Erin O’Toole promises to keep Liberal assault rifle ban, directly contradicting his own platform – National | Globalnews.ca

Conservative Leader Erin O’Toole directly contradicted his own party’s platform at the French-language debate on Thursday night and again Friday morning, saying he wouldn’t repeal a Liberal ban on assault rifles — despite his platform promising to do just that.

The Conservative platform promises to “start by” walking back Liberal amendments to the Firearms Act, which beefed up background checks and tightened restrictions on firearm vendors and owners. It also promises to repeal a Liberal executive order from May of last year, which banned 1,500 “military-style assault rifles.”

While terms like “assault-style” and “assault rifle” are not legal classifications in Canada, they are frequently used colloquially by gun control advocates and the government to describe the type of high-capacity, quick-fire guns targeted by the ban.

Still, despite this explicit promise, O’Toole sang a different tune when he spoke at Thursday’s debate — and again at a press conference Friday morning.

“We will maintain the ban on assault weapons,” O’Toole said when pressed on his comments Friday morning.

“And we will make sure that we work with police and we work to make sure there’s a transparent process to keep people safe and to make sure that we tackle rising gun violence.”

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Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau attacked O’Toole over his about-face in the TVA French-language debate Thursday night. He pointed out the Conservative platform point pledging to repeal the Liberal assault rifle ban — but O’Toole interrupted, stating “that’s not the case.”

“It’s written on page 90 of your platform, you should read page 90 of your platform,” Trudeau fired back, speaking in French.

“You say you’ll bring assault rifles back to Canada.”

But O’Toole held firm in the changed position.

“We will maintain a ban on assault rifles,” he said.

Trudeau then accused O’Toole of making contradicting promises to different voters.

“You’re in the process of seeing Mr. O’Toole saying one thing to one person, to Quebecers, and something else to everyone else,” Trudeau said.

The Conservative platform, in addition to promising to repeal the very order in council containing the ban that O’Toole has now pledged to keep in place, also promises to undertake a review of the Firearms Act. The Tories say they’ll talk to law enforcement, firearms owners, manufacturers and members of the public in the process.

“We will then update legislation by introducing a simplified classification system and codifying it in law,” the platform reads.

The Liberal platform, meanwhile, promises to toughen up laws on banned assault weapons “by making it mandatory for owners to either sell the firearm back to the government for destruction and fair compensation or have it rendered fully and permanently inoperable at government expense.”

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They also say they’ll crack down on high-capacity magazines, ban the sale or transfer of magazines that can hold an illegal number of bullets, and set aside $1 billion to support the provinces or territories that want to put in place a handgun ban.

NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh was asked about O’Toole’s new position on Friday morning as well, but he did not directly attack O’Toole for his about-face. Rather, he detailed his own party’s position on guns.

“Our goal is to keep people safe, and that means to remove those sorts of weapons from Canada entirely, which includes a buyback programme so that they’re not in our country anymore,” he said.

“The Liberals and the Conservatives aren’t clear on this. They haven’t been clear, and our position is very clear. We’ve got to do whatever it takes to make sure we keep people safe. And there are certain weapons that should not be in circulation in Canada.”

— With files from Global News’ Amanda Connolly