Councillors voted 39 to 5 to urge the province to ask the federal government for the data in the registry before it is scrapped. The vote also reaffirmed Toronto city council’s long-standing support for the gun registry and ordered the city solicitor to look for ways to intervene to stop the deletion of data on the approximately 287,000 non-restricted firearms registered in the Greater Toronto Area.
Mayor Rob Ford, Deputy Mayor Doug Holyday along with Councillors Giorgio Mammoliti, Denzil Minnan-Wong and John Parker were the five councillors to vote against the motion brought forward by Councillor Kristyn Wong-Tam.
“I think that overall council has sent a very strong message to (Premier Dalton McGuinty) and they would like the government of Ontario to intervene,” Wong-Tam told reporters. “I would like to see us join the fight, join Quebec for the legal injunction (to preserve the registry).”
The rookie councillor said the message from a majority of councillors in Canada’s largest city is they support the request from police organizations to save the gun registry data.
“They know that tossing away the data is actually not the right thing to do,” she said.
Councillor Doug Ford admitted he voted mistakenly in support of Wong-Tam’s motion.
“I’m not in favour of keeping records, I’m against it,” Ford said.
“I don’t support municipal councillors, and this isn’t the first time (Wong-Tam’s) done it, bringing up federal issues all the time. I think every council meeting she brings up a federal issues, let’s stick to municipal issues and let them stick to federal issues.”
Holyday said council didn’t have the information to make a “responsible decision” on the gun registry information.
“I don’t think the province is eager to get into the fight and I don’t think we should be pushing them,” he said.
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