QUEBEC - The Quebec government says it's fiercely opposed to the end of the federal long-gun registry and will fight to keep using its data.
Public Security Minister Robert Dutil says the province will do everything in its power to keep the information.
Speaking at a news conference in Quebec City, Dutil refused Wednesday to rule out legal action among his options.
Quebec had already announced months ago that it wanted to keep using some kind of long-gun registry if the Harper government killed the federal version, as expected.
But this week Ottawa made it clear that not only would it destroy the registry -- it would also destroy the data compiled over the past decade.
"We know that the federal government, in the last (Conservative) election campaign, said it would abolish the resgistry," Dutil said.
"We don't agree with that but we learned about it during the election campaign. But they never said they were going to destroy the records.
"We are formally, ferociously opposed to that."
The registry was created at a cost of more than $1 billion in the wake of Montreal's Polytechnique massacre in 1989.
The federal government says the registry data is largely out of date and, also, it has suggested it would break the Privacy Act to share the information.
While the Quebec government has expressed its shock at the latest federal move, the Harper government actually signalled in July that any province seeking to create its own registry would have to start from scratch.
At the time, a spokesman for federal Public Safety Minister Vic Toews told The Canadian Press that any data collected for one reason by one government could not, under the Privacy Act, be repackaged for another purpose by another level of government.
Dutil conceded Wednesday that destroying the records would make it difficult to keep a registry in Quebec.
"If we don't have the data, the costs (of creating a new registry) would be prohibitive," he said.
The province's intergovernmental affairs minister said Quebec taxpayers helped pay for that registry -- and they don't want to lose it.
Intergovernmental Affairs Minister Yvon Vallieres said he would take up the matter with his federal counterparts.
