TRANSLATION FROM FRENCH TO ENGLISH

PUBLICATION:     La Presse

DATE:                        2003.09.24

SECTION:                  Canada

PAGE:                         A4

BYLINE:                    Bellavance, Joël-Denis

DATELINE:              Ottawa

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An additional $10 million for the firearms registry

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The Chrétien government is about to inject an additional $10 million into the controversial firearms registry despite repeated promises in the last 12 months to reduce the cost of the program. This has outraged opposition parties in the House of Commons.

Yesterday in the House of Commons the President of the Treasury Board, Lucienne Robillard, tabled supplementary estimates totalling $5.4 billion for the current fiscal year, which will end on March 31, 2004.

In the budget document, the Department of the Solicitor General, which has been managing the gun registry since April 14, asks for an additional $10 million to continue operating this program, which by 2005 will have cost taxpayers over $1 billion, or 500 times more than initially anticipated, according to a scathing report by Auditor General Sheila Fraser tabled last December.

Last March, the Chrétien government had a motion adopted in the House of Commons approving an additional investment of $59 million in the program. 

The latest request by Solicitor General Wayne Easter enraged Saskatchewan Alliance MP Gary Breitkreuz, who for several years has led a crusade to force the Liberal government to abolish this program, which he considers completely useless. 

“This program is well and truly a bottomless pit. But the most frustrating thing about the whole business is that we won’t know until the end of this fiscal year exactly how much money the federal government has poured into the program,” said Mr. Breitkreuz.

The Alliance MP said he was even more indignant that the RCMP, whose job is to fight organized crime and terrorist networks, only got $21.5 million more.

“Who is in greatest need of funds, the RCMP or the national arms registry? To ask the question is to answer it. This government’s priorities are all wrong,” declared Mr. Breitkreuz, who argues that, at this rate, Ottawa is in danger of sinking $2 billion in the program.

“The national firearms registry is sinking like the Titanic, but the government is trying to keep it afloat with small lifeboats until the next elections. The program is dead, but the government refuses to admit it,” he added.

Treasury Board spokesman Mario Baril maintained that the $10 million is not new money, but money rolled over from last year’s operating budget at the Department of Justice and intended for the Canadian Firearms Centre.