Trudeau urged by gun-control group to replace Bill Blair as public safety minister

The Liberals promised to make it mandatory for owners of the banned firearms to either sell them back to the government or have them rendered inoperable at federal expense.

An influential voice on gun control says it is time for a new cabinet minister to usher in the re-elected Liberal government’s promised firearm measures.

In a letter to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, the group PolySeSouvient calls for the appointment of a minister who “truly supports gun control.”

PolySeSouvient has frequently expressed frustration with Liberal efforts to strengthen gun laws, led in recent years by Bill Blair, a former Toronto police chief, as public safety minister.

The group includes students and graduates of Montreal’s Ecole Polytechnique, where a gunman killed 14 women in 1989.

As Trudeau assembles a new cabinet, PolySeSouvient says any MP who publicly defended Bill C-21, sponsored by Blair earlier this year, “would not be trustworthy” to deliver on gun control.

The bill proposed a buyback of recently banned firearms the government considers assault-style weapons, but would have allowed owners to keep them under strict conditions a feature the group sharply criticized.

During the recent election campaign, the Liberals promised to make it mandatory for owners of the banned firearms, which include the Ruger Mini-14 used at Polytechnique, to either sell them back to the government or have them rendered inoperable at federal expense.

Trudeau pounced on a Conservative platform promise to scrap the Liberal ban on a wide variety of guns and review the Firearms Act with input from police, gun owners, manufacturers and the public. Tory Leader Erin O’Toole amended the pledge mid-campaign to say outlawed guns would remain banned, but he did not say whether that might change following the planned review.