Tory move to abolish long-gun registry has support in Yukon

Legislation to abolish the long-gun registry, tabled by the federal Conservatives in the Senate this week, has support in the Yukon.

The unpopular registry has been a huge inconvenience for aboriginal people who still rely on hunting for food, said Ed Schultz, executive director of the Council for Yukon First Nations.

"When we look at the low economic activity in a lot of our remote communities … a lot of families need the harvesting practices for their daily nutritional intake," he said.

Forcing people to register their shotguns and rifles has done nothing but create a large and pricey bureaucracy, he added.

The Yukon Fish and Game Association supports the move to do away with the registry and hopes Liberal MP Larry Bagnell lend his support, said executive director Gord Zealand.

"Vote the way the people of the Yukon want you to vote, not the way your particular party may want you to vote … poll your constituents and see what they want," Zealand said.

Although Bagnell said he couldn't comment on the bill because he hasn't seen it, he did say his opposition to the registry is well known.

"I've always had the position that people, northerners, would prefer these funds be spent on something other than a long-gun registry," he said.

If his party opposes the abolition of the registry that it created, he said he doesn't know whether he will be allowed to stray from party lines. Federal Liberal party Leader, Michael Ignatieff, is reportedly vowing to defeat the bill in the House of Commons.

The Yukon's lone senator, Dan Lang, supports the bill.