FIREARMS CENTRE SHORTCHANGES BORDER AGENCY
“Customs officers wasting millions and manpower tracking law-abiding gun owners and hasn’t even done a risk assessment or cost-benefit analysis.”

Ottawa – Today, Saskatchewan M.P. Garry Breitkreuz, the Conservative Firearms Critic, released more documents that once again demonstrate the Liberal’s misplaced public safety priorities. In a letter to the Canada Firearms Centre (CFC), the Head of Customs Contraband, Intelligence and Investigations wrote: “As a result of the new import requirements, a sizable workload is being generated that the CBSA must manage solely for the purposes of the Firearms Act. Over the past 3 years, we have documented more than 251,000 non-residents with firearms traveling in transit or coming into Canada for legal sporting purposes, and have collected more that $11.2M in fees on behalf of the CFC. During this same period, close to $7.6M was spent on the delivery of the firearms program of which only $5.2M was recovered from the CFC.”

Breitkreuz asked, “What is Public Safety Minister Anne McLellan thinking when she allows this to go on right under her nose?” The covering letter from the Canada Border Services Agency also confirms that the department didn’t have the option of spending these millions where they were needed most such as: the pursuit of smugglers, terrorists, illegal immigrants, illegal guns, drugs, explosives, and other contraband. Their excuse for not doing a risk assessment and cost benefit analysis: “…the Agency is required by law to administer the program.”

The documents also show that the Canada Border Services Agency doesn’t check to see if these sport shooting tourists and hunters took their guns with them when they left Canada. That’s more than 450,000 legally-owned guns the bureaucrats lost track of,” reported Breitkreuz. “In 1995, the Liberals promised, in defiance of all logic, that this scheme to track legal guns would somehow stop the smuggling of illegal guns. These new documents show how phony their promises to Parliament were. The Liberals only implemented the sections of the Firearms Act to collect the fees but not the sections to track the guns; measures they said were vital to control gun smuggling. “What a pile of horse manure,” exclaimed Breitkreuz.

“Before spending more than a billion tax dollars, the first thing any competent government would do is identify and quantify the problem. Something the Liberals still haven’t done. These foreign hunters have never been and never will be a threat to public safety so these sections of the Firearms Act were totally unnecessary. For the last ten years, we have been providing data that proves the Firearms Act isn’t doing what they promised and that the money should be redirected to real public safety priorities and real border control priorities. For the last ten years, the Liberals have kept their heads buried firmly in the sand. In the most recent poll, 76 percent of Canadians want the gun registry scrapped and the money spent on law enforcement. It’s time to elect a government that will do just that,” concluded Breitkreuz.

May 12, 2005 - Breitkeuz’s Written Question on Border Control Costs and Priorities
http://www.cssa-cila.org/garryb/inthehouse/Questions/05_may12_question.htm

-30-

Le 13 mai 2005 L’AGENCE DES DOUANES FLOUÉE PAR LE CENTRE DES ARMES À FEU