Are Tories trying to dodge a bullet? March 16, 2004 Edmonton Sun By NEIL WAUGH Former Sergeant-at-Arms Oscar Lacombe was introduced in the legislature yesterday. Thumping his desk harder than most MLAs in honour of the veteran of many Canadian peacekeeping missions before he became ceremonial head of security in the legislature was Alberta Justice Dave Hancock. The 75-year-old's presence in the chamber was no accident. Later this week he learns whether he violated federal firearms legislation by bringing an unloaded and sealed .22 without a firing mechanism to a public rally, on the Legislature grounds in protest of the Ottawa Liberals detested firearms registry. Federal Auditor General Sheila Fraser reckons the registry has cost Canadian taxpayers $1 billion, with no end in sight. It has also done little to deter firearms-related crime but has victimized millions of law-abiding Canadian citizens. Including, I guess, Oscar. Lacombe's cause has been championed by the Citizen Centre for Freedom and Democracy. The right-wing pressure groups are demanding that the Alberta PCs erect a "firewall" of legislation around the province to protect Albertans from any more jurisdictional invasions by the feds, and the gun registry. The centre has launched a campaign on its website and over 88,000 e-mails and letters have already gone out to the premier, Tory MLAs and specifically Hancock. And the rhetoric is pretty heated. The recent response Hancock put out to the Citizen Centre's changes is a "concoction of self-serving bluster, distortions and contradictions," the CCFD countered, and it urges supporters not to "let them get away with it." What's more, it accuses Hancock and the PCs of "co-operating with Ottawa." The issue comes down to who specifically is prosecuting Lacombe - especially after the Tories took a pledge not to do Ottawa's gun registry dirty work for them. The PCs are past masters at shaking off attacks from left-wing pressure groups, knowing that the Liberal/New Democrat vote is only about 30%. It's when they take heat from the right that they have trouble dealing with it. "They should be sending their e-mails to the federal government, Hancock said. "We've taken a very strong position that the registry should be shut down and that the money could be more appropriately used to make our communities safer," he added. But rhetoric is one thing, action is quite another. Remember it was the Alberta Tories who made a big fuss over the Alberta farmers jailed for defying the Canadian Wheat Board monopoly, and then allowed the protesters to be led away to an Alberta government prison. "In this particular case, we told the police to go talk to the feds because we considered it a registry situation," Hancock said. But when the federal prosecutor showed up in court, she reportedly said she was acting as an agent for the province. "They are not our agents in so far as we're not directing them, we're not paying them and not telling them what to do," Hancock said. But he also added "the provincial government has an obligation to prosecute under the Criminal Code." Citizens Centre chairman Link Byfield - who was also introduced in the legislature yesterday - isn't buying Hancock's story. "They promised they wouldn't do it," Byfield spat. "They promised they would leave enforcement of the registry to Ottawa but what they have done is taken on the job themselves." He branded Hancock as "less than frank," and has ramped up his e-mail campaign in recent days. Watching the Tories' top-ranking Red Tory squirm is Alberta New Democrat Brian Mason - who has already created havoc for the PCs this legislature session over where the mad cow compensation ended up. "It seems to me that the government is trying to have it both ways," Mason winked. "They're sending very mixed messages to rural Alberta." And that's not good.   More info on Oscar Lacombe

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