A national coalition of gun owners is furious after the Liberal party disclosed the coalition was the advocacy group referenced as “Canada’s NRA” in a Liberal fundraising blitz over government gun-control legislation last month.

As firearm owner reaction to the bill grows, the popularity of a Commons E-Petition attacking the legislation suggests the battle over the firearm initiative is just beginning.

The Canadian Coalition for Firearm Rights (CCFR) discovered they are the “Canada’s NRA” a Liberal fundraising email referred to after a coalition member challenged the unusual fundraising blitz two days after the government tabled its gun-control bill on March 20.

After listing several new measures contained in the legislation, Bill C-71, the fundraising email went on to say that Conservative Leader Andrew Scheer and his party “want to steadily weaken gun safety laws in Canada,” and that Conservative policies would make it easier for handguns and assault rifles to end up in the hands of criminals.

The email quoted former RCMP commissioner Bob Paulson as having said: “There’s a rabid firearms lobby that has their hooks into the Conservatives, and they’re aggressive.”

“They’re taking orders from Canada’s NRA. And we can’t let them,” the email said of the Conservatives.

The U.S. National Rifle Association, the biggest gun lobby in the United States, is prevented by its own constitution from funding gun-freedom movements in Canada.

The CBC, however, quoted one of Canada’s leading gun lobbyists in a 2010 report that exposed other ways the NRA supported opposition to a national long gun registry the former Liberal government of Jean Chretien established in the 1990s.

Responding to an email from Robert Anderson, the CCFR member who challenged the Liberal claim of a Canadian NRA linked to the Conservatives, a Liberal party staffer on a team that responds to communications from the public defended the statement.

“Canada does have its own version of the NRA, known as the CCFR, and lobbyists for this and other groups are fighting to loosen gun laws and increase the threat to Canadians nationwide,” party co-ordinator Ryan Spero wrote back.

After this story was first published, a Liberal party media advisor contacted iPolitics to say the party, in an earlier email, was referring to groups of gun lobbyists like the CCFR as a whole.

The CCFR’s vice president for public relations posted Spero’s email on the coalition’s web site and called the NRA reference “bizarre.”

“The Liberal government has resorted to quite literally lying to Canadians in ‘Chicken Little’ the sky is falling fundraiser emails,” vice-president Tracey Wilson wrote in reaction to the Liberal letter.

Wilson’s denunciation of the Liberals included claims Spero made in his own email to Anderson, including a statement that the “overwhelming majority of guns used in gun crime in Canada were obtained legally.”

A B.C. government task force reported in 2017 that up to 60 per cent of handguns seized at homicide or crime scenes in the province originated in Canada, after handgun thefts in Canada had risen steadily from 2013 to 2016, while the proportion of crime scene handguns smuggled from the U.S. declined.

The president of the CCFR said the Liberal party targeted the coalition because of growth in support since its formation in 2015.

“They’re calling us ‘Canada’s NRA’ because we’re currently the most influential pro-gun group in the country,” coalition president Rod Giltaca said.

“We’re the ones that spent five solid days on the Hill when this bill dropped,” said Giltaca, a registered lobbyist for the coalition.

Wilson, also a registered in-house lobbyist for the coalition, reported 13 communications with MPs on the day Bill C-71 was tabled and in another round of lobbying two days later.

The lobbying reports included communications with Scheer and 13 other Conservative MPS, as well as New Brunswick Liberal MP TJ Harvey, the chair of the Commons all-party rural caucus.

Wilson later reported lobbying communications on March 29 with Liberal MP Mark Holland, Parliamentary Secretary to Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale, and communications the same day with Pontiac, Que., Liberal MP William Amos.

Wilson reported lobbying communications with Calgary MP Michelle Rempel on March 28.

Giltaca — who owns a tactical firearm training centre in Langley, B.C., and is a certified instructor for non-restricted and restricted gun acquisition licences — said he has no connections with any U.S. firearm advocacy organizations, including the NRA.

In response, a spokesperson for the Liberal party said “Andrew Scheer’s Conservatives want to weaken gun safety laws in Canada – and that was made very clear in Scheer’s gun platform during his race for the Conservative leadership.

“His plan would make it easier for dangerous handguns and assault rifles to end up in the hands of violent criminals, and does not reflect what the vast majority of Canadians want,” said Elyse Surette-Dimuzio, a communications advisor with the Liberal party.

“The Liberal government’s common-sense gun measures will make Canadian families safer while respecting the rights of gun owners, and we’ll continue to emphasize that point at every opportunity.”

Surette-Dimuzio added in an email to iPolitics: “The Liberal party’s reference, in an earlier official email, to the Conservative Party ‘taking orders from Canada’s NRA’ was not in reference to any one specific organization, but rather to groups of such lobbyists as a whole.”

Quebec gun-control advocates who also obtained a copy of the Liberal fundraiser, and forwarded a copy to iPolitics at the time, criticized the fundraising blitz as a partisan exploitation of gun-control supporters.

Meanwhile, a Commons E-Petition denouncing the Liberal gun bill and sponsored by Alberta Conservative MP Rachael Harder had accumulated more than 62,000 signatures by Wednesday, 13 days after it appeared on the House of Commons E-Petition web page.