Note:
A version of this story also appeared in The New Brunswick Telegraph
Journal
PUBLICATION:
The Moncton Times and Transcript
DATE:
2004.03.05
SECTION:
News
PAGE:
A4
COLUMN:
Canada
BYLINE:
Canadaeast News Service
DATELINE:
OTTAWA
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Sweeping
changes to gun registry on way, says Liberal; Program will remain, but will be
decriminalized, less demanding on gun owners
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The
federal government is considering several sweeping changes to the troubled gun
registry that has angered much of rural New Brunswick.
Federal
Liberal insiders said yesterday they expect Prime Minister Paul Martin will
decriminalize the program, end the need for gun owners to renew their
registrations, and require that only newly purchased guns be registered in the
future.
"It
will be a registry-lite," quipped one Liberal source.
The
changes reflect what the federal government has been hearing from its own MPs -
including Andy Savoy, New Brunswick's most-outspoken Liberal critic of the
registry.
"I'm
confident Mr. Martin will do the right thing and find a compromise that takes
into account both urban concerns and rural concerns," Savoy said yesterday.
Savoy
said he proposed many of the same changes last month when he and several New
Brunswick outfitters met in Fredericton with Albina Guarnieri, the new minister
of state for civil preparedness who is conducting a review of the gun registry.
Among
other things, Savoy has been pushing for a grandfather clause that would spare
existing gun owners from having to register their shotguns and rifles.
He
has also been lobbying to decriminalize the program so that anyone who fails to
register a long gun is only slapped with a fine rather than a criminal record.
But
Savoy, who has previously advocated scrapping the gun registry and even
abstained during a key vote for supplemental funding for the program last year,
said he has since heard from "a lot of people" who would like to keep
some form of the current registry.
"Then,
if your guns were stolen the registry would help you to track them," Savoy
said.
"Those
are the kinds of things I've been fighting hard for and I'm glad Mr. Martin has
listened and agreed to overhaul the registry," Savoy said.
The gun registry has long been a lightning rod
for Western alienation and outrage in rural Canada. That long-standing
opposition was galvanized by a scathing December 2002 report by federal Auditor
General Sheila Fraser, who concluded the cost for implementing the program would
top $1 billion by next year. Ottawa had initially vowed in 1995 that the tab
would be no more than $2 million once the fees for licences and registration
were recovered. Martin announced a government review in January, but he has
repeatedly insisted he will not scrap the registry that employs more than 120
New Brunswickers at its main processing centre in Miramichi.
"Obviously there are ongoing problems with the (gun registry) system and we've really got to have those costs contained," Martin told reporters when he announced the review. "Let me be very clear," he added, however. "We are committed to gun control and we are committed to the registration of weapons."