OTTAWA - A year after the federal Conservatives won power promising to abolish the gun registry, the program is still running - and any hope of killing it before the next election appears to be fading.
Even gun enthusiasts who have long railed against the long-gun registry have lost faith that Prime Minister Stephen Harper can muster the votes to do away with it in the current minority Parliament.
"The best thing to do would be to forget about it," David Tomlinson, head of the National Firearms Association, said Monday.
"There are no brownie points to be made by going ahead, it's merely an embarrassment . . . . At this point, the best advice is to wait until after the next election."
Public Safety Minister Stockwell Day, who was handed the task of finding a way to keep the Tory election pledge, brought in regulatory changes last May that included a one-year amnesty for any rifle and shotgun owners facing prosecution for failing to register their weapons.
The move bought the government some time among the hunters, farmers and target shooters who have long complained about the system.
But it requires legislation - not just regulatory amendments - to actually repeal the registry created by the Liberal government of Jean Chretien more than a decade ago. And although Day tabled a bill in June, there hasn't been a single word of Commons debate on it since then.
Day has insisted repeatedly that he's still committed to abolition, but has refused to say when he'll take action to try to push the bill through the legislative mill.
The reason for the Tory hesitation is easy to discern, said Joe Comartin, the NDP justice critic: "They know that if they bring it to the House it will be defeated."
Although the New Democrats and Liberals are split on the issue, strong majorities in both caucuses are opposed to killing the registry. The Bloc Quebecois is virtually unanimous in rejecting abolition.
The political climate also changed last year with the shooting rampage at Dawson College in Montreal that left one student dead and several injured.
"The bill wouldn't have passed the House anyway," said Liberal justice critic Marlene Jennings.
"But the Dawson shootings revived the interest of a lot of people (in gun control). You have a very strong movement now pushing for the registry to be maintained and further strengthened."
Even among Tories there has been a noticeable softening of rhetoric.
The party's election platform asserted: "Canadians demand more than simple cosmetic reforms of failed programs. The wasteful long gun registry must end."
By the time Day appeared at a Commons committee in November he was framing the issue in less combative terms.
"We need to stop using the phrase 'scrapping the program,' " he said. "We're making the gun registration system even stronger."
He pointed out that the Tory bill would do away only with the need to register shotguns and hunting rifles. Stringent controls would continue on handguns and assault-style weapons.
The government has also increasingly shifted its argument from the ideological to the economic sphere, contending the long gun registry is simply too costly.
Much of that argument rests on the findings of Auditor General Sheila Fraser, who reported that the federal gun control program, including the registry, ran up bills of nearly $1 billion over a decade.
But that money is long gone and can't be recovered. Supporters of the program say the management problems behind those cost overruns have since been fixed.
The RCMP, which took over administration of the gun control program last year, has estimated that the saving from abolishing registration of long guns would be just under $3 million a year.
That figure belies the Tory claim of continued waste and inefficiency, said Wendy Cukier, head of the Coalition for Gun Control. But it doesn't mean the political battle is over.
Cukier fears the Conservatives are just biding their time and hoping to strengthen their parliamentary forces a in the next election.
"I'm quite sure that if this government got a majority the legislation (to abolish the registry) would be on the table again. I don't see any indication that they're backing off."
