DATE:
2003.11.27
EDITION:
National
SECTION:
Editorials
PAGE:
A23
SOURCE:
National Post
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Gun
registry debacle continues
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Garry
Breitkreuz, the Saskatchewan MP and Canadian Alliance firearms critic, says the
federal gun registry will burst through the $1-billion expenditure barrier by
2004, rather than 2005, as once predicted. We see no reason to doubt him. Mr.
Breitkreuz has been riding the gun registry file hard from the outset. And
despite Liberal efforts to play shell games with the program's soaring costs,
he's almost never been wrong.
The
polite, balding, 58-year-old former school teacher from Yorkton, Sask., has
filed more than 400 Access to Information requests concerning the registry's
inner workings. That may seem like obsessive behaviour. But sadly, these
requests are the only way to make the federal government come clean on this
boondoggle. It is quite possible the Alliance's deputy whip now knows more about
the registry than the justice ministers and solicitors-general who have been in
nominal charge of it during his watch.
Mr.
Breitkreuz was the first to expose the registry's massive cost overruns, the
ridiculously high error rates and delays in applicant screening, the numerous
licences issued to the wrong applicants, the $200-million-plus computer system
that still does not work properly despite a series of costly retrofits, and the
multiple snafus in which registry staff have approved the transfer of guns known
by police to be stolen.
All
along the way, the Liberals have scoffed at Mr. Breitkreuz's claims, even
questioning his sanity. But the Alliance MP has never backed down.
Most
famously, when the Liberals were still insisting the registry had cost no more
than $400-million and would still break-even through user fees, Mr. Breitkreuz
patiently insisted the registry had already blown through $687-million, only a
tiny fraction of what might be recovered from the charges levied against gun
owners for licences. Jean Valin, then the registry's official spokesman, sniffed
that the $687-million figure was a "gross exaggeration" and a
"story that the gun lobby and some members of the Reform party has been
spreading."
But
over time, Mr. Breitkreuz's claim was vindicated. In her well-publicized expose
of the registry last December, Sheila Fraser, the Auditor-General, pegged the
cost of the registry to the end of March this year at $688-million, just one
million off the sum Mr. Breitkreuz and his legislative assistant had arrived at
on their own.
No
one who read that AG report will find it hard to believe the registry will hit
the billion-dollar mark 12 months ahead of schedule. Ms. Fraser called the
registry the worst cost overrun ever seen by her office. She even pulled her
auditors from the registry audit early because the books were so poorly kept
they couldn't make full sense of them.
If
anything, $1-billion may prove to be a conservative figure. The Library of
Parliament has estimated the total cost of enforcing Ottawa's firearms law --
including the cost of taking police officers off the streets to check the
authenticity of registry certificates, and having Crown prosecutors try alleged
violators of the mandatory licensing provisions -- will contain hundreds of
millions in indirect costs.
Mr.
Breitkreuz also revealed yesterday that the Liberals have awarded a $300-million
contract to an outside computer firm to clean up the very same database on which
it has already wasted $227-million since 1995.
If
the gun registry really protected Canadians, perhaps all of this waste might be
viewed as an embarrassing footnote to an otherwise worthy government program.
But as the three gun murders in Toronto this past weekend illustrate -- the
city's 56th, 57th and 58th murders of the year -- the registry is useless in
preventing the gun crime Canadians fear most. By definition, criminals aren't
law-abiding to begin with. So no matter how much of our money Ottawa is prepared
to squander, the people most likely to use a gun in a crime are the people least
likely to register those guns in the first place. Early this year, when Toronto
was suffering a similar spate of murders, Julian Fantino, the city's police
chief, admitted his officers had never encountered an incident in which the
registry "enabled us to either prevent or solve any of these crimes."
Wildly expensive and totally useless: Perhaps that should be the registry's motto.