NOTE:  Barbara Yaffe’s column was also published in: The Vancouver Sun, The Ottawa Citizen, The Windsor Star, The Victoria Times Colonist, and The Charlottetown Guardian.

PUBLICATION:        The Leader-Post (Regina)

DATE:                         2003.08.23

EDITION:                    Final

SECTION:                  Viewpoints

PAGE:                         B7

COLUMN:                  Barbara Yaffe

BYLINE:                     Barbara Yaffe

SOURCE:                   Vancouver Sun

DATELINE:                 VANCOUVER

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Scrap registry

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VANCOUVER -- Being a good government means sometimes having to say you're sorry. Ottawa should be sorry, and say so, with respect to its national firearms registry.

The Chretien government probably had good intentions in the mid-1990s when it conceived the program, along with a highly political objective -- securing votes of city types concerned about crime. But the initiative has been a train wreck and it's time to haul it out to the demolition yard. The reason it's still around is political, not rational. How can Liberals, after spending huge sums on the project, abandon it?

The only Canadian politician adept at admitting mistakes and surviving politically is Alberta's Ralph Klein. The federal Liberals have never mastered the art.

So they've endured relentless pounding in the Commons on the gun registry. And the pounding won't stop any time soon. For good reason. The auditor-general creamed the program in 2002, noting the $2-million registry will cost nearly a billion by 2005.

Shortly after, Toronto's Julian Fantino, top cop in Canada's largest city, weighed in revealing the gun registry had been of no use to his force.

Still, the Chretienites defended their registry, blaming cost overruns on non-compliance by gun owners -- despite $30 million in upbeat advertising, a grace period for registering and the temporary waiving of fees. They also blamed lack of provincial co-operation.

Ottawa even tried switching responsibility for administering the boondoggle from the justice minister to the solicitor-general. But, by golly, the one thing the Liberals wouldn't do was back down, based on their contention Canadians support the registry.

Well, it turns out, the public doesn't support it as much as the feds might imagine. A new survey -- albeit a small one -- shows 39 per cent of Canadians think the registry is worth keeping. According to JMCK Polling in Calgary, a majority supports the registry only in Quebec, where Marc Lepine went on a shooting spree at the University of Montreal.

A larger Ipsos-Reid poll in December showed 43 per cent of Canadians in support.

"The more people learn about the federal firearms fiasco, the less support it receives," according to Garry Breitkreuz, Canadian Alliance firearms critic.

What's happening now, he asserts, is public respect for the law is diminished, making it difficult for police to enforce registry provisions. Not that anyone is trying very hard to do that.

Already, eight provinces have announced they've no intention of prosecuting firearms scofflaws. B.C. Attorney- General Geoff Plant calls the registry "an unmitigated disaster." Ontario's Bob Runciman calls it"a colossal disaster."

Native Indians in Williams Lake, meanwhile, say they won't comply, raising the question as to whether other aboriginals will also opt out.

Incredibly, last January the federal Justice Department sent a bulletin to police and prosecutors across Canada, advising "ignorance of the law" can be considered an adequate defence for non-registrants. Hopefully, this policy will also spread to the tax department.

Personally, I hate guns. Their only use is for killing and I don't believe in killing -- humans or animals -- unless it's in self-defence. I'm one of those urban types that should be gung-ho wild for the registry. I'm not. It's too costly and makes no sense. Why force honest duck hunters to jump through bureaucratic hoops to register their guns? And make no mistake, it's the duck hunters, not crooks and murderers, who will sign up. Further, most semi-automatics and submachineguns are smuggled across the border and bad guys don't register these firearms.

Besides, the feds have maintained a registry of restricted firearms since 1930. And since the 1970s firearms purchasers have been required to get acquisition certificates, entered into an RCMP data base in Ottawa. (The RCMP has concluded the data base isn't worth the effort.)

Ottawa has really shot itself in the foot with its firearms registry. Time for Premier Klein to phone Paul Martin and give him a lesson in the art of the political apology.

- Yaffe writes for the Vancouver Sun.