09.20.2010 08:32 AM

Peter Stoffer

I have always said NDP MP Peter Stoffer is a stand-up guy. He’s also walking, talking proof for the proposition that when progressive MPs work together, we can defeat Conservatives.

13 Comments

  1. Anonymously Posted says:

    Hey, WK, this Oct 1 election call tidbit in the Hill Times (behind a wall, so don’t know how many caveats you have in there), is this something you pulled out of your .. um .. Polievre, or is there some truth to it i.e. war rooms being set up, buses booked, etc?

  2. Paul R. Martin says:

    The long gun registry is the gift that keeps giving. Its impact is minor and is essentially symbolic; yet it allows politicians of all persuasions to huff and puff ferociously.

  3. james curran says:

    Although I will say W. that 23 minute speech had me late for my first meeting this morning.

  4. bc says:

    Stoffer is also a massive, raging hypocrite…

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XQuiFSzGULY&feature=player_embedded

    I have a hard time believing that “public opinion” changed so drastically. His decision is clearly motivated by political forces.

    Looks like the NDP is secretly whipping.

    • Scott Tribe says:

      No different then what many of us think the Conservative whip is doing as well… no different then what Liberal MP Glen Pearson said in his blog in June that several Conservative MP’s have privately told him they’re being whipped to vote for this “private members bill/free vote” farce.

  5. Namesake says:

    A Sensible Proposal, to follow:

    True to form, Stockwell Day told a manifest untruth about the Long Gun Registry (several, actually) in his presser this morning:

    viz., that it, the part they’re intending to abolish, cost $1-B to develop.

    But it didn’t. It was the implementation of the entire Firearms Act that the billion was spent on over a decade.

    That included (and still does) screening, licensing, training, and continually monitoring the mental health & criminal records reports on firearms license holders, and subsidizing the costs of enforcing the Firearms Act (to go inspect the safe handling processes, or seize those who refused to renew their licenses, e.g., or to seize prohibited weapons), and more.

    All those costs are going to continue, and the total annual budget of the Candian Firearms Centre which administers both all that and the pre-existing restricted weapons (handguns) registry is now about $80-M a year — of which somewhere in the vicinity of $4 to $10-M a year is dedicated to maintaining the long gun registry itself (whose costs now are mainly for people transferring, i.e., selling their guns to one another, and a lot of that’s just for the mailing costs for all the forms and information letters that go back & forth).

    But, tell you what, for those who are so incensed about the cost of that and say there’s so much more good they would or could do with that money for public health or safety issued, let’s do an end-run around it:

    I propose that all the Opposition Parties (heck, incl. the BQ & Greens), or maybe just some well-respected individuals, or someone the gun nuts can’t get too mad at, like the association of emergency room doctors, or maybe just “We The (Anonymous) People”:

    Set up a Donation site dedicated solely to the costs of maintaining the LGR!

    There are 34 million people in Canada, plenty of whom would gladly contribute the 12 to 29 cents per Cndn. that this long gun registry is costing to maintain each year (at the $4-$10-M annual range), to save hundreds of lives a year in firearms-related suicides, accidents, and homicides, as well as countless injuries. (Or at least to try, even if you think the evidence is still equivocal.)

    Depending on the poll, up to half of Canadians think it would be a big mistake to scrap this thing altogether, so if all we adults contribute, say, $2 each a year: then they’ll have more than enough to keep it running, and the cost issue will be an entirely moot point. (as will the effectiveness, because it’s really not too onerous a burden: it’s free now, it only has to be done once per gun per owner, and it can be done in seconds online.)

    So, anybody know how to set up one ‘o those PayPal sites to get this thing rolling?

    • speck says:

      Monitoring the “mental health” records? That’s a pretty broad statement. What happened to doctor-client confidentiality?

      • Namesake says:

        To get and maintain a license giving one the right to wield lethal firearms, a person cannot have a mental illness
        associated with violence within the last 5 years, or have been
        convicted of a criminal offence for which no pardon was granted.

        That’s the whole, or at least, the main point of this thing, after all: to keep the guns out of the hands of criminals and unbalanced people, to reduce the number of “going postal” incidents.

        I haven’t found out the details of the monitoring process, yet, but as some of the Dr.’s supporting the LGR have testified, when they know someone has guns and in their professional opinion they do present a threat to themselves or others, they report them to the police.

        You gotta problem with that?

        Hospitals also report suspicions of child abuse. Gotta problem with that, too?

  6. speck says:

    People are forgetting that Stoffer has been discussing a jump to the Halifax mayoral race. The “I love my guns” routine might have worked for the last 13 years in the rural riding he sits in, but the vote-rich areas in the downtown have become shooting galleries in the last 2 years, with one gunfight even taking place on the front lawn of the city’s maternity hospital. Voters there will avoid a pro-gun candidate in any form like the plague, and he’s slowly waking up to that fact. Unfortunately for him, the NS Provincial NDP government has already made deep inroads into the ‘not exactly-as-promised’ model of governance, so this comes at a particularly bad time for him. Boo hoo.

    • Namesake says:

      Typical. I guess Con-Bots can’t help themselves from making character assassinations against those who disagree with them, and don’t believe in evidence-based ones, either.

      Stoffer spoke to this point directly in interviews yesterday: he is not intending to resign, and he does intend to run again in the same federal riding.

      • Greg says:

        Wow.

        Con-bots. Ingenious.

        I wonder if it will be as funny while Stoffer and his colleagues are packing their offices this next election and checking the employment section. After all, there must be a windfall of classified ads for people who work 13 years for a region’s chiefs goals that they throw away on whim.

        Can you guarantee to keep this direction as party strategy for the next 12 months?

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