SAULT STE. MARIE, Ont. — He says he doesn’t want to sound paranoid, but Prime Minister Stephen Harper is concerned his own federal bureaucracy is trying to bring back the long gun registry “through the back door.”
Harper courted gun owners and anglers today in northern Ontario with a carefully stage-managed question and answer session with invited representatives of the Ontario Federation of Anglers and Hunters.
Killing the long gun registry was a long-standing Conservative government promise —and fundraising cash cow. Now that it’s dead and buried, the governing party is reviving alleged threats of its resurrection.
The government has loudly denounced and reversed an RCMP move to prohibit a couple of guns police say can too easily be converted into fully automatic weapons.
Harper cited that example to tell gun owners his government will not tolerate what he called bureaucratic initiatives “effectively trying to put the long gun registry back through the back door.”
Harper did not take questions from journalists after the event.
The prime minister was to meet with members of his hunting and angling caucus later in the day as parliamentarians wrap up a week-long break from the House of Commons.