Hey, what happened to that long-gun registry bill?

(Adrian Wyld/Canadian Press)

On Tuesday, the government gave notice of its intent to introduce legislation to repeal the long-gun registry.

Once this tip o' the hand is made on the notice paper, the bill may be introduced in the House of Commons after 48 hours. So some sources suggested and some media reported (mea culpa) that the legislation was coming on or as early as Thursday.

On Wednesday afternoon, we were told they were "dotting i's and crossing t's" on the bill.

It's now Friday, and we've seen no bill. What happened?

Well, maybe nothing. Perhaps from a government communications or legislative strategy point of view, another day was deemed more suitable for kicking off the government's latest, and likely now final, attempt to kill the long-gun registry.

But when?

Government House Leader Peter Van Loan was coy when CBC asked him about it today.

"We'll introduce it when we introduce it, and as for the specific date, you can perhaps ask the minister, but I think that we'll be doing it very soon."

We also asked Van Loan whether the bill would match the wording found in the private members bill to kill the registry that very nearly passed in the last Parliament.

Van Loan demurred again.

"You'll have to see it when you see it," he said. "I can't talk about the details of legislation when it's on notice, you know that."

Over then to Candice Hoeppner, the Manitoba Conservative who brought forward the previous bill, which came within two votes of passing a year ago. Perhaps she'd know the rough timeline, given her new role as the parliamentary secretary to the public safety minister and her obvious keen interest in the issue.

"It is a priority for this government," she assures us. "I don't want to give any specific dates. It's going to be up to the house leader [Van Loan!] to decide. But because it's a priority... I'm looking forward to it coming very quickly."

We also asked Hoeppner whether the government intended to move it through the House before, say, New Year's, like what's intended for the wheat board legislation or the omnibus crime bill.

"I don't know that would happen," Hoeppner said. "There's going to be the regular process that it goes through in terms of debate and committee but thankfully we have the majority so all of the Conservatives will be voting obviously in support of it so we'll be able to get it through in the way that it normally would."

It doesn't sound like they're in a hurry. And perhaps we shouldn't expect them to be. The Conservative election platform said it would pass other priority crime bills within 100 sitting days of Parliament. But it promised no such hurry-up offence on the long-gun registry.

When asked whether the new bill would reflect any changes from the previous bill, Hoeppner stuck to the line that what they promised to Canadians "is ending the registry so that's what we're going to fulfil."

Hoeppner says the government continues to hear from stakeholders on both sides of the issue and she welcomed their opinions. She also didn't entirely rule out going beyond what the previous bill called for, either initially or later on.

"If there are other things that need to be done in terms of (gun) licensing, we're going to listen to all reasonable proposals and maybe see what we need to do later on."

So we continue to wait. Maybe next week?