COLUMN: Lorne Gunter

BYLINE: Lorne Gunter

SOURCE: The Edmonton Journal

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End the billion-dollar gun registry boondoggle: The Liberals have lost interest in this ineffective operation, but now fear to close it down

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Something appears to have gone drastically wrong at the national gun registry in July, but it is difficult to find anyone who will admit it. No, let me rephrase that: Lots of people inside and outside the registry will admit something went wrong. Rather, there are conflicting reports over how drastic the foul-up was, and whether it was out of the ordinary. Several gun owners -- scores, if not hundreds or even thousands -- received letters this summer asking them to re-register firearms they had already registered.

One source, a senior Liberal staffer on Parliament Hill, insists this was made necessary by a "huge crash of the processing computers," sometime in early July. He also insists the crash wiped out "thousands" of firearms records entered into the computers around or just after Christmas -- more like tens of thousands.

Another source, this one closer to the Department of Justice, which runs the registry, says there were indeed "delay problems" in July, but they were nothing unusual. The system is prone to "periodic interruptions" during which no files are lost because all registration records are kept in duplicate on separate computers systems.

Frankly, I tend to believe this latter source when he claims disasters are run-of-the-mill fare at the registry, and also when he claims safeguards are built into the computers to ensure vital information is never lost. Still, it strikes me as funny that the government's explanation for why no one should be concerned about the July crash is, in essence, "Don't worry, that happens all the time."

Plenty of gun owners reported an inability to get through to the firearms registry both on the phone and via the Internet at about the same time -- early to mid-July. For days on end, callers received a recorded message telling them telephone volume was so heavy no one could speak with them nor even take a message. They were advised to call back another time. The registration of firearms slowed to a crawl, too. According to the registry's own numbers, it processed only 10,000 registrations per week in mid-July, but was back up nearly to normal (40,000) by mid-August.

Turmoil Seems Normal

Whether this incident was uniquely bad, or merely catastrophe-as-usual, three things are clear about the registry as it approaches its fourth anniversary and as the deadline (Jan. 1) for registering all firearms approaches: It is in turmoil.

The Liberals have, for all intents and purposes, abandoned it. And, the processing of owner licenses and firearms registrations has become so perfunctory the registry cannot possibly make Canadians safer from gun crime.

On Sept. 9, the Yellowknifer newspaper reported that the federal firearms officers in both Yellowknife and Hay River had quit their jobs. No replacements were being sought. These resignations follow hard on the heals of resignations by firearms officers in Saskatoon, Regina and Winnipeg. Since spring, eight in all have left their posts.

Between now and the end of the year, the government must register another 3.5 million firearms (assuming its own ridiculously low estimate of the number of guns in Canada is correct). It cannot possibly meet that target, particularly if its staff keep quitting and its computers keep crashing. It has taken nearly two years to register the first 4.2 million.

The entire registry staff continues to shrink in number, though. The Liberals claim this is because the peak of the registry's workload has passed. But it hasn't. It is more likely the peak political benefit the government can derive from the registry has passed. The Liberals cannot afford the political "hit" from closing it, but they also can't make it work effectively, so they are keeping it going, but as small as they dare.

The staff is likely being downsized, too, because the nature of their work has changed, dramatically. When the new registry opened, every application for a licence to own guns was going to be rigorously screened, and every registration of a firearm was going to be verified for accuracy by a government inspector. But now, there are no verifiers.

By all accounts a registration form comes in, it is scanned into the registry's computers, and a certificate is issued to the applicant. The 4.2 million certificates generated so far contain nearly 3.2 million blank information fields. Nearly 20 per cent list no serial number. The principal reason the Liberals gave of the necessity to register all guns, at the time the Firearms Act was passed in 1995, was so they could be traced to their owners following the commission of crimes, thereby making it easier to solve crimes and lower the crime rate. Millions of the certificates are useless for this purpose.

Licensing owners, too, were going to keep guns out of the wrong hands. While the Liberals claim their registry is doing this -- that under the new law many more licences have been refused or revoked than under the old -- the rate of refusals and revocations has actually declined because of the rubber-stamp procedures being used to grant licenses. Between 1979 and 1999, 0.76 per cent of applications for Firearms Acquisition Certificates were refused. Since 1999, the refusal rate for one of the new licenses has been half that, just 0.38 per cent.

It's galling that the Liberals won't end this billion-dollar boondoggle, now.