LILLEY: Carey Price is showing how far-reaching Trudeau’s hunting gun ban will go
Carey Price #CareyPrice
In the end, it might be a hockey player who makes Justin Trudeau back down on his latest overreach.
The prime minister has been blasted by gun groups, hunters, provinces and more for the last-minute changes to his gun bill that would ban many hunting rifles and shotguns, but nothing has moved him.
Enter Montreal Canadiens legendary goalie, and proud Indigenous man, Carey Price.
“I love my family, I love my country and I care for my neighbour. I am not a criminal or a threat to society,” Price wrote in a post on social media alongside a photo of him dressed for hunting and holding a shotgun.
He went on to say that what Trudeau is doing with his expanded gun ban is unjust.
This simple post on Instagram ended up seeing Price showcased on the front page of Quebec’s most-read newspaper – Le Journal de Montreal. His story was profiled on Quebec’s most-watched television news programs, discussed on Quebec radio, and eventually found its way to English media and social media.
For the past two weeks, the Trudeau government has been facing a wave of criticism that they are trying to ban hundreds of models of hunting rifles and shotguns. The Liberals sold Bill C-21 as a way to take handguns and “military-style assault weapons” off Canada’s streets but recently brought in changes that would outlaw many hunting rifles and shotguns.
Yes, they’re on the list
As the expanded list of banned firearms has come out, opponents of the bill in general, and the amendment in particular, have been pointing to the bolt action hunting rifles, the deer and duck guns on the list.
The response from the Liberals has been to deny reality, claim it isn’t happening.
It’s been quite bold with Trudeau himself stating that the bill doesn’t ban hunting rifles and shotguns. Bill Blair, the former Toronto Police chief turned Trudeau cabinet minister, has said the government is focused on weapons of war.
The guns being banned might be considered weapons of war if you travelled back in time to the War of 1812, but no army of recent vintage would use any of these on the battlefield.
The same government that wants to give itself the power to regulate what it considers disinformation online is itself engaged in a disinformation campaign on all fronts and platforms.
It’s not just people like Price who are upset with the Trudeau government.
The Ontario Federation of Anglers and Hunters, a group normally more concerned with wetlands preservation than firearms legislation, has launched a campaign to have their more than 100,000 members contact their MP. Many hunters are often absent from the gun control debate in Canada because they don’t think it applies to them.
They have been told by governments, particularly this government, that there is no desire to target hunting rifles and shotguns. Now that the Trudeau government is doing that, targeting shotguns favoured by bird hunters, for example, hunters are angry and getting mobilized.
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The provincial governments of Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta have all spoken out against the amendment .
“If these amendments are allowed to proceed, Bill C-21 will be the most sweeping and arbitrary ban of firearms in Canadian history. The federal Liberals claimed that they were never going after hunters, farmers and target shooters — they lied,” said Alberta Justice Minister Tyler Shandro.
Alberta has been opposed to this bill from the start and Shandro, along with the whole Alberta government, is something easy for Trudeau to ignore.
Carey Price — with his celebrity, his indigenous roots, the fact that he’s not known for political activism — is someone harder for the government to ignore.
Read the full list of guns the Trudeau Liberals are attempting to ban: