FIREARM FOLLIES: LIBERAL REPORT
STILL HIDING FUTURE COST OF THE GUN REGISTRY
By
Garry Breitkreuz, MP – October 18, 2004
Official
Opposition Critic on Firearms Legislation
On Friday, October 8, 2004, the Liberal government’s long-awaited Report on Plans and Priorities for the soon-to-be two billion dollar Canadian Firearms Program was tabled in the House of Commons. Canadians and Parliament will still have to wait a lot longer for the truth because it wasn’t in this report.
The
first problem the Liberals must try to explain is the ever increasing
price tag for the gun registry. Not only do they finally admit that the
total cost will exceed $1 billion ($1,055,400,000) by the end of March
2005, but their forecasted expenditure for this fiscal year alone rose
from $100.2 million as reported to Parliament on February 24th
to $119.7 million – up from the $94.9 million forecasted in last
year’s estimates. To put
this waste of money in perspective, the Edmonton Police Commission is
desperately seeking $3.5 million this year to hire 39 new police officers.
The $120 million wasted on the gun registry this year alone equals
the salaries of more than 1,300 police officers!
No
mention was made in the report of Public Safety Minister Anne McLellan’s
pre-election promise on May 20th to cap the gun registry costs
at $25 million a year.
The Minister’s department stonewalled our Access to Information Act request for documents showing how they arrived at this bogus number. All we got were eleven pages of blanks. All the Information Commissioner got was another complaint about government hiding information from Parliament and the public.
The
second more serious problem in the report is that the Liberals must now
explain to beleaguered taxpayers (and patients waiting for MRIs or
surgery) the total lack of financial forecasts for future years.
Almost two years ago, the Auditor General blew the whistle on this
monument to Liberal bureaucratic, billion-dollar boondoggles and stated
that the biggest problem she uncovered was that Parliament was kept in the
dark. This report proves that
the Liberals are still keeping Parliament in the dark.
The
departmental report, signed by Minister Anne McLellan, stated the reason
they can’t provide financial estimates for future years is that the
whole program is under review. But
how can this be? Former
Associate Minister of Defence, Albina Guarnieri, completed her review in
March and Anne McLellan announced her plans for the registry in May, but
last week’s report to Parliament is still left with gaping fiscal
fissures.
This
report to Parliament also fails to address the concerns about cost
overruns included in Raymond Hession’s most recent report dated
September 5, 2004, that we obtained with an Access
to Information Act request. Even
though important information was withheld by the department, the Final
Report by HLB Decision Economics Inc. titled: Review
of CAFC Funding Requirements and Options concluded: “The net result is an increase in projected expenditure levels as
compared with forecasts released at the time of the Hession Report [Up
from Hession’s January 31, 2003 estimate of $488-$541 million over 10
years].
These expenditure forecasts are, moreover, subject to significant
risk of rising yet further.” Parliamentarians
and the media can only wonder what Hession’s new forecasts are because
they are for the most part blanked out using the Access
to Information Act to cover up the truth.
Twenty-four
times – that’s how many times the Liberals have refused to answer our
question: How much is it going to cost to fully implement the firearms
program and how much is it going to cost to maintain every year after
that? And that’s just since
December 2002. What are the
Liberals hiding? Even
the CBC pegged the true cost of the gun registry at closer to two billion
dollars. And what have
taxpayers got to show for their investment?
The
sad truth is that every shooting reported by the
media proves the soon-to-be $2 billion firearms program isn’t working.
If the gun was unregistered – it failed!
If the gun was registered – it failed!
If the gun owner was unlicenced – it failed!
If the gun owner was licenced – it failed!
It’s time for Parliament to scrap Bill C-68 and cut the
public’s losses before another billion is wasted.
BREITKREUZ’S
NEXT COLUMN: LIBERAL REPORT
FABRICATES FIREARM PROGRAM BENEFITS
Garry Breitkreuz is the Associate Justice Critic on
Firearms Legislation and the Member of Parliament for Yorkton-Melville,
Saskatchewan.
For more information: www.garrybreitkreuz.com
Hession’s
Original Cost Estimates for the Firearms Program – January 31, 2003
http://www.cssa-cila.org/garryb/publications/firearmscostprojections-2003-02-031.pdf