PUBLICATION: Calgary Herald
DATE:
2003.08.04
EDITION:
Final
SECTION:
Opinion
PAGE:
A12
SOURCE:
Calgary Herald
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Good
advice ignored
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Why
are we not surprised? Last week, Saskatchewan Alliance Member of Parliament
Garry Breitkreuz uncovered more damning documents about the gun registry. The
newly released information shows sensible warnings from the federal advisory
group on firearms (the one in place since 1997) were ignored.
According
to Access to Information documents, the User Group on Firearms made some
sensible recommendations before it was summarily fired three months ago by
Justice Minister Martin Cauchon.
The
advisory group told the minister he should decriminalize the possession of
unregistered firearms belonging to a licensed owner -- a sensible
recommendation, and preferable to the current Firearms Act that can place
grandfathers with unregistered guns in jail for up to 10 years.
They
also told the Minister in Charge of the Latest Billion Dollar Boondoggle that
the program's entire credibility was at risk because police would not enforce it
and the law would spur a greater black market in guns, and that "ignoring
this will be recognized as a bankrupt policy."
The
advisory group's solution to the last dilemma was a recommendation to delay
mandatory registration. Actually, anyone who ever talked to a street cop well
knows they will never have time to enforce Ottawa-centric and wasteful urban
liberal dreams, whether Ottawa delayed full implementation or not. The police
are too busy responding to calls on assaults, rapes, and break-and-enters, among
other real criminal acts.
Still, as the Liberal government will never admit its error on the gun registry program itself, the two recommendations were at least sensible compromises. No wonder Cauchon fired them.