“On behalf of all those who support the long-gun registry and opposed Bill C-391, I would like to thank you once again for your vote on Wednesday, 22 September 2010. I know that this was not an easy decision to make, and that it was made under no shortage of pressure and public scrutiny, and I thank you for having the conviction to take the stand you took.

“Although the matter is far from settled, and the specific future of the long-gun registry is far from certain, I am glad and grateful that our government has chosen to review and work to improve the registry, rather than simply throw the baby out with the bathwater for the sake of political gain.

“I thank you for your vote, and I am confident that your constituents will not forget the courage and integrity that you displayed in casting it.”

I have to admit that I was touched. Jack certainly wasn’t obliged to take the time out of his busy schedule to make that call, and I’d have to be incredibly cynical to suggest that his motives were anything but genuine. He fought a long and difficult battle to get enough of his MPs onside on the Bill C-391 vote, and he ran the risk of paying a severe political price for it. But he took the side he took, and he approached it the way he did, because he felt it was the right thing to do and the right way to do it.

Not to gush, but that takes character, not to mention a respect for the public that you wouldn’t exactly associate with other party leaders.

And Jack wasn’t nearly the only one who exhibited that sort of respect and character. We owe the same gratitude to the MPs who rose above tremendous pressure to vote against the bill despite their earlier positions, and to the police chiefs and other law enforcement officials and community leaders who took their own controversial stands in favour of the registry, as we do to Jack.

One thing I haven’t yet done in the wake of the vote is take the time to thank the six NDP MPs out of twelve who chose to vote to save the registry. And frankly, it seems like the right thing to do. It’s one thing to tell your MP and/or a bunch of other MPs that you want them to take a stand on an issue you care about, but it’s another to write to the ones that do and show your appreciation.

And by the way, both of those instances are counted as evidence that you as a constituent feel the way you do about the issue in question. MPs keep track of that stuff, and they take it into account when they determine their positions on the issues. Peter Stoffer certainly did – and if he hadn’t, the vote on Bill C-391 would have been a tie, which would likely have led to House of Commons speaker Peter Milliken casting the deciding vote in favour of the bill.

Isn’t that enough of a reason in itself to take the time to thank all the MPs you hassled about saving the gun registry? Isn’t that generally enough of a reason to thank an MP who takes a stand in your favour?

What do you say we all ake a moment this evening to thank our representatives who reversed their earlier positions on the gun registry instead of taking the easy way out? And while we’re at it, why don’t we offer our thanks and condolences alike to Liberal MP Scott Simms, for example?

In the meantime, there’s already a lot of speculation about the ways in which the gun registry vote is going to help or harm our various political parties. But there’s another standing issue threatening to represent another shift in the balance of power, and we’ll get to that in due time.

Which they probably could have done, if their decision to remove Chief Superintendent Marty Cheliak from his position as director of the Canadian Firearms Program hadn’t instantly transformed a negligible private member’s bill into a national hot button issue. And although I don’t want to downplay or disregard the incredible amount of work that a great many Canadians put into making last night’s vote a reality, it’s also got to be said that the Conservatives played a major part in setting their own defeat in motion.

Mind you, to be fair, Chief Supt. Cheliak’s removal wouldn’t have been quite so newsworthy if it hadn’t been the latest example of a clear pattern of jettisoning anyone who disagrees with the government’s narrow agenda. That, more than any of the specifics of this issue, is what caught the nation’s attention.

There’s a lot more to say about that, and I’ll say it in a subsequent post. For now, let’s just acknowledge that in spite of all the right-wing complaints about Michael Ignatieff whipping his party on the vote, and supposedly defying the will of his constituents in the process, you’d have to be incredibly naïve to think that any Conservative MP could have possibly voted against Hoeppner’s bill last night without destroying his or her career.

I mean, I’m sorry, but why else would an informed voter think that people like Tony Clement continue to get out of bed every morning, put on a suit, and wantonly make an ass of themselves by telling the public something that happens to contradict whatever they told the public the day before?

Not that I’m gloating. Whatever personal pleasure I might take in having watched the Conservatives get spanked on national television last night as a direct result of their own hubris, I’m not going to gloat. After all, they’re still running the country, and we don’t even know when the next election is going to be.

By the way, the reason why we don’t yet know when the next election is going to be is because Bill C-391 was a private member’s bill. Very few of those bills eventually become law – and this one sure as hell didn’t, although I’m not saying that to gloat.

But you see, one of the advantages of pursuing a measure like this through a private member’s bill, as opposed to a bill put forward by the ruling government as a whole, is that the defeat of a private member’s bill doesn’t run the risk of leading to a motion of no confidence.

A motion of no confidence is a motion put forward by the opposition – the Liberals, in our current case – with the intent of defeating the ruling government. Such a motion can be put before Parliament whenever an important bill presented by the ruling government fails to pass.

The assumption, you see, is that the failure of the bill represents a failure of the ruling government to maintain the confidence of the people. And if a motion of no confidence is passed, then the people get to go to the polls.

Make no mistake: this was totally a government bill in terms of support and budget and everything other than name.

And if you take only one point away from this rambling post, then please let it be this one: if the Conservative government hadn’t made a rather shrewd decision to attack the gun registry through a private member’s bill, then we’d almost certainly be going to the polls right now.

Indeed, we’d likely now have exactly the same sort of opportunity to vote the Conservatives out that Harper denied us by successfully proroguing Parliament in 2008.

But thank God we’re not going to the polls, right? Because as Finance Minister Jim Flaherty said on Tuesday, and as his colleagues in his cabinet have said many times before, now is not the time for an election.

Much as Bush and his cronies in the US argued that their country would fall apart if its people chose to elect a new president during what I’m sure he would been glad to maintain as a perpetual state of war, so the Conservatives in our country are arguing that we’d better not get any ideas if we care about our economy.

And the economy, by the way, is an issue that a great many more Canadians would like to see the government – and Mr. Flaherty in particular, because it’s his job – deal with instead of yelling about the gun registry.

But if you’d paid attention to the Conservative response to last night’s vote, then you certainly wouldn’t know that the government doesn’t think it’s time for an election. Hoeppner herself tried to get everyone excited about their next increasingly hypothetical opportunity to vote by telling the press last night that the opposition MPs who changed their minds on this issue, in spite of their earlier promises, had better fear the will of the voters.

Which is really pretty weird, because you know who else has absolutely flip-flopped on his stance on the gun registry during his career in Canadian politics?

Stephen Harper, that’s who.

And I’m sure you’ll agree that if anyone in the Government of Canada has any sort of credibility these days, then Stephen Harper does. I mean, am I right, or am I fundamentally wrong?

But I’m not going to gloat. It’s beneath me. I’d rather take a cue from the men and women I deeply admire who recognize the value of being magnanimous in victory. And if part of that magnanimity is a quiet recognition that sometimes the people and the forces of good can unexpectedly defeat the cynical powers that be, then I guess that’s not so bad.

It’s a noteworthy victory that caps off an interesting political moment, to say the least. The tension and the emotion on both sides of the debate have been palpable, and that’s especially remarkable for an issue that a lot of us had barely heard about just a few weeks ago.

Where we go from here is difficult to say. But tonight’s vote is a victory worth celebrating, and the great many people across the country who played a part in making it happen deserve our thanks.

If you’ve been following this blog – or another, hopefully better source of relevant information – then you know that the fate of the bill and the future of the registry largely depend on the twelve NDP MPs who voted in favour of the bill during its second reading in November. At the moment, six of those MPs have pledged to change their vote, one seems to be on the fence, and the other five look set to support the bill.

Last night, I took a moment to send some emails out to these twelve MPs – and to party leader Jack Latyon, who also happens to be my MP. I thanked some for pledging to make the right decision, and I urged the rest to join them. Even though it’s late in the game, I’d like to share my letter to Jack, because a lot of the things I said and a lot of the issues I touched on will be relevant for many days to come, regardless of the outcome of tonight’s vote.

If we win this thing, as it looks like we might, then I think we ought to celebrate together. But no matter what happens tonight, we’re going to have plenty of work to keep on doing tomorrow.

Anyway, here’s the meat of the letter:

“It was an unexpected pleasure to run into you in Toronto this weekend, and I hope the journey back to Ottawa has been a good one. I am writing to you today to once again express my gratitude for the work you have done not only to raise national awareness of Bill C-391 and the value of the long-gun registry, but also to encourage your MPs to vote in favour of further dialogue.

“Those of us who support the long-gun registry have feared for its future since the introduction of Bill C-391. But in the wake of the removal of RCMP Chief Superintendent Marty Cheliak from his position as the director of the Canadian Firearms Program – and the similarly shameful and anti-democratic tactics that the Conservative Party has pursued in the days that have followed – we have come to recognize that there is more to Bill C-391 than the fate of the long-gun registry.

“Many have rightly recognized the Conservative Party’s campaign in support of this bill as yet another symptom of a crisis of democracy in Canada. We have watched as the Conservatives have told Canadians what they believe, and downplayed the polls that contradict their assertions. We have watched them suppress evidence that goes against their dishonest claims, and we have watched them punish the noble public servants who dare to stand up to them. We have watched them put a narrow political agenda ahead of public safety and security.

“We are also proud to support all those in Parliament with the courage to say that enough is enough. And I believe I would be negligent in my support of the party if I didn’t remind you now that the reason I joined the NDP in the first place was to support you and your vision of a better government. There are times when it is especially difficult and politically controversial to stick to such a vision – and these are surely the times when a leader and his fellow representatives, having the courage and integrity to do so, are most deserving of the support of their party members.

“I thank you as always for your service, and I look forward to tomorrow’s vote with hope for our gun registry and our government alike.”

I haven’t taken it for a test drive yet, but if it works as it should, then I’d recommend taking advantage of it. Tonight at 5:45 PM EST, for example, the House of Commons is scheduled to vote on a Liberal motion to defeat Bill C-391, the bill designed to scrap the long gun registry. It’s going to be a close one, and I invite you to watch as it happens.

Out of the twelve NDP MPs who voted in favour of the bill during its second reading last year, he is the sixth to announce such a switch. And it looks like Niki Ashton may become the seventh, given the proper support and encouragement from her constituents

“At the end of the day,” Stoffer said, “I have to represent my constituents.” Although he’s personally not a fan of the registry, he notes that 62% of his constituents would rather preserve it and revise it than scrap it altogether.

Sadly, it’s a discrepancy that has made him question his own leadership. “It is unfortunate that I have failed them,” Stoffer told the press. “It is unfortunate that I did not do my job accordingly or properly.”

If everything goes according to projections on Wednesday, then Stoffer’s vote will tip the scales. At the moment, 153 votes are expected to be cast against the bill, while 151 are expected to be cast for killing the registry.

So yes, it’s still a close one – and as I mentioned in a previous post, it could just as easily be the abstainers who decide this one. Despite his apparent reservations about his own leadership, credit is due to Stoffer for voting in service of his constituents despite his own views on the bill, and pledging that he will not abstain from voting.

By the way, Peter Stoffer is also mentioned in an article that This Magazine posted earlier this afternoon, entitled “The 7 Private Members’ Bills That Shouldn’t Die in Parliament, But Probably Will.” The article notes that Stoffer is the MP who introduced Bill C-224, which proposes that a right to housing be written into the the Canadian Bill of Rights. Not a bad idea, Mr. Stoffer!

Well, now we’re hearing that Ms. Ashton has postponed a planned announcement on the nature of her vote – which is at least an indication that she’s giving the issue some serious and promising thought.

If Ms. Ashton and MP Peter Stoffer, who will apparently announce his own intentions on Monday, vote against the bill – and all of the other MPs involved vote the way they’re expected to vote – then Bill C-391 will be defeated.

And I want to note once again that killing the bill isn’t the same as voting to preserve the long gun registry in its current form. Plenty of politicians and constituents who oppose this bill have argued that there’s room for improvement. But such improvements will never come to pass if the registry is scrapped and the debate is shut down, which is what this bill is all about.

The numbers are promising, but we’re not out of the woods yet. Indeed, the greatest threat to the gun registry could be the MPs who choose to abstain from the vote. That’s why the people who have pledged to vote against it need your support, the people who have pledged to vote in favour of it need your appeals, and the people on the fence need your backing most of all.