ABOUT THEIR $2 BILLION FIREARMS PROGRAM
By Garry Breitkreuz, MP, Conservative Firearms Critic – August 8, 2005
In my search for the truth about government waste and incompetence on the firearms file, I have made more than 500 Access to Information Act requests over the last five years. The Auditor General’s report of December 2002 uncovered the fact that the government had been keeping Parliament in the dark about the cost of the firearms program but that’s not all by a long shot. Here is my preliminary list of things the Liberal government can’t and/or won’t tell us Canadians after spending $2 billion of our tax dollars on this useless gun registry.
WHAT THE LIBERALS WON’T TELL YOU
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Firearms Program Enforcement Costs; • Firearms Program Compliance Costs; • Firearms Program costs to the Economy and Jobs; • Firearms Program Cost/Benefit Analysis; • The Benefits of Firearms Ownership; • The total cost to fully implement the Firearms Program; • Total number of employees working in and for the Firearms Program at all levels of government (was more than 1,800 as of April 12, 2001); • The annual cost to operate the program once it is fully implemented; • That there are still approximately 10 million guns to register according to Statistics Canada firearm import and export records and previous Liberal government estimates; • That Criminal Code incidents per police officer have more than doubled since 1962; • That violent crime has more than quadrupled in the last 40 years; • That in 2003, the crime rate in the three prairie provinces was 66% higher than in their four neighbouring states south of the border; • That all 6.9 million registration certificates have been issued without the owners’ names; • That five million guns in the registry still need to be “verified” in accordance with police demands for accuracy; • That there are more than three million blank and unknown entries on the gun registration certificates that have been issued – including almost three-quarters of a million that were registered without serial numbers; • That more than 375,000 firearms brought into Canada by foreign visitors have never been entered in the gun registry or tracked to determine if they ever left Canada; • Why prohibited guns can not be taken to shooting ranges but can be taken to gun shows; • Why legal firearms being imported into Canada will soon have to have special United Nations serial numbers on them, supposedly to stop gun smuggling in Africa; • Why even though crimes committed with firearms is dropping, more victims are being injured and suffering more serious injuries; and • Why 70 years of registering legally-owned handguns hasn’t kept handguns out of the hands of criminals. |
WHAT THE LIBERALS CAN’T TELL YOU
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The addresses of the 176,000 convicted criminals with firearm prohibitions; • The addresses of the 37,000 violent individuals with restraining orders against them; • The addresses of the 15,500 persons that have had their firearms licences refused or revoked; • The current addresses of more than 120,000 newly licenced gun owners; • The current addresses of 315,000 owners of a previously registered handgun; • The location of more than 600,000 previously registered handguns; • Where all 7 million registered guns are actually stored; • The number of firearms traces that led police to the robbers and shooters; • The number of robbers and shooters convicted as a result of the affidavits issued; and • The number of crimes solved with the 70-year-old handgun registry. |
Finally, the biggest cover-up is the government’s refusal to tell the Canadian people how many lives could have been saved and what major improvements in public safety could have been achieved with the two billion dollars and 10 years wasted on the Liberals’ futile firearms program. How about 28,000 more police officers and border guards; or more women’s shelters; or more suicide prevention programs; or more scientists to clear up DNA backlog; or kicking bogus refugees out of our country; or even keeping more violent offenders in jail where they belong? Sadly, the Liberals seem bound and bent to waste another billion on this pitiful excuse for a public safety program. Is there ever a time when a gross waste of tax dollars becomes a crime?
Garry
Breitkreuz is the Official Opposition’s Associate Justice Critic
on Firearms Issues
and the Member of Parliament for Yorkton-Melville, Saskatchewan.
For more information: www.garrybreitkreuz.com
8 août 2005 - CE
QUE LES LIBÉRAUX NE PEUVENT OU NE VEULENT PAS VOUS DIRE AU SUJET
DU PROGRAMME DE CONTRÔLE DES ARMES À FEU QUI A COÛTÉ
DEUX MILLIARDS DE DOLLARS