PUBLICATION:  Calgary Herald

DATE:  2003.02.05

EDITION:  Final

SECTION:  Opinion

PAGE:  A14

SOURCE:  Calgary Herald

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Targeted funding

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Tales of woe from the Canadian Firearms Centre no longer surprise Canadians. They may still be appalled, however.  Two reports on the gun registry released this week reveal the scope and complexity of the task was completely underestimated in 1995, when then-justice minister Allan Rock demanded registration of all firearms in Canada.  This, despite abundant warnings that registration was not only a feeble response to crime, but would also face formidable technical challenges.   Further, regional patronage appears to have contributed significantly to the centre's costly inefficiency.

Consultants use euphemisms. The inefficient geographic dispersion of the registry is said to "sub-optimize" it. Conceding the registry was "dauntingly complex," consultant Raymond Hession continues, "The project struck to manage the development failed to prescribe the business process and technical architecture of the solution."   Our less charitable version would be that Rock wanted a high-profile policy hit.

Disregarding the warnings, and with no clear idea of how, he instructed his department to make the registry happen. And by the way, could they put offices in Edmonton, Ottawa, Montreal and Miramichi? Then he left to accept the Health portfolio. 

Objectors were ignored. Those who approved but worried about the price were fobbed off with assurances the program would be self-funding, at about $80 million.

Now, with $1 billion wasted, Hession tells Canadians that to protect their bad investment, further expenditures of $500 million over the next decade will be needed. They wouldn't have paid half that for a registry to begin with.

It is not too late for Ottawa to dump this turkey. It should.