A non-affiliated Senator sided with the Conservative opposition in a Senate committee Monday as the Conservatives stripped the government’s long-debated firearms bill of nearly all its key public safety and gun control measures.

But the victory for Andrew Scheer’s Conservative party won’t last long.

The raft of amendments must be adopted in the Senate.

A senior Conservative senator acknowledged after the final committee stage for Bill C-71 in the Senate national defence and security committee that the opposition party does not have the numbers to overcome Liberal and Independent senators in the Senate House.

Voting and discussion over amendments consumed nearly three hours of voting and motion debate for the Conservatives and the two Independent senators to get the bill through clause-by-clause voting.

Conservative Senator Don Plett objected to a statement Independent Senate Group (ISG) Sen. André Pratte wanted to add to the committee’s report sending the bill back to the Senate. Pratte had emphasized that Conservative amendments “gut the bill” and run counter to public safety considerations under the bill that was important for the government’s agenda.

Plett accused Pratte of proposing that senators should vote the way the government wants them to in the Senate.

“At the end of the day, the government will decide what amendments they want to accept,” said Plett, once a president of the Conservative Party under former prime minister Stephen Harper.

“Nobody came into this meeting today with their eyes closed,” said Plett. “They know there would be amendments. This is not over; this bill is still going to the Senate.”

As the voting continued, ISG Sen. Marilou McPhedran failed to get support even from fellow ISG members for a clause she wanted to add that would prohibit nearly all legally owned handguns in Canada. McPhedran’s motion was defeated as Pratte and another ISG senator abstained in the vote, while Conservative senators opposed it.

The Conservative senators, with the support of New Brunswick non-affiliated Sen. David Richards, stripped out clauses of the bill that would: bring in lifetime background licence checks for gun licence applications and renewals; compel retailers to keep details of gun sales records for at least 20 years; require permission to transfer restricted handguns and rifles to gunsmiths; and eliminate cabinet’s authority to override RCMP firearm classifications for restricted and prohibited semi-automatic rifles.

An assistant to Senator Diane Griffin, a member of the Independent Senators Group, contacted iPolitics on Tuesday to say Griffin did not side with the Conservatives as they gutted main parts of the bill.

The office conceded that Griffin proposed several amendments and that her absention led to a key Conservative amendment passing.

“She proposed several technical amendments to address witnesses’ concerns while still adhering to the government’s policy objectives,” Lyle Skinner, Griffin’s Parliamentary affairs adviser, said in an email.

Skinner conceded Griffin’s abstention on a vote over the clause expanding background checks resulted in a Conservative requirement for further consultation on the issue, effectively nullifying the clause. Griffin supported the government’s proposal to eliminate current cabinet authority to override RCMP firearm classifications for restricted or prohibited firearms, said Skinner.

She proposed an amendment, which was defeated, that would have transferred the cabinet override to the Commissioner of Firearms, who is the Commissioner of the RCMP, Skinner said.

Conservative and Independent senators supported an amendment from Griffin that would have eliminated a sentence in the bill requiring owners of restricted or prohibited firearms to obtain an authorization to transport their weapons to gunsmiths, but the Conservatives then voted against the entire clause, which would include automatic authorizations to transport only for licensed gun owners who transfer restricted or prohibited firearms to a shooting range.

The Canadian Coalition for Gun Control accused the Conservatives of moving backwards despite calls for gun safety rising after the shooting attack at two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, last month last that left 50 people dead.

“Bill C-71 was exceedingly modest, aimed at reinstating the requirement for gun sellers to maintain records and improvements and reversing measures the Conservatives had introduced to erode controls on handguns,” said Wendy Cukier, the coalition’s president.

“Canada is one of a handful of countries in the world that is going backwards at a time when countries like New Zealand are taking decisive action to curb gun violence,” Cukier wrote in a statement to iPolitics. “Canadians should have no doubt the influence of the gun lobby and its ability to hijack the agenda,” she said.

This story has been updated to reflect a statement from Independent Senator Diane Griffon’s office that Griffin did not side with the Conservative Senators who voted against most clauses in the firearm bill.