During the French-Language Debate on September 8, Conservative Party Leader Erin O’Toole repeated his support of Liberal firearm restrictions.
This reassertion of his adoption of firearms restrictions, which Trudeau’s government implemented in May 2020, came as a response to questions about rising crime in Montreal.
“Are you going to maintain all the firearms bans, Mr. O’Toole,” the debate moderator asked.
“I will maintain restrictions in place for firearms, and I will take politics out of the system,” responded O’Toole.
“And the mayors are right. We need to target street gangs and gun smuggling. We have a plan to do that, working in close collaboration with police forces, [and] municipalities because we’ve seen shootings in Montreal, in Vancouver with weapons smuggled in.”
Before O’Toole could finish his spiel, the moderator felt the need to chime in.
“Because you changed your platform three times,” asserted the moderator, perplexed by O’Toole’s historical contradictions.
“We need to have an approach that’s transparent because we need to take politics out of this question,” asserted O’Toole without missing a beat.
O’Toole’s platform reversal came only three days ago when reporters pushed O’Toole to clarify his position.
“As I’ve always said,” O’Toole lied, “the ban on assault weapons will remain in place.”
“You have not always said that, sir,” a reporter, like the moderator, said, responding truthfully.
“The ban on assault weapons will stay in place,” O’Toole continued, totally ignoring the reporter. “The restrictions put in place in 2020 will remain in place.”
“The review that we’ve put in our plan to take the politics out of the classification system to make sure that decisions are grounded on science and facts and not on politics is in our plan.”
With O’Toole now supporting gun bans, mask mandates, vaccine passports, and even mass immigration to fill labour shortages, it is a wonder why O’Toole has not sacked up with the Liberals formally and stopped pretending to be Conservative.
