With Canadians preparing to cast their ballots in less than a week, getting answers on issues that affect them are becoming more and more important.

Topping that list have been the economy, health care and the war in Afghanistan, but one issue of interest to many voters has grabbed few headlines: gun control.

“There is no talk about it,” said Ernest Reid, president of the Simcoe County Gun Club. “Over the summer, the province and the mayor of Toronto were making all kinds of noise about banning all handguns and semi-automatic rifles, and now here we are at an election and you don’t hear a thing.”

The reason for that, suggested Reid, is that none of the candidates want to take on such a “hot issue.”

Simcoe North Green Party candidate Valerie Powell, noting one of her party’s pillars is non-violence, said they would keep the controversial gun registry, but would reduce the paperwork and the bureaucracy involved for rural gun owners and hunters.

The Greens would, however, come down hard on handguns and semi-automatic weapons.

“You can control all the guns you want in Canada, but, if you don’t stop smuggling, you’re not getting to the ones being used by the criminal element,” said Powell.

Richard Banigan, the riding’s NDP candidate, said the gun registry introduced by the previous Liberal government has been badly mismanaged. He also acknowledged there is disagreement even within NDP ranks about the issue of gun control.

“The urban members are very much in favour of gun control, and some of the folks from out west and up north don’t exactly have the same opinion, because to them a gun is more like a tool,” he said. “One law does not fit all. You can’t have the same law in downtown Toronto as you would have in the Northwest Territories. It makes little sense.”

He said long guns (such as rifles and shotguns) are useful for farmers, ranchers and rural residents, while handguns are not.

“There’s different kinds of guns, there’s parts of the country that have different problems – and a one-size-fits-all law is not going to work.”

Regarding automatic weapons, assault rifles and the like, Banigan said they “have no place on the street at all,” though he wouldn’t rule out collectors having them as long as they were locked up and kept disabled.

“But those weapons are so awesomely destructive that, if they ever got into the wrong hands, they could cause huge loss of life.”

Conservative incumbent Bruce Stanton boasted his party changed the firearms act to no longer require the registration of non-restricted firearms, such as shotguns and rifles.

“(There is a large) number of people who are outdoor enthusiasts and from the angling and hunting community, (which is) still a very prominent part of the area,” he said.

“Even though the complexion of the riding is changing, there is still a fundamentally large component of our riding that’s rural. There are still people who go hunting and fishing, and they see the additional requirements of the registrations of their firearms as an unnecessary and expensive requirement.”

Stanton noted fewer than three per cent of gun-related crimes were committed with firearms that were registered.

Liberal candidate Steve Clarke said he supports a two-pronged approach to the gun crime that has plagued the streets of Canada’s larger cities, most notably Toronto.

“Under a Liberal government, all military assault weapons would be banned,” he said. “I can’t see an argument against that myself.”

One thing people on all sides of the issue seem to agree on is that the majority of people who use registered firearms do so responsibly.

“The safety culture within that community is very strong,” said Stanton. “Every time the mayor of Toronto comes out and says, ‘We’ve got to go get the firearms’… it’s more or less making it their fault that these criminals are bringing in illegal firearms and using them in the commission of crimes.”

– With files from Frank Matys and Travis Mealing