Former Manitoba MP Charged With Trafficking Hundreds Of Firearms, Which Is At Least An Ambitious Retirement Plan
Inky Mark, who represented Dauphin-Swan River-Marquette in the House of Commons from 1997 to 2010, has been charged with firearms trafficking after police seized hundreds of weapons. Constituents who remember him as a soft-spoken backbencher are said to be revisiting old campaign literature for clues, so far finding only a photo of him at a fall supper.
The RCMP has not disclosed how one former MP came to allegedly accumulate an armoury that sounds less like a hobby and more like a small NATO contribution. Sources close to the investigation confirm the collection was, at minimum, larger than the Canadian Armed Forces' active handgun inventory, which is not a joke the Department of National Defence found funny when we ran it past them.
Political observers note that most former MPs pad out their retirement with a corporate board seat, a memoir nobody reads, and a standing invitation to comment on CBC's *Power & Politics*. Mark appears to have chosen a more entrepreneurial path, one that neatly sidesteps the usual honorarium ceiling.
The irony has not escaped gun-control advocates, who spent years arguing that Canada's licensing regime was too lax. They now find themselves pointing at a former lawmaker as Exhibit A, while the Conservative Party quietly checks whether the constituency association still has his cell number on file.
Mark is presumed innocent. His lawyer declined to comment, other than to note that his client had always taken a keen interest in rural issues.