NEWS RELEASE

February 4, 2003                                                                                                   For Immediate Release

CAUCHON, KPMG AND HESSION ALL MISS THE TARGET

“The Justice Minister is still traveling down a road littered with mines left by his predecessors.”

Ottawa – Today, Garry Breitkreuz, Official Opposition Critic for Firearms and Property Rights, exposed the major flaw in the KPMG and Hession reports tabled by Justice Minister Cauchon yesterday.  “It’s unbelievable that these people don’t learn from their own mistakes,” said Breitkreuz.  “In 1994, the bureaucrats warned the Justice Minister that they couldn’t calculate the costs.  They grossly underestimated the number of guns and gun owners that led to the current firearms fiasco and wasted a billion dollars.  “Neither report delivered to Parliament yesterday addressed these incorrect assumptions.  The Justice Minister is still traveling down a road littered with mines left by his predecessors.”

Government documents show many mistakes unaccounted for by the two consultants’ reports.  This is the mine field the Minister is walking into which he refuses to see:

-         400,000 gun owners still don’t have licences and can’t register their guns without them;

-         300,000 owners of registered handguns don’t have licences authorizing them to own them;

-         Up to 10 million guns still have to be registered;

-         Five million registered firearms still have to be verified by the RCMP;

-         Seventy-eight percent of the firearms registered have blank or unknown entries;

-         813,822 firearms have been registered without serial numbers;

-         131,000 persons prohibited from owning firearms by the courts are not tracked by the system;

-         9,000 persons who have had their firearms licences refused or revoked are not tracked by the system;

-         38,000 licenced gun owners unable to be located by the system;

-         15,381 firearms licences were issued to persons with no proof of having passed a firearms safety course;

-         26,800 duplicate Firearms Registration Certificates have been issued; and

-         832 duplicate firearms licences have been issued, and 259 firearms licences have been issued with the wrong photograph.

“What is it going to cost to licence all the gun owners, register all the guns and fix all these mistakes?” asked Breitkreuz.  “The Justice Minister’s fancy consultant reports still can’t answer these questions.  He says it will take weeks to prepare an ‘Action Plan’.  He told Parliament to wait until fall to receive his grand total of what has been wasted on the Liberal’s ‘universal gun registry’.” 

Breitkreuz predicted that taxpayers wouldn’t know the truth before the next election.  “By fall, the Liberals will be heavy into a leadership race and none of the candidates will want to defend their billion-dollar boondoggle.  By spring, a new leader will be elected and the last thing the Liberals will want is this messing up their election plans.  The majority of Canadians want the gun registry scrapped.  They know how to stop the hemorrhaging.  Too bad the Liberals don’t listen to the majority when it conflicts with one of their sacred cows.  It's clear the Liberals are bound and determined to dump more cash into this black hole.  There's only one way to end it -- elect an Alliance government,” concluded Breitkreuz.

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