After saying no laws would change, Jean Charest pledges review of assault-style firearm ban

Conservative management candidate Jean Charest promised Tuesday to topic a nationwide ban on so-called assault-style firearms to a classification evaluation by a panel of consultants.

It comes after the previous Quebec premier stated again in March, when particularly requested in regards to the prohibition, that he wasn’t “searching for to alter the legal guidelines as they’re.”

“That’s not on my program,” Charest advised The Canadian Press on the time.

Requested in regards to the obvious shift, marketing campaign spokeswoman Laurence Toth stated that Charest stands by his preliminary place. What he’s proposing is a evaluation of the laws and never a legislative change, she stated.

The social gathering’s place on firearms got here underneath scrutiny throughout final 12 months’s federal election marketing campaign when former chief Erin O’Toole struggled to articulate whether or not he was proposing to raise a federal ban on some 1,500 fashions of what the Liberals name assault-style weapons.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau imposed the ban utilizing laws launched by means of a Might 2020 order-in-council. He was additionally the one to press O’Toole throughout the latest federal race on his marketing campaign promise to revoke it.

Charest’s place on that ban is much like the one O’Toole ultimately adopted final 12 months. After a number of days of confusion round his stance, O’Toole inserted a footnote into the social gathering’s platform clarifying it might preserve the prohibition in place however topic it to a evaluation.

“A Charest authorities will implement common sense gun legal guidelines by taking this divisive wedge situation out of the fingers of politicians and hand over the classification of weapons to a panel representing each policing and firearms consultants,” Michelle Coates Mather, additionally a spokeswoman for Charest, stated on Tuesday.

“This panel’s scope will embody a evaluation of the 2020 Trudeau order-in-council whereas making choices solely primarily based on public security.”

Firearm advocates and gun homeowners make up a part of the social gathering’s grassroots, which is closely concentrated in Western Canada, and so it’s typical for management candidates to launch insurance policies associated to firearm possession.

Gun management has additionally re-emerged as a problem throughout the race to search out O’Toole’s alternative because of the Liberal authorities tabling new laws within the Home of Commons proposing to freeze the sale, buy and importation of handguns.

The invoice got here within the wake of the college taking pictures in Uvalde, Texas, that killed 19 kids and two academics. Trudeau stated he desires to see events work collectively to make sure the invoice can go rapidly by means of the minority Parliament.

Longtime Ottawa-area MP Pierre Poilievre, who’s working on a marketing campaign pledge of “freedom,” blasted the brand new laws as a “made-for-Hollywood strategy to firearm classification” and promised to focus extra assets on stopping the unlawful smuggling of weapons throughout the border.

“Firearms ought to be categorized by what they do, and never how they appear,” he stated in an announcement.

To set the standards for classification, Poilievre additionally promised to assemble a panel of consultants that features sport shooters and First Nations hunters.

READ MORE: Quebec pushes Ottawa to behave on handguns after Montreal teen murdered

Patrick Brown, the mayor of Brampton, Ont., accused Trudeau of “politicizing American tragedies” and refusing to handle the “precise drawback” of gang violence and firearms smuggled in from the USA.

“As prime minister, I might scrap the Firearms Act and change it with made-in-Canada laws that might strongly tackle smuggled firearms and gang violence,” Brown stated.

“My laws could be primarily based on sound information, enter from victims companies teams, legislation enforcement and law-abiding firearms homeowners — not American politics.”

Leslyn Lewis, who positioned third within the 2020 management race, emailed supporters Tuesday to accuse the Liberals of taking part in politics with public security.

“Dr. Lewis is annoyed on behalf of Canadians who need legal guidelines that make sense and defend individuals,” a marketing campaign spokesman advised The Canadian Press.

“She’s going to evaluation each single firearms legislation at present in place and change the Liberals’ laws with legal guidelines that may truly make Canadians safer.”