By Bruce Cheadle, The Canadian Press

OTTAWA - Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff says the federal long-gun registry needs to be revamped to make it more palatable to rural Canadians.

His comments came Wednesday as parliamentarians were poised to vote on a Conservative private member's bill designed to kill the decade-old registry.

Several Liberal and New Democrat MPs have said they'll vote for the legislation, meaning it could pass second reading in the minority parliament and go on to further debate.

Ignatieff says federal Liberals, who brought in the long-run registry in response to the December 1989 massacre of 14 women at a Montreal college, still support "the principle" of gun control.

"The issue is to find a system of gun control that works for all Canadians - that works in rural Canada, that works in urban Canada," said Ignatieff.

Ignatieff went on to say he wants to hear from police, victims' groups and gun owners "to find a way to rebuild legitimacy for the gun registry in rural Canada. That's not a thing you can do overnight."

His comments throw a new wrinkle into a heated debate over a registry system that even its supporters acknowledge was poorly designed and implemented in the early going.

Conservatives, backed by a strong rural voting base, have been dead-set against the long-gun registry for years but have never forced the issue to a vote in the House of Commons since coming to power.

Rather, the party has put its resources behind a private bill by Candice Hoeppner, a young, female, back-bench Tory MP from Manitoba, knowing that the NDP and Liberal parties traditionally permit their MPs free votes on such legislation.

The Conservatives have simultaneously bombarded rural opposition ridings with radio ads pressuring local MPs to vote in favour of the registry's demise or face a voter backlash. And on Wednesday the Prime Minister's Office issued talking points to all Conservative MPs on the bill under the subject line "Message of the Day."

"They clearly are using private members' bills to achieve the government objective in another way," said Liberal MP Bob Rae.

But Conservative MP James Rajotte noted he's run in four elections on a platform of eliminating the gun registry, "and we've been increasing support for that position each and every time."

The Edmonton MP suggested urban Albertans may view the registry through the prism of fiscal responsibility "and they feel that it's not in fact cost-effective in terms of reducing any crime."

The auditor general found in 2006 that the registry had cost almost $1 billion in total through the end of fiscal 2005, but noted the program appeared to have come under better control. Since handguns and prohibited weapons must still be registered, eliminating the long-gun portion of the registry would only save taxpayers about $3 million annually going forward.

Liberal MP James Bagnell, one of at least three Liberals who indicated they would vote with the Conservatives to kill the registry, said the debate should serve as a springboard for Canadians to better understand one another.

"Urban Canadians are passionately in favour, a lot of them, of a registry . . . . They wonder why anyone in the city would actually need a gun," said the Yukon MP.

"In a lot of rural Canada, it's just a tool that people are used to using every day. They're not afraid of (guns) and they don't think this is the most effective use of funds to reduce crime."

As if to highlight the urban-rural divide, Tory MP Daryl Kramp issued the following on his Twitter account: "feeling sorry for myself - many of my friends are in the hunting camps this week - my son-in-law just bagged a bear and I am here in Ottawa."

Kramp, who represents a rural riding in eastern Ontario, also wondered aloud how many empty seats there would be in the opposition ranks when the vote on Hoeppner's bill was called.

Victoria MP Keith Martin, a Liberal who once sat as a Canadian Alliance MP, said he'll support the bill now because he wants it examined further at a Commons committee, where testimony from police officers and other witnesses could change his views.

"At the end of the day, if the gun registry is working in the interests of public safety, if it is working in the interests of saving and helping to save the lives of our police officers, then I will support it" in a subsequent vote, said Martin.

That is the argument that is being loudly made by victims' groups, police chiefs and some provincial governments.

Priscilla de Villers, a former Ontario provincial Tory candidate who became a tough-on-crime policy advocate after her daughter Nina's 1991 murder, issued a public call for the registry's survival.

"It is incomprehensible that after all these years we should still be held hostage by a relatively small group of citizens, gun owners, who demand the right to possess, exchange or use weapons without the same restrictions that we, in a civil society, demand from owners of vehicles and animals," de Villers said in a news release.

The Quebec legislative assembly voted unanimously Wednesday in support of the registry, and the province's public safety minister sent a letter - copied to every single Quebec MP - urging his federal counterpart, Peter Van Loan, to maintain the current system.