Garry Breitkreuz, M.P.
Yorkton-Melville		 News Release

For Immediate Delivery

April 14, 1999

GUN REGISTRY RED-TAPE CREATING SERIOUS NON-COMPLIANCE PROBLEM

"In 1995, 76% said they would register all their guns. In 1997, compliance had dropped to 58%."

Ottawa – Today, Garry Breitkreuz, MP for Yorkton-Melville, released results of another Access to Information Request which reveals that only 58% of firearms owners surveyed said they plan to register all their guns. "What’s amazing is that so many firearm owners were willing to admit to a government pollster that they were going to refuse to do the paperwork that the Criminal Code now requires in order to own a firearm," said Breitkreuz.

The Department of Justice commissioned the Environics poll that was conducted in October 1997 and involved a total of 2,008 respondents but only 233 were willing to admit they owned firearms. The survey results obtained by Breitkreuz are in a report titled, "Firearms Owners Intended Compliance with Gun Registration and Gun Licencing." The Environics survey results show: 58% of respondents said they plan to register all their guns, 2% will register some of their guns, 25% do not intend to register any guns, 6% refused to answer, and 10% said they don’t know. Environics states the margin of error for a sample this size is estimated to be ± 2.2 percentage points, 19 times out of 20.

Breitkreuz compared the Environics survey and a 1995 survey to show how the level of non-compliance is increasing dramatically. "In 1995, 76.7% of gun owners surveyed said they would register all their guns. In 1997, compliance had dropped to 58%. The 1995 survey involved an even larger sample of gun owners and was conducted by Professors Gary Mauser, Ph.D. and H. Taylor Buckner, Ph.D. and was published by The Mackenzie Institute of Toronto in January, 1997. The study was titled, "Canadian Attitudes Toward Gun Control: The Real Story."

The government keeps predicting that non-compliance with their new gun registry will not be a problem but these two surveys demonstrate that the problem is getting worse. In fact, in another document obtained by Breitkreuz in the same Access to Information Request, the department is estimating that only 2% of gun owners will fail to comply. "These bureaucrats are misleading the Minister of Justice with their rosy forecasts. She should be listening to her own hand-picked User Group on Firearms rather than these self-serving bureaucrats," suggested Breitkreuz. On April 23, 1998, the Minister’s User Group on Firearms wrote her, "The new series of forms are unnecessarily long, complicated and burdensome and raise some serious privacy issues. They also tend to talk down to the applicant. This will significantly undermine compliance. A minimum 50% error rate is now predicted." Breitkreuz commented, "The real problems with the forms were never corrected and the 40 recommendations made about the forms to the Department of Justice by the Privacy Commissioner were completely ignored. In the meantime, law-abiding firearm owners and government licenced gun dealers are being forced through miles of red tape for no useful purpose. Concluded Breitkreuz, "The Minister of Justice is going to have to bypass her bureaucrats if she’s going to learn the truth about this billion-dollar waste of time. Non-compliance will destroy the good relations that exist between the people and the police – a relationship that’s absolutely critical for effective law enforcement. This should concern everyone."

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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