PUBLICATION:
Edmonton Journal
DATE:
2004.12.03
EDITION:
Final
SECTION:
Opinion
PAGE:
A18
COLUMN:
Lorne Gunter
BYLINE:
Lorne Gunter
SOURCE:
Freelance
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Throwing
good millions after bad: Liberals will need another three years before gun
registry is 'fully implemented'
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"It
is anticipated that all components of the firearms program now planned or under
development will be fully implemented by December 31, 2007."
Pardon
me!? What
struck me about the above line when I first read it was its matter-of-factness.
It was uttered almost casually, as if it were no big deal, at the end of a
formal response to an order paper question in the Commons on Monday.
Roy
Cullen, the parliamentary secretary to Anne McLellan, the Minister of Public
Safety and Emergency Preparedness, was giving a detailed breakdown of the costs
of the government's monumentally incompetent firearms registry, in response to a
request from Saskatchewan Conservative MP
Garry Breitkreuz. After all the sums had been presented, Cullen said,
"It is anticipated that all components of the firearms program will be
fully implemented by December 31, 2007."
What!?
The thing's not done yet!? The
registration scheme has blown through more than $1 billion. It has been open six
years and in planning three years before that, for a total of nine years. And
it's not ready!? You would
think the people in charge of this colossal foul-up would run away from it as
fast as they can. Or at least
they'd slink away from it slowly, some moonless night, when no one was watching.
But
no, there they are, two or three or more times each year blithely standing there
-- earnest and determined -- insisting that somehow, someday this giant,
flightless monument to social-engineering incompetence is going to magically
catch air and lift off the ground.
I'd
have to admire their pluck, if I weren't sure their steadfast resolve was really
a mask for an almost pathological inability to admit they've blundered -- big
time. It is, after all, easy to
keep bulling ahead with a bad idea when you have a nearly bottomless reservoir
of other people's money to throw at your next bungle, and your next, and your
next.
But
what confidence do you have that the Liberals will be able to make their gun
registry work with three more years and, say, $400 million more of your money
and mine, when in nine years with $1 billion they have managed only to create a
textbook example of over-reaching, out-of-control political and civil service
ineptitude?
I
have no confidence that, no matter how much time and money is devoted to the
registry, it will ever be useful.
Two
other troubling implications arise from Cullen's statement. First, it is in
direct contradiction of an assurance McLellan made in 2001 that the registry was
"fully operational." And second, the numbers Cullen released confirm
the Liberals have no intention of keeping the cost of their firearms fiasco down
at $25 million per year. When they promised they would in last spring's
election, they were just being clever with words, intentionally confusing two
sets of figures to give the impression they could get this rampaging disaster
under control.
Exactly
three years to the day before Cullen assured the House that his government's
registry would be "fully implemented," but not until nearly 2008 -- on
November 29, 2001 -- McLellan insisted in the same chamber that the
"startup" phase of the registry "ended as of Dec. 1, 1998, and we
are now in full operational mode."
Oh
sure, you could argue that saying the registry was in "full operational
mode" did not necessary mean it was already "fully implemented."
But it was clear from McLellan's remarks that she wanted to leave the House with
the impression that her vaunted registry was up and humming along at full
capacity. There is certainly no way her "full operational mode" left
room for speculation that the registry would not be "fully
implemented" for a further six years after her speech.
When
laying out the full cost of the Liberal firearms program to the end of March
2004, Cullen also (unintentionally) revealed how duplicitous the Liberals'
election pledge was to cap the registry's costs at $25 million.
From
1995 to the end of last March, the "firearms program" has cost $943
million. But the "registration component of the program" has cost just
$228 million, less than one-quarter of the total.
In
the last three years, the "registration component" has cost $50.1
million, $22.6 million and $33.3 million, respectively. Meanwhile, over the same
period, the total cost of the "firearms program" has been as high as
$170 million in a single year.
The
Liberals clearly only meant they would keep a lid on the one-quarter of costs
pertaining directly to the registration of guns. Administration costs, licensing
of gun owners, advertising, gun owner training and all other costs associated
with this grandiose plan.well, they're not technically "registry"
costs, so the Grits have no intention of holding the line on them.
Their
election promise might save $6 million or $8 million a year -- might -- but they
will still be throwing away over $100 million annually on their "firearms
program." The
distortions and deceptions (and self-delusions) continue.