Harper and Layton's fortunes in the crosshairs

Late summer manoeuvring over the long-gun registry could fire a double-barrel shot to the future electoral success of both the NDP's Jack Layton and Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper.

The posturing leading up to the Sept. 22 vote in Parliament on the registry's future is costing Layton his credibility and leading Harper down a road where he shouldn't want to go.

On the surface, getting rid of the registry is a no-brainer for the prime minister. The right-wing Conservatives, and earlier party incarnations as Reformers and Alliance, have opposed the registry since it was introduced by the Liberals when they were in power.

But now in their second minority government, the non-progressive Conservatives still do not have the votes to shut it down. So earlier in this Parliament they came up with a way to bring the issues onto the floor of the House of Commons and the national political stage.

Conservative MP Candice Hoeppner, elected in 2008 from the rural Manitoba riding of Portage-Lisgar, introduced a private member's bill to shut down the registry.

There is limited time to debate private member's bills, and very few get debated, let alone have a chance to become law. But the Hoeppner bill has wound its way through the legislative system to the point where it faces only a couple more votes before it might be approved by the House of Commons.

How has that happened? Enter the New Democrats.

The dissident dozen

Layton and 23 other New Democrat MPs are comfortable with the registry. So is the NDP membership and left-of-centre to left-wing Canadians who make up the approximately one in five Canadian voters who regularly support the party in an election.

But in the crucial vote on second reading earlier this year, 12 New Democrats voted to support the bill — along with all 144 Conservatives, as expected.

Six Liberals also voted for the bill but they didn't really matter, since the NDP votes — when added to the Conservative tally — gave the legislation enough support to be approved in principle. The Liberal votes, on their own, would not have been enough to carry the bill forward.

But that doesn't mean the Liberals are out of this game. The official Opposition has now put forward a motion saying the Commons should no longer consider the bill to kill the long-gun registry. That is what the House will vote on Sept. 22.

Without the votes to affect the outcome on their own, the Liberals now have their party ducks in a row. Their whip, Roger Cuzner, says all 77 Liberals will vote to kill the bill.

Which puts Jack Layton and his dissident dozen on the spot. But instead of drawing the line around party policy and threatening punishment to MPs who break party discipline, Layton has decided to allow a free vote. Why?

He once punished MP Bev Desjarlais when she would not vote with the party in support of same-sex marriage. She lost her job as an official party critic, then lost the NDP nomination in the next election. She ran as an independent and was defeated.

But this time there are just too many rebels, too many MPs offside to punish them for ignoring party discipline and policy. Making them sit as independents would reduce the size of the party caucus by a third.

Layton loses in two ways

Most of these dissident MPs come from Northern Ontario and the B.C. Interior, places where people tend to believe that "guns don't kill people, people kill people."

Voting to kill the registry is seen by them as imperative if they are to be re-elected.

However, polls show that a majority of Canadians believe as the RCMP and Canada's chiefs of police do, as well as most Liberals, Layton and the rest of the NDP.

 "Guns don't kill people, but people with guns kill people," so the argument goes, and that is why they should be registered.

So Layton is losing two ways even if enough of the dissident dozen pull back and the Hoeppner bill doesn't proceed.

First he has not been strong enough to impose his will on the caucus. And second, he was willing to risk the demise of the long-gun registry — something that will cost him dearly in votes with the kind of people who could support the NDP at election time but, depending on issues and circumstances, could easily vote Liberal as well.

The perils for Harper

But if those are Layton's woes, why could this be a problem for the prime minister?

Isn't he, after all, likely to succeed at his longtime goal of getting rid of the registry? And even if he doesn't, won't he get an "A" for effort? 

Well, he will. But only from the people that already support him.  Other voters are likely to wonder why this has become such a big issue, particularly when the police and the RCMP think the registry is a good idea.

Having this come back on the public agenda now will rekindle still-fresh memories of killing the long-form census, even though all the experts said it was the wrong idea.  Proof again, to some, that the Harper government approves of its own biases rather than the advice of experts.

But there is one other problem for the Conservatives.

In the triangulation of politics outside of Quebec, Harper needs a strong NDP to take votes away from the Liberals and help the Conservatives win seats. An NDP weakened over the gun control issue is not in the Conservatives' interest.

In terms of the future of the long-gun registry, the vote later this month is crucial. But no matter which way the vote goes, the political impact has already been delivered.