February 9, 1996
LIBERALS REFUSE TO RELEASE RESULTS OF GUN CONTROL EVALUATION!
"Is Rock hiding the facts because they contradict his arguments for Bill C-68?"
Yorkton - Today, Garry Breitkreuz, MP for Yorkton-Melville, made available the official response from the Department of Justice to his recent Access to Information request. Back in December, Breitkreuz learned about a contract awarded to Prairie Research of Winnipeg, Manitoba. The purpose of the consulting contract was "to evaluate the impact of the 1977 and 1991 legislation pertaining to firearm incidents". Inside sources told Breitkreuz that the Justice Department did not make the results public because they were not favourable for the Liberal government's position on gun control. The contract was supposed to be completed last August while Bill C-68 was still being reviewed by the Senate.
On January 15th, the Department of Justice responded to Breitkreuz' request by providing him with just nine pages of their 2010 pages of documents refusing to provide copies of the progress reports and the final report. The bureaucrats claimed that making these reports public would "prejudice" the results of the evaluation. "The only thing these research results 'prejudice' is the government's position that gun control laws somehow reduce violent crime," commented Breitkreuz.
He responded to this shameful abuse of power by filing a formal complaint with the Information Commissioner, Mr. John Grace, which stated: 'I find it disgraceful that the Department of Justice has chosen to hide behind Section 22 of the Access to Information Act. Insiders have advised me that the reports the Justice Department are hiding from the public reveal that 'the 1977 and 1991 amendments regarding gun control' and 'the enhanced FAC application process' have had minimal or no effect on reducing 'firearm deaths', reducing 'firearm incidents' or reducing 'firearm use in criminal activities'."
Breitkreuz concluded by asking some obvious questions:
(1)Why didn't the Liberals complete the evaluation that the Auditor General recommended, before the Liberals embarrassed themselves by ramming their costly, intrusive firearm registration legislation through the House of Commons?
(2)If taxpayers forked out almost $60,000 to have this evaluation done, don't they have the right to know the results?
(3)Are Canadians living in a democracy or some arrogant, dictatorial regime that resorts to hiding the truth from the people?
(4)If Allan Rock is so convinced he's engineering a better society, why won't he support my Firearms Sunset Act which would preserve only those gun control laws that reduce violent crime and junk the useless ones?
"Unfortunately, Rock is barking up the wrong tree on the real cause of crime. It's not the gun, it's the bad guy using it. This is a prime example of the Ottawa fat-cats trying to justify ever more layers of paper-shuffling bureaucrats by hiding the truth about their flawed gun control laws."
For a copy of the Department of Justice response please call: