"Deceiving the public is bad, but deliberately deceiving the courts must surely have dire consequences."

Breitkreuz was referring to an 8-page document titled; "Costs Presentation Options" dated February 5, 1998. Under "Option C: Incremental Approach" it states: "If pressed, confirm actual spending of past three years on C-68. Provide arguments why we can’t produce a definite cost forecast." Under another section titled, "Timing Considerations", the department proposed releasing the cost of the gun registry at the same time the government goes public with the Federal Budget. Page 8 of the document states: "A lot of numbers are mentioned during that period and we benefit from the sheer volume of numbers being released (ie [sic] unlikely to attract a lot of attention)."

On this same page, the Minister’s bureaucrats admit, "During the Alberta reference court proceedings, we argued that we were not in a position to reveal costs. Announcing the costs before a decision may add a bad ‘obiter’ in their decision." Breitkreuz concluded, "Documents provided to me in response to previous ATI requests prove the Justice Department had been keeping an annual summary of the gun registry costs since 1995. Even though they had these detailed financial documents, they were telling the Alberta Court of Appeal that they couldn’t reveal them. Why wouldn’t they tell the court? Deceiving the public is bad enough, but deliberately deceiving the Alberta Court of Appeal must surely have dire consequences."

Ironically, Breitkreuz obtained these damning documents because of a letter to the editor from Justice Minister Anne McLellan, published in the Toronto Star on July 19, 1999, in which she stated, "user fees will cover the entire cost of the program." Breitkreuz explained, "I had already learned that the government had collected only $2.9 million in user fees during the first six months of the registry’s operation (about 1 percent of the total costs of the program so far) and was skeptical of the Minister’s claim. So I fired off another ATI request asking the Department of Justice for the documents to prove the Minister was telling the truth."

"Confirming my suspicions, the department refused to provide their ‘cost recovery plan’ which I had asked for, once again citing ‘Cabinet confidences’ to keep 61 pages of public documents secret," said Breitkreuz. "This is the third time the Justice Department has used Cabinet secrecy to hide a total of 348 pages of vital information from the prying eyes of the media, the public and Parliament." In June of last year, they refused to give Breitkreuz 172 pages of budget documents that would reveal the true costs of the registry. In September, another 115-page document concerning the impact the gun registration scheme will have on jobs and the economy was withheld from Breitkreuz. "I’m so upset by the Justice Minister’s ‘culture of deceit’ that I have had a Private Members Bill drafted to limit the government’s ability to use the Cabinet secrecy excuse."

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