Yorkton – Today, Garry Breitkreuz, MP and Canadian Alliance Candidate for Yorkton-Melville, fired another shot at the Liberal’s mortally wounded gun registry. "The polls look terrible for Liberals in western and rural Canada - so what does their fearless leader do? With one statement, he hangs his western and rural Liberal candidates out to dry, hoping to shore up support for his party in the big cities." Breitkreuz was referring to Chretien’s attack earlier in the week in which he portrayed Stockwell Day as a gun lover. In Wednesday’s Calgary Sun, Licia Corbella commented, "Chretien likely alienated most rural voters by making it sound as though someone is evil simply for owning a firearm." Breitkreuz added, "Chretien is so out-of-touch and has become so accustomed to ruling by decree that he doesn’t even understand when his legislation is insulting voters’ intelligence and undermining the basic rights and freedoms of everyone – not just the five to seven million responsible firearm owners in Canada."

Note: See attached for additional details justifying each of the ten reasons.

-30-

1. C-68 HAS ALREADY COST AT LEAST ONE LIFE: The Liberals defend their soon-to-be billion dollar boondoggle by saying, "If the gun registry saved just one life, it would be worth it." In March, a man in Nain, Newfoundland who was prohibited from owning firearms went to the RCMP, picked up his rifle that they had been storing for him, and killed a 15-year-old boy. The "aboriginal exemptions and adaptations" in Bill C-68 forced the RCMP to give the man his murder weapon. What do the Liberals say now that they know their gun registry actually cost one life?
2. C-68 COSTS ARE AT LEAST SIX TIMES HIGHER THAN PROMISED: According to Access to Information requests and sources inside the Justice Department, Bill C-68 has cost more than $500 million more than the Liberals promised in 1995! The sad fact is that the Liberals have resorted to using "Cabinet secrecy" to hide gun registry budgets and economic impact reports from the public.
3. C-68 IS OPPOSED BY THE PROVINCES: In 1995, the Liberals rammed Bill C-68 through Parliament and down the throats of the provinces. In February of this year, six provinces and two territories challenged the constitutionality of the legislation in the Supreme Court. Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba have completely opted out of the administration of all federal gun control laws and the Province of Ontario has refused to help administer the Liberal’s gun registration scheme. This summer the Territory of Nunavut launched their own constitutional challenge of Bill C-68.
4. C-68 HAS INCREASED BLACKMARKET GUN SALES: The Justice Minister’s own User Group on Firearms warned her that Bill C-68 created so much red-tape trying to regulate legal gun sales that black-market gun sales were on the increase.
5. C-68 IS OPPOSED BY FRONT-LINE POLICE OFFICERS: Every survey ever taken by police shows that between 76% and 91% of front line police officers oppose Bill C-68. According to police sources, Bill C-68 is alienating honest citizens and diminishing respect for the law. "In fact, the Firearms Act violates every one of [Sir Robert] Peel’s Principles of Policing," writes Constable John Gayder.
6. C-68 GUN REGISTRY IS RIDDLED WITH ERRORS AND USELESS TO POLICE: The Liberals have so badly bungled implementation of Bill C-68, that registration and licencing errors and non-compliance by millions of responsible firearms owners render data in the gun registry unreliable and useless to police in our communities.
7. C-68 HAS TAKEN POLICE OFF THE STREET: The Liberals promised that the gun registry wouldn’t take police off the street and wouldn’t create a huge bureaucracy. In July, the Library of Parliament reported that the gun registry was employing 1,744 bureaucrats, which included at least 368 RCMP personnel. The Library report did not include the hundreds of Firearms Officers working for provincial, regional, city and municipal police forces. On September 21, 1995, Ontario Solicitor General, Bob Runciman told the Senate Standing Committee on Constitutional and Legal Affairs: "In national terms, 85 million dollars would put another 1,000 customs agents on the border; 500 million dollars would put an extra 5,900 police officers on the street."
8. C-68 HAS DIVERTED RESOURCES FROM REAL POLICING PRIORITIES: The $585 million wasted so far on the Liberal’s fatally flawed gun registration scheme could have been used for important police priorities like a sex offender registry or a DNA data bank for all criminals. In the 1997 election, one of the Canadian Police Association campaign slogans was, "Register Criminals before firearms."
9. C-68 PROVED REGISTRATION DOES LEAD TO CONFISCATION: The Liberals broke their promise that registration would not lead to confiscation when they used Bill C-68 to ban 553,000 registered handguns without any evidence that these legally owned firearms were a risk to anyone’s safety. Bill C-68 amended Section 117.15(2) of the Criminal Code giving the government such sweeping power that they could ban any or all firearms in Canada and not even the Supreme Court of Canada could overturn it. On November 15, 1997, the Montreal Gazette quoted Deputy Prime Minister Herb Gray, "This could be the start of a global movement that would spur development of an instrument to ban firearms worldwide similar to our land-mines initiative."
10. C-68 VIOLATES EVERYONE’S RIGHTS AND FREEDOMS: According to legal experts, Bill C-68 violates fundamental property rights protection guaranteed in the Bill of Rights, and also violates a number of Charter rights including: the right to privacy, the right to remain silent, the right to be secure against unreasonable search and seizure, the right to be presumed innocent, the right to freedom of association, and the right to retain and instruct counsel without delay. Every one of these C-68 rights violations will be challenged in the courts.