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CANADA
Thursday, November 24, 2005 ORAL QUESTIONS [The following is the unedited version of today's blues] FIREARMS REGISTRY Mr. Garry Breitkreuz (Yorkton—Melville, CPC): Mr. Speaker, thanks to our Access to Information requests, Parliament now knows that the Liberals spent more than $527 million just on the computer contracts to register 7 million guns. That is almost $100 per gun. Forty million cows were registered for only $8 million. That is about 25¢ per cow. The gun registry is not doing anything to stop gun and gang violence in Toronto or anywhere else either. My question is, how is it possible for the Liberals to spend more than half a billion dollars on a computer system that should have cost only a fraction of that amount? Hon. Anne McLellan (Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness, Lib.): Mr. Speaker, it is probably only the hon. member and a few others on that side who think that the system does not assist the police in their daily activities. The former president of the Association of Chiefs of Police said there is no question that the system works and that it is a valuable tool. The gun control system improves the screening of legal gun owners, increases their accountability and provides tools to prevent the diversion and misuse of firearms. Police officers use the firearms registry online more than 5,000 times a day to help them do their work. Since 1998, there have been 4.6 million queries to the system by police. More than 5,400-- [cut off by The Speaker] (1500) The Speaker: The hon. member for Yorkton—Melville. Mr. Garry Breitkreuz (Yorkton—Melville, CPC): Mr. Speaker, it is pretty obvious that the minister is trying to equate paper shuffling by bureaucrats with public safety. She is not answering the question. Why does the computer system for guns cost hundreds of times more than that for cows? The firearms fiasco is starting to make the sponsorship scandal look like a corner store robbery compared to a bank heist. When will the Liberals quit pouring hundreds of millions of tax dollars into a black hole? When will they stop? Hon. Anne McLellan (Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness, Lib.): Mr. Speaker, I hope the hon. member is not equating the potential lethal nature of a firearms with whatever lethal nature he thinks one of our bovine friends might present to the public. I was brought up on a farm and let me reassure the hon. member that in all my years on that farm I did not actually encounter a lethal cow. However, because guns are lethal, that is why we have a gun control system, because we put-- [cut off by The Speaker] * * * ___________________________________________________________________________________________________
NOVEMBER
24, 2004: FIREARMS COMMISSIONER BILL BAKER ADMITS: 176,000 CONVICTED CRIMINALS
PROHIBITED FROM OWNING GUNS "NO LONGER EFFECTIVELY COVERED BY
FIREARMS ACT." NOVEMBER
9, 2005 - CFC REPORTS LOSING TRACK OF 11,978 LICENCED GUN OWNERS! WHAT THE
LIBERALS CAN’T OR WON’T TELL YOU ABOUT THEIR $2 BILLION FIREARMS
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