PUBLICATION:          The Edmonton Sun 

DATE:                         2003.02.28

EDITION:                    Final 

SECTION:                  News 

PAGE:                         7 

BYLINE:                     DOUG BEAZLEY, EDMONTON SUN 

COLUMN:                  Inside Story 

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DING-DONG, THE REGISTRY'S DEAD

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Garry Breitkreuz is grinding his teeth. Across the Commons floor, Roger Gallaway is looking at the back of Justice Minister Martin Cauchon's head and wondering how long he can keep from laughing. It's the open secret on Parliament Hill - something so transparently obvious it could not escape the notice of a six-year-old, and something the Chretien government can never, ever admit to anyone.

The gun registry is dead. Ding-dong, call for the coroner.

Will Cauchon admit it before he asks the Commons to vote him another $172 million to keep the system on life-support? Unlikely. We're all waiting for Paul Martin's coronation, after all, and in the meantime the cabinet can't admit to the public that it just flushed $800 million down the toilet.

The registry's enemies in Parliament all acknowledge the program will stay in a holding pattern for now, and that means it will need more money. Much, much more money.  "Cauchon is telling us he'll have the registry purring along at an annual cost of $65 million by 2008," said Gallaway, the Grit MP for Sarnia, Ont., and one of the few Liberal backbenchers willing to publicly criticize his colleagues in cabinet over the gun file.

"The problem is that no one seems to want to tell us what it will cost to get from here to there. Cauchon answers every question with the usual gun-control liturgy ... 'Canadian values,' blah, blah ... .  "But given the public servants responsible for the cost overruns are the ones giving us our cost forecasts now, I'd say there's a small credibility problem there."

A small problem? Let's recap. When the registry was introduced in 1995, it was supposed to cost $119 million and raise $117 million for a net annual cost of $2 million. In December, Auditor General Sheila Fraser revealed the registry was on track to cost a whopping $1 billion by 2005.  That's three years before they said they would have the registry operating at a cost just 32.5 times the original estimate. Progress!

In the meantime, Parliament's got some decisions to make. Next month, cabinet will come crawling forth in search of $59 million to cover money the registry already spent in fiscal year 2002-03. In June, MPs will vote on doling out another $113 million to the program.

Parliament takes a two-week break starting next week and, according to Gallaway, a lot of Liberal MPs are going to start hearing what their constituents really think. "Look, I'm not trying to incite any backbench revolts," he said. "But I'm starting to hear from a lot of the Liberal MPs who arrived here after 1995, and they're getting their ears filled by constituents who are pretty angry over this. "Those who supported the registry in the past must be feeling misled by now."

That doesn't necessarily mean the Liberal backbench is ready to pull the plug on its own. As Alliance MP John Williams points out, even a modest-sized caucus revolt against voting more funds for the registry would be more than outgunned by pro-registry votes from the Bloc, the New Democrats and possibly even the Tories. "There'll be some defiance of the government whip, sure. But I doubt it'll be enough," he said.

The more likely scenario, according to Alliance critic Breitkreuz: Martin, newly installed in the PMO and anxious to restore harmony, turns the registry over to an independent cost-benefit audit.  Once the auditors get through tearing the thing to shreds, Martin could wash his hands of it with little embarrassment.  "But I don't think they'll risk it until after the next election," he said.

But the gun registry is turning into more than just a controversy over government spending: it's become a lightning rod for backbencher rage. As the AG pointed out, cabinet kept Parliament in the dark about the project's real costs.

This week, the government released more detailed information about the registry's cost estimates in a news release than it did in the material it tabled in the Commons - another slap in the mouth for representative democracy.  "Sooner or later, the registry is going to be abandoned," said Gallaway. "The problem is Crown prerogative and the relationship between cabinet and the Commons. "Because what happens in government no longer reflects what MPs actually think."