TORONTO—With summer nearing an end, politicians must soon stop flipping hamburgers or dancing with voters and prepare to face each other in the House.

While a fall election is always a possibility during a minority government, it is safe to say that there is no appetite with any federal political organization to go to the polls any time soon. If anyone would be interested in going to the polls this fall, it's the Conservative government because the economy is still booming. Who knows what it will be like next spring. However, considering that the Conservatives are still unable to escape the quicksand of the lower to mid-30s in the polls, we can safely assume that a fall election will take place only if a political incident occurs in the House.

The first issue federal politicians are going to deal with when the Parliament resumes its session, is the long gun registry and the private member bill that wants to abolish it. This is an issue that has dominated the boring summer media coverage of political events and some even believe that this debate is going to have serious consequences on the government.

I've never believed so; in fact, I'm convinced that this debate is going to have zero effect on the outcome of the next election and, if anything, it's going to be the opposition that suffers some political consequences.

In fact, we know that there are divisions within the NDP ranks, while the Liberals have not been able to come up with a proposal unanimously supported by the entire caucus.

Even from an electoral perspective, the issue is going to have a zero sum effect.

We know that the gun registry program draws support mainly from major urban areas such as Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver, while most of the opposition comes from rural areas. Of course it's true that voters in these cities will not be very happy with the Conservatives but this is not going to be a huge problem because Conservatives don't enjoy a lot of support in these areas.

The problem, on the other end, is more complicated for the opposition in rural areas; in fact, it is in these areas that the most important fight will take place during the next election. This means that the opposition will get some more support in urban areas, where their growth potential is almost nonexistent (unless they swap ridings among opposition parties with no impact on the government-opposition equation), but they risk a lot in areas where they need to grow. At the best the electoral impact of this issue is going to be zero for all the political organization that will gain some, but will lose some.

Of course, as it happens many times, political organizations know that the debate over this issue will take them nowhere in terms of electoral gain, but they use it to damage the opponent with peripheral considerations. For example, Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff said many times this summer that Prime Minister Stephen Harper has introduced the bill to cancel the gun registry because he wants to "divide the country" creating a split between rural and urban areas.

This is a statement based on the assumption that Canadians are naive. In fact, Ignatieff should explain to the voters why keeping the gun registry program is a democratic endeavour, while the same debate to cancel the same program is an evil exercise.

The point is that being against or in favour of the gun registry program is not an element to judge if someone is a good or bad Canadian. It is just a democratic debate where both positions are legitimate and to be respected, even if not supported.

The real division in the country comes into play every time a politician tries to illegitimize the opponent's position by muzzling democratic debate.

The reality is that the gun registry issue, though important, is not going to be the game changer for the next election.

Angelo Persichilli is political editor of Corriere Canadese, Canada's Italian-language daily newspaper based in Toronto.

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