Parliament is set to return this week and will likely be capped by what will be an extremely close vote on whether to keep the contentious long-gun registry.

Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff has promised to whip his party's vote, and says he has the support of all eight MPs who voted against the gun registry earlier.

"What we are saying is ‘Let's save the gun registry and let's make it acceptable, let's make it work for northern, remote, and rural Canada,'" Ignatieff said on CTV's Question Period Sunday.

"We need a gun registry because the cops say we need it, the emergency room doctors say we need, the victims' groups say we need, so let's keep it."

Conservative House Leader John Baird has downplayed his party's chances at winning the vote. Last week, he said "Toronto elites" in the NDP and Grits would make sure the Conservative private member's bill would not pass.

Liberal MP and public safety critic Mark Holland will attempt to pass a motion to strike down the bill to scrap the gun registry -- and says he is only one MP shy of the needed votes.

He, like the Tories, is looking to the NDP for support. NDP Leader Jack Layton is not whipping his party's vote but has said he has enough support to keep the registry.

"I am confident we have the votes needed to defeat Bill C-391," he said last week after a fifth NDP MP publicly changed their vote on the bill.

"It's up to the NDP," Holland told Question Period. "We need at least one more NDP member to come on board in order to save. We are calling on them to stand up for this registry which police, emergency physicians . . . have told us . . . saves lives."

NDP MP Glenn Thibeault has changed his vote on the bill, but says he just voted to bring the bill to community to get changes done to the registry.

"This is an opportunity that northern hunters, who feel like criminals under the current registry, have the opportunity to bring forth amendments that we will present in the House," he said on Question Period. "Shouldn't we work at finding a solution for this?"

Conservative MP Pierre Lemieux said farmers, sport shooters and hunters, want to end the long-gun registry, not amend it.

"We are fighting like tigers to end the long-gun registry because it targets law abiding Canadians," he said on Question Period. "I have a hard time how the NDP are one-by-one changing their minds."

The long-gun registry was established in 1995, in response to the massacre of 14 women at Ecole Polytechnique. It was phased in over eight years.

Costs ballooned during its implementation to over a billion dollars. However, it costs about $4 million a year now to maintain.