A senior RCMP officer who was shuffled out as head of Canada’s gun registry after publicly defending its usefulness is the latest civil servant to pay the price of running afoul of the Conservative government, critics charge.
Chief Supt. Marty Cheliak is being sent for French language training, just a year after taking over as director of the RCMP’s Canadian Firearms Program, which includes the controversial gun registry.
The move comes ahead of a parliamentary debate this fall over the fate of the long gun registry, which federal Conservatives oppose and want to scrap.
Just last May, Cheliak said the program – and the registry – “does serve a very real purpose and contributes to police officer safety and the safety of all Canadians.”
He pointedly warned that warned that scrapping the long gun registry could allow stockpiles of weapons – now automatically flagged by the system – to go unnoticed.
“Without the database of registered long guns, the door may be open to unlimited and unmonitored stockpiling of long guns for individuals and groups,” he told the Commons committee on public safety. Continued...
