PUBLICATION:          WINNIPEG FREE PRESS 

DATE :                        TUE MAR.25,2003 

PAGE :                        A12 

CLASS :                      Focus 

EDITION :  

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Editorial - It's still a waste

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The federal Liberal government today will ask the House of Commons to approve spending another $59 million on the national firearms registry program. That program, as Auditor General Sheila Fraser pointed out late last year, has already cost $800 million. By her estimate -- which now seems to be on the conservative side -- it will have cost $1 billion by the time it is supposed to have been completed -- January 1, 2005. Ms Fraser's estimate is now regarded as conservative because it has become clear that, by the 2005 deadline, the registration program may still be incomplete. Having spent $800 million on it so far, the government has been able to register only a fraction of the firearms believed to exist in the country. Critics of the registry are now talking about a $2 billion price tag by 2010, still with no guarantee that all or even most guns will have been registered.

In December, after the auditor general's damning analysis, the Liberals proposed asking Parliament to approve another $72 million for the gun registry. A rebellion by Liberal MPs put paid to that notion. Still stinging from that defeat, Prime Minister Chretien has threatened Liberals who vote against the $59 million requisition today with expulsion from caucus. He has, however, given those Liberals who balked at $72 million in December no good reason to approve $59 million today. Indeed, what was wasteful and pointless then seems just so today.

The gun registry needs to be refigured, not refinanced. It was wrong in its conception, wrong in its implementation. If there was a reason for all firearms in this country to be registered and licensed, it was a reason of no apparent urgency. A phased in program simply requiring the transfer and purchase of firearms to be recorded would have accomplished the same purpose with far more efficiency and far less expense. It would also have resulted in far less passionate resistance from gun owners.

Until such a change in focus of the gun registry is implemented, no more money should be wasted on the project.