PUBLICATION:        The Edmonton Sun 

DATE:                         2004.05.14

EDITION:                    Final 

SECTION:                  Editorial/Opinion 

PAGE:                         11 

BYLINE:                     NEIL WAUGH, EDMONTON SUN 

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OSCAR AND DOUG STICK TO THEIR GUNS

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Oscar Lacombe - Korean war veteran, former sergeant-at-arms of the Alberta Legislature, descendant of Metis pioneers - achieved his goal yesterday. He became one of the first martyrs of the Ottawa Liberals' gun registry, just as Prime Minister Paul Martin is about to finally call a federal election and Deputy Prime Minister Anne McLellan has to convince already skeptical Albertans that Liberals really do have their best interests at heart this time.

Oscar's ordeal was clearly martyr-lite after the judge gave him about the lightest sentence possible for bringing an unloaded and disabled .22-calibre rifle sealed in a plastic bag to an anti-gun-registry protest at the Legislature grounds: a conditional discharge with no criminal record if Lacombe performs 75 hours of community service. And this only after several long months of agonizing deliberation.

But Lacombe made his point, at least in the eyes of Premier Ralph Klein.

The same can't be said for Justice Minister Dave Hancock, whose culpability throughout the entire Oscar affair has been picked up by right-wing forces in the province. Hancock is all but guaranteed to play the part of the Red Tory villain in the campaign of the Alberta Alliance party in the next provincial election.

Hancock, who led a meaningless debate in the legislature this spring protesting the gun registry, after rural caucus members started applying the heat, refused to pronounce Lacombe a victim. "Mr. Lacombe did what he believed he needed to do to make his point," the justice minister sniffed. "I'm sure he understood going into it what the possibilities were."

Hancock's boss, the premier, was much more emphatic yesterday. "Oscar wanted to make himself a victim of an unjust law," Klein said. "He wanted to bring attention to the silliness of this law."

Unfortunately, the premier brought up the Canadian Wheat Board protesters who were persecuted by the feds for selling their own wheat to a 4-H club in Montana rather than to Ottawa's government grain monopoly. They chose jail. Klein showed up at a rally at the Lethbridge courthouse steps on sentencing day. But he ruined the Tories' credibility by allowing them to be hauled off to a provincial prison.

The same stench of insincerity hangs over the Lacombe case after the federal prosecutor reportedly told the court she was acting as an agent of the Alberta government. All along, Hancock has claimed that the Alberta government wanted nothing to do with gun registry prosecutions. Now, no matter how much he protests and gives his pat answers, there's a large body of Albertans who don't believe him. "You can't break the law no matter how you feel about it," Klein said, trying to come to Hancock's rescue. "The gun registry is a bad law. But we have an obligation and make an oath to uphold the law no matter how bad the law is."

This is something Wainwright Tory MLA Doug Griffiths can understand. But he is willing to say what neither Klein nor Hancock would about Oscar. "Yes, he's a victim," Griffiths spat. Then he joined Lacombe's club. "To be honest, I'm the only politician in the country to fight it," said the former schoolteacher. "Of course I don't want to go to jail, like anyone else in this country," Griffiths said. "I didn't decide this overnight. I spent months agonizing over what to do. When it came to Jan. 1 (the registration deadline) I decided not to comply." 

Doug's unregistered firearms are locked in his gun safe. But in the eyes of the Ottawa Liberals, Griffiths is technically a criminal. Griffiths talked about Mahatma Gandhi."I think Gandhi was a brilliant man," Griffiths said. "Instead of violent opposition, he simply said don't comply. "There are hundreds of thousands of Canadians who are saying the same thing I am." Doug Griffiths is clearly a Tory of conviction and integrity. Now, what's Hancock going to do?