| PUBLICATION:
The Edmonton Sun DATE: 2005.11.19 EDITION: Final SECTION: Editorial/Opinion PAGE: 11 BYLINE: DOUG BEAZLEY, EDMONTON SUN WORD COUNT: 606 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- GUN REGISTRY COSTS THE NEXT ADSCAM -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- How many different ways can a prime minister say he's too chicken to fight? This much is clear: Paul Martin really, really doesn't want to fight an early election. The Liberals are still bleeding from the Gomery gut wound, and the bogus tax cuts promised in the recent fiscal update don't seem to be reversing the trend. But since he can't admit he has no stomach for a Christmas-season election, Martin has to roll out however many lame excuses he can think of. His latest: a mid-winter vote would interfere with religious observances. "There are also other religions that have different New Year's at different dates and their holidays at a different date and I think we have to be respectful of that," Martin said. Let me get this straight. Had Martin gone with his preferred timetable for a March election, we'd be sending voters to the polls through Ash Wednesday and the beginning of Lent - the holiest period in the Christian calendar - not to mention the Jewish festival of Purim. Instead, we're just screwing up Christmas, Hanukkah, the Zoroastrian feast of Zarathosht Diso and the winter solstice. I had no plans for the solstice - maybe Martin's a Druid. Want to hear my argument for postponing the vote? The Liberals badly need to be crushed at the polls - the alternative would be to send a message that Canadians really don't much mind being robbed by their governments. And there's one scandal festering in the halls of power that needs another year to ripen. I'm talking about the $500 million-plus the Liberals have spent on computer systems for the federal gun registry, the $2 billion white elephant that makes Adscam look like an expense-account pack of chewing gum. That's over half a billion dollars, folks - more money than anyone I've talked to can recall anyone ever spending on a computer system since the damn things were invented. Wasting that kind of money takes something more than mere incompetence. Call it wilful stupidity, corruption, greed - all the ingredients that went into Adscam, with deeper pockets. Days ago, Conservative MP Garry Breitkreuz released a spreadsheet listing 24 separate contracts for "information technology" associated with the Canadian Firearms Centre. The sheet lists only contract sums - ranging from $318 million down to a piddling $19,650 - and the names of the companies involved. There is no breakdown of how much was spent on hardware, software and staff time - this, despite months of requests from Breitkreuz's office. How much do computer systems cost? A Cray supercomputer capable of making a trillion calculations in a second will set you back about $10 million. Nav Canada, the national agency that runs air traffic control systems, has spent about $1 billion since 1996 on upgrading systems at most of Canada's 108 federal airports. Toronto's Pearson airport sees 400,000 flights a year; Nav Canada spent $17 million seven years ago building Pearson a brand new control tower, complete with systems and software. The CFC system is nothing more than a database - it only needs to keep track of about eight million firearms. And yet, the feds managed to spend enough on this one database to provide computing power for a manned mission to Mars. Something is very, very wrong here. This stinks of graft, Adscam writ twice as large. Breitkreuz thinks the feds blew a lot of money replacing earlier database systems, after it became clear they weren't capable of handling the work. But that still can't explain the whopping price tag. What we need is a special investigation by the auditor general. No such investigation is planned. If the Conservatives win a minority government, we'll find out how the Liberals managed to rack up 24 contracts in a row for a single computer system. But even if the Liberals win, there are still enough angry opposition MPs in the Commons to force this issue onto the AG's plate before the end of 2006. Maybe Martin should be wishing for an early election. The alternative - for him - could be twice as bad. ----------------------------------------------------- NEWS RELEASE - November
15, 2005 |