OTTAWA—The Conservative government says lobbying by police and victims will not deter its quest to dismantle the long gun registry.

“We are committed to ending it,” Transport Minister John Baird said Thursday.

Even so the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police, the Canadian Police Association, the Canadian Association of Police Boards joined to urge the government not to get rid of the tool.

“The knowledge of who possesses firearms helps us to prevent tragic events virtually every day in this country,” said William Blair, Toronto police chief and president of the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police.

Charles Momy, president of the police association, said if the registry “can prevent one person in this country from either committing suicide, from being injured or killed, or that a crime is solved as a result of information obtained by the registry, isn’t that worth it for all Canadians?”

Conservative Manitoba MP Candice Hoeppner, whose private member’s bill calls for the registry to be scrapped, said she wasn’t buying it.

“Police, just like Canadians, are divided on the real value and usefulness of the long-gun registry. Many front-line officers do not support the registry,” she told a news conference.

She held the news conference with three former Winnipeg SWAT team members who said the registry is all but useless.

Dave Shipman, who retired after 25 years with the force — 16 of them in homicide — said he’s seen hundreds of killings with a myriad of weapons.

“Never have I attended a killing when a registry of any of the weapons would have prevented that killing from occurring,” Shipman said.

The Tories have long opposed the long-gun registry as costly and ineffective. They say the registry was originally forecast to cost $2 million, but that costs ballooned to $1 billion or more by last summer.

But the police organizations noted it now only costs $4.1 million a year to operate.

Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff said Canada must maintain the integrity of the gun registry after attending a service on the steps of Parliament to remember the victims and survivors of the 1989 Montreal’s École Polytechnique massacre in which 14 women were killed. That incident was largely responsible for the creation of the long-gun registry.

“We simply can’t understand how a law-and-order party, the Conservatives, don’t understand the importance of the registry as a matter of public safety,” said Ignatieff, told reporters.

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Transport Minister John Baird said the government has decided to get tough on gun and other crimes, rather than waste more money on the gun registry.

“That is why we are pursuing an aggressive regime through amendments to the Criminal Code,” Baird said.

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