow the Cons to keep gun owners on their side and motivated even as Harper deliberately avoids acting on his party's promises. And if the opposition parties are on the ball, they'll find a way to get a poison-pill-free version of the bill through Parliament to shut down the issue.