PUBLICATION:        Times Colonist (Victoria)

DATE:                         2004.12.07

EDITION:                    Final

SECTION:                  Comment

PAGE:                         A10

SOURCE:                   Times Colonist

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Gun registry misses the target: Fifteen years after the Montreal massacre, the program is costing more than it's worth

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Monday was a difficult anniversary for the families and friends of the 14 women murdered at the Ecole Polytechnique in Montreal 15 years ago by a deranged gunman out to kill "feminists."

It will have been hard on them to hear that MPs may be on the verge of killing this week what they fought so hard for -- the national firearms registry.

The latest assault on the program is being launched by Ontario MP Roger Gallaway with a motion to scrap a $97 million payment to the National Firearms Centre, denying it the funds it needs to run the registry.

MPs are to vote on his motion Thursday, and it expected to be supported by some Liberals and New Democrats and by most of the Conservatives in the House. No one seems sure whether there will be enough votes to save the centre.

The relatives and friends of the victims of Marc Lepine mounted a cross-Canada crusade for stricter gun control. The gun-registry law passed in 1995.

In the wake of the Montreal massacre, keeping track of all weapons -- not just restricted ones -- in the country, and allowing police to use the registry as an investigative tool made sense to those with a natural aversion to guns.

Who, apart from hunters or ranchers or maybe the Inuit, needed shotguns and rifles, anyway, in this day and age?

But it was legislative overkill -- driven more by emotion than common sense. Murderers and armed robbers were never likely to register their weapons in advance and provide the serial numbers so police could hunt them down more easily.

It turned Canadians into criminals, not for committing some act, but for failing to fill in a document and pay a fee. The program has done nothing to teach Canadians how to use weapons safely. It fails to recognize that most people killed by guns are family members or acquaintances, not strangers. It has enraged those Canadians who feel it is their right to own guns and use them responsibly.

And since the obscene cost of the program has begun to emerge, politicians of all stripes have attacked it. Several provincial governments have refused to enforce the registry law. Promises by the government to streamline the bureaucracy and cut costs have not been met. Backlogs are huge; deadline after deadline has been extended.

In 1995 we were told the program would cost no more than $85 million -- only $2 million when registry fees were put against costs. Today, it's estimated that the registry will cost considerably more than $1 billion when it is fully implemented -- which won't be until 2007, or 12 years after it was conceived.

About two million Canadians are said to have been licensed and more than six million firearms registered -- but there are continuing reports of inaccurate registrations, and the government has charged that some gun-owners have been sabotaging the program, increasing cost overruns, some by registering their chainsaws or glue-guns.

Yet police say officers use the database 2,000 times a day and find it easier to track illegal guns. But the law doesn't allow them to check how many of those convicted of violent crime or those prohibited by court order from obtaining firearms have acquired them illegally.

The Coalition for Gun Control argues that the rate of firearms deaths is the lowest in Canada for 30 years. It notes that homicides with rifles and shotguns dropped to 43 in 2002 from 61 in 1995; that 32 women were killed by firearms in 2001 compared to 43 in 1995, the year the registry was set up.  "We are safer today than we were 15 years ago," says Wendy Cukier, president of the coalition.

That's a comfort. But there's no evidence that this bumbling, bureaucratic registry has anything to do with it.

There's absolutely no evidence that another Marc Lepine isn't be out there, somewhere, armed and very dangerous.