November 18, 2008

Dear Supporters:

Although this is not directly related to our charter challenge of the Firearms Act in the courts I thought I'd give you my brief perspective about the Conservative convention in Winnipeg last weekend.

As many of you know I have been politically active for years now. The CPC convention in Winnipeg is where the party works on their official policies (new as well as amendments to existing ones) that guide the party in their day to day decisions and initiatives. I attended the convention as a voting delegate from our riding association along with four others. Dan Baron (one of our other voting delegates) and I worked together throughout the convention primarily to make sure firearms owners were properly represented during any discussions in this area.

We are happy to report that a couple of poorly worded amendments to the firearms policy were defeated so that the net result is no change to the current policy.

We were pleased to see that the firearms issues were still very much alive for both delegates and MP's. Whenever the topic of firearms rights came up the crowd always went into a spontaneous applause. To put this into perspective, it's rare to have this type of applause during debates but the firearms issue is one of those exceptions.

When talking to many MP's and cabinet ministers they all stated that this issue was still a hot topic in caucus even though it isn't getting a lot of air time lately. One thing I was very pleasantly surprised about and I hope you will be too; Many of the MP's and cabinet ministers knew who I was and the charter challenge that is underway. It's nice to know that all the sacrifices and efforts that so many people have put into this have not gone unnoticed by our elected officials.

It was refreshing to see at least three powerful MP's that knew the REAL issues at stake in our charter challenge and they promised to make sure those issues get heard in caucus meetings. They also vowed to make sure that other MP's and ministers that should know, also get educated. I have a sense that this could very well become a bigger political issue again as we enter into our appeal hearing in Toronto. Let's pray that it does!

I should also point out that our legal trust fund did NOT pay for this trip of mine. A loyal friend and supporter, Dr. Joe Gingrich paid the $650 fee to attend this convention. He has been an inspiration to me with his political activism and insistence that people like me need to go to these policy conventions. Thank you Joe, I hope I'm not embarrassing you too much by publicly acknowledging your dedicated support in this way.

Yours in Liberty,

Bruce.