Politics makes strange bedfellows and good news often comes from the strangest of places. On May 8, 2018, it was the Minister of Public Safety’s comments on Bill C-71, The Firearms Owners Harassment Act.
While CSSA disagrees with the Minister and the government over the goodness of Bill C-71, we wholeheartedly support his public statement about transparency for all firearm classification decisions made by the RCMP.
The comment came during his presentation before the House of Commons committee reviewing the draft legislation.
Question by Sean Fraser (Liberal): “If the RCMP is going to be in charge of classification decisions, is there anything preventing them from releasing reasons, in the interests of transparency, as to why a particular firearm is classified a particular way?”
Ralph Goodale – Minister of Public Safety: “Not to my knowledge, Mr. Fraser. If that helps with transparency, if that helps in reassuring the public as to why a particular decision was taken, I would be more than happy to pursue with the experts within the RCMP so that people have a full understanding about why a classification was made in a certain direction.”
Everyone benefits from this openness and transparency, not just firearm owners. It is refreshing to see a Liberal MP and government minister agree with us on this issue, as CSSA has called for the transparency of RCMP classification decisions for over two decades.
We applaud the Minister for his support for RCMP classification transparency.
We ask all our members to contact Minister Goodale, thank him for his public statement and urge him to follow through.
Call his constituency office in Regina at +1 (306) 585-2202
Write him at:
Hon. Ralph Goodale, P.C., M.P,
Minister of Public Safety
House of Commons
Ottawa, Canada K1A 0A6
Email: Ralph.Goodale@parl.gc.ca
Watch the excerpt here: https://youtu.be/4OrNx-zeNQE
Watch the full Committee meeting on Bill C-71 here:
Bill Blair: Completely Out of Touch or Just Plain Disingenuous?