Don't You Love it When a Plan Comes Together?

Especially when that plan is Mark Holland's ineptitude

As debate surrounding Canada's long-gun registry continues to heat up, the governing Conservative Party has pointed out a little detail about Michael Ignatieff's proposal to make possession of an unregistered long-gun a ticketable -- as opposd to criminal -- offence:

It's actually unconstitutional.

"What he [Ignatieff] has proposed stomps on jurisdictional powers under the constitution -- it's absolutely unconstitutional," explained Conservative MP Shelly Glover. "The provinces would have to buy in and we already know there are three attorneys general who have spoken out very clearly they're not buying in.”

For his own part, however, Public Safety Critic Mark Holland isn't convinced -- and doesn't seem terribly concerned about the Constitution.

"It is true that it would require co-operation on the part of the provinces," Holland retorted. "We would have to work collaboratively with the provinces, but there isn't a necessity for a constitutional change."

"You'd need to have the charge laid under a different [provincial] act," Holland concluded.

And, as Glover has already pointed out, therein lies the rub.

In order to effectively abolish the gun registry within their own provinces, all any one province -- Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba -- would have to do is not pass a provincial law.

This would force a Liberal party federal government to either step in more forcefully and trample provincial jurisdiction -- as they have often done in the past, so it isn't out of the question -- or accept the de facto abolition of the long-gun registry in those provinces.

Tgnatieff's proposal would thus make the registration of long-guns a matter of provincial jurisdiction. It's on that note that the Tories would be well-advised to consider adopting it -- and not for the reasons Mark Holland would prefer.

Holland, after all, seems to think that this proposal would preserve the long-gun registry across the entire country. This proposal should be considered because it simply won't.

Holland goes on to accuse the Conservatives of wanting to "confuse" Canadians. Yet it's clear that it's Holland himself who is confused.

"I think they're losing the battle and they're getting desperate to create facts," Holland mused, in a bout of his typical demagoguery. "They're trying to use the boogeyman of the Constitution in a last-ditch effort to torque the debate."

Yet it's individuals like Holland who have done anything possible to create facts to support the long-gun registry, which they cannot show to have prevented a single crime, and they cannot show to have saved so much as a single, solitary life -- and it can be shown to have failed to do either on numerous occasions.

Michael Ignatieff's and Mark Holland's plans seem to be coming together nicely. Unfortuantely bor both, the plan seems to be complete and utter ineptitude.