NEWS RELEASE

September 28, 2000

For Immediate Release

THE REPORT ON THE FIREARMS ACT THE AUDITOR GENERAL WOULD HAVE GIVEN IF…

"Liberals continue to support their billion dollar gun registration scheme even though it will never work."

Ottawa – "Last night, the Liberals sounded like they were living on another planet by defending a gun registry that clearly isn’t working and will never work," commented Garry Breitkreuz, MP for Yorkton-Melville, after the government killed his Private Member’s Bill C-409, Firearms Law Sunset Act.

"My bill would have implemented a process of constant improvement in this country’s gun control laws. Gun control laws that don’t work would be repealed. Gun control laws that are working would be retained and improved. Most importantly, my bill would take the politics and emotion out of the process of making gun control laws. Laws would be based on reason, logic and solid research. Only those gun control laws that could pass the Auditor General of Canada’s public safety test and cost-effectiveness audit and solid operational and financial audits would be retained," said Breitkreuz. "The public trusts the Auditor General far more than they trust politicians. I am willing to put our gun laws to a public safety test. Unfortunately, the Liberal government isn’t willing to do the same."

During his speech in the House of Commons, Breitkreuz gave the report the Auditor General would have given had his Firearms Law Sunset Act been passed at the time that the Firearms Act (Bill C-68) became the law of the land (See House of Commons Debates, Page 8754-55, September 27, 2000).
  1. The Auditor General would chastise the government for ignoring his 1993 recommendations by proceeding with the implementation of even more costly and complex gun control laws without first evaluating whether previous gun control laws were working effectively.
  2. The Auditor General would report that the Justice Department’s polls on public support for the gun registry were biased because they failed to reveal to respondents the estimated cost and impact the legislation would have.
  3. The Auditor General would have found that, despite spending half a billion dollars on the gun registry, biker gangs, bank robbers, homicidal and suicidal maniacs are still having no trouble getting their hands on firearms through the black-market.
  4. The Auditor General would have found that, despite spending more than half a billion dollars on the gun registry, there has been no reduction in the number of firearms being smuggled into the country.
  5. The Auditor General would also report that the gun registry has had no effect whatsoever on reducing the criminal use of firearms, the number of armed robberies, the number of homicides or the number of suicides.
  6. The Auditor General would have found that, despite the fact that more than 1,700 bureaucrats are working on the gun registry, there are fewer police on our streets today than were on our streets thirty years ago - when measured by number of criminal incidents per officer. Statistics Canada put it very simply: In 1962, there were 20 criminal incidents per police officer – in 1997, there were 46 criminal incidents per police officer.
  7. The Auditor General would have found that the Department of Justice’s multi-million dollar television ads are grossly misleading because the ads say the only consequence for unlicenced gun owners will be that they won’t be able to buy ammunition. The truth is that unlicenced gun owners will become instant "Made-in-Ottawa" criminals at the end of December and could be put in jail for up to five years.
  8. The Auditor General would have found that as of September 2nd, 2000, the Department of Justice had only issued 286,233 firearms licences in the last 21 months (13,630 per month) and that 339,663 licence applications were in processing or in backlog. He would also have noted that it would take the Dept. of Justice more than 25 months to get rid of this backlog and 12 more years to process the licences from the remaining 2 million gun owners (the government’s estimate) who haven’t yet applied.
  9. The Auditor General would include in his report the Justice Minister’s 1995 promise to Parliament that the firearms registry would cost only $85 million to implement and run a deficit of only $2.2 million over five years. The Auditor General would then report that the actual cost over the first five years was $325 million and the deficit $310 million. The Auditor General would go on to report that his sources in the Justice Department have provided documents that show the firearms registry budget for this fiscal year alone has already exceeded $260 million and will top $300 million before the end of March 2001.
  10. The Auditor General would remind Parliament that the Justice Minister promised user-fees would cover the entire cost of the program but as of August 11, 2000 the government had collected only $17,139,993 in user fees and owed refunds of "approximately" $1,234,520.
  11. The Auditor General would discount the Dept. of Justice statistics about the number of firearms licences refused and revoked and legal gun sales blocked. He would write that these results have been achieved because of better background checks and information management and had absolutely nothing to do with the registration of guns. He would also confirm earlier findings by the Privacy Commissioner of Canada that a large percentage of the blocked sales were as a result of incorrect information on 3.5 million Canadians in the RCMP’s infamous FIP (Firearms Interest Police) data bank.
  12. The Auditor General’s report would make the following points with respect to blocked gun sales:
  1. The government has had the means to achieve these kinds of results for the last twenty years with the old FAC (Firearms Acquisition Certificate) program;
  2. There was no need to create a half-billion dollar gun registry for rifles and shotguns to achieve these results; and
  3. All these hundreds of millions have blocked only the legal sale of firearms - absolutely, nothing has been done to stop anyone from buying firearms on the black-market – where the real problem is.
  1. The Auditor General would report that the gun registry is riddled with errors and is of absolutely no help to police in their fight against real criminals.
  2. In one of his most damning findings, the Auditor General would have deplored the fact that the gun registry has undermined community policing programs by treating more than three million law abiding responsible firearm owners as criminal suspects. The consequence is a breakdown of trust between the police and the average citizen in thousands of municipalities across the land.
  3. The Auditor General’s report would go on for page after page documenting one of the most colossal political disasters and bureaucratic boondoggles in recent Canadian history. He would conclude by recommending that the gun registry be scrapped and the money go to putting more police on the street and in the fight against organized crime.

Breitkreuz concluded his remarks in the House, "Mr. Speaker, Bill C-68 will guarantee that gun control laws are both costly and ineffective, whereas Bill C-409 will guarantee that every gun control law has to be both successful and cost-effective in saving lives and reducing the criminal use of firearms."

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For more information, please call:

Yorkton Office: (306) 782-3309

Ottawa Office: (613) 992-4394

E-mail: breitg0@parl.gc.ca

Web Site: www.garry-breitkreuz.com