BREITKREUZ’S RESPONSE TO

THE MINISTERIAL STATEMENT

ON THE CANADIAN FIREARMS PROGRAM

by Garry Breitkreuz, MP (February 21, 2003)

Mr. Speaker, today the Justice Minister’s announcement of an “Action Plan” to fix the gun registry is very much like sending the deck hands of the Titanic out with rolls of duct tape to fix the gaping gash in the side of the ship.  Except the Minister’s duct tape is made out of pure gold.

The Minister’s Action Plan means that in a very few years Parliament will be debating a TWO BILLION dollar boondoggle.  This is because he failed to address the real problems in the legislation and in the registry itself.

The Minister proudly proclaims that even with everything he announced today the gun registry is still going to cost $67 million a year.

The Minister’s admission means that his great “Action Plan” is only going to save $5 million a year from the $72 million a year Mr. Hession’s report estimated the gun registry would cost without “streamlining”.

But does anyone believe the Justice Minister’s estimates.  Take any one year and look at how much they forecasted to spend in the Main Estimates and then how much they actually spent.

The Auditor General uncovered the fact that the Justice Department made inappropriate use of the Supplementary Estimates.  She said and I quote, “Between 1995-96 and 2001-02, the Department obtained only about 30 percent of $750 million in funds for the Program through the main appropriations method; in comparison, it obtained 90 percent of funding for all of its other programs through the main appropriations.” [end quote]

This means that the Justice Department’s estimates were consistently WRONG and understated by 70%.  This would be a good rule of thumb for Parliament and the public to use when they are trying to figure out how much the gun registry will really cost to fully implement and how much it will cost to maintain each and every year after that.

How can the Justice Minister claim he’s being transparent when he has been keeping Parliament in the dark for the last 11 weeks?  He was more open with the media this week when he admitted his “cash management” program consisted of NOT PAYING HIS BILLS.

His “Action Plan” and his cost estimates are fatally flawed because he refuses to acknowledge that he has to correct eight years of operational mistakes by his bureaucrats.

I’ve prepared a list of the most critical mistakes:

q       More than 5 million firearms registered in the system still have to be verified by the RCMP

q       Up to 4 million records in the RCMP’s Firearms Interest Police (FIP) database have to be corrected

q       Seventy-eight percent of the registration certificates have entries that were either left blank or marked “unknown” and they all have to be corrected

q       Hundreds of thousands of gun owners still don’t have a firearms licence and can’t register their firearms without a licence.

q       More than 300,000 owners of registered handguns don’t have a firearms licence authorizing them to own one; and they can’t re-register their guns without a licence. 

q       Up to 10 million guns still have to be registered or re-registered in the system. 

q       Yes, six million guns are registered but not with the owners name & address on them!  The provinces have registered 18.6 million cars and they all have the owners’ name and address on them.

q       Police will not even be able to tell where the registered guns are stored.

The Justice Minister thinks moving the gun registry bureaucrats to the Solicitor General’s department is going to improve things.  He should give his head a shake and fire a few bureaucrats – instead of promoting them.

Mr. Speaker, does anyone know what they’re doing over there.  For example, on Monday, if the government had had their way, they would have used closure to ram Bill C-10A through the House.

This bill would have created a Commissioner of Firearms reporting to the Justice Minister and moved the RCMP Registrar of Firearms under the direct control of the Minister.

Four days later, he’s now proposing to move all these positions to another department.  This means that in very short order, Parliament will be debating another gun registry bill.  This wasn’t one of Mr. Hession’s 16 recommendations. 

And still we’re left not knowing how much it’s really going to cost to fully implement and how much it’s going to cost to maintain year after year after year after year.  He won’t even tell Parliament or the public what it cost to run the program for the last 11 weeks.  Does he even know?

And for what benefit?  The Minister tells us it will improve public safety while in the meantime police chiefs tell Canadian people the truth.

In December, when Toronto Police Chief Julian Fantino was asked about the escalation of firearms crime in his city, he said: “A law registering firearms has neither deterred these crimes nor helped us solve any of them.”  In January, the President of the 66-member Ontario Association of Chiefs of Police said the gun registry laws are “unenforceable” … “until the mess is sorted out.”  It is clear that the “unenforceable mess”  Chief Tom Kaye was referring to isn’t going to be fixed by the amendments in Bill C-10A.

After 8 years, the Justice Minister is still trying to convince the public and the provinces that the gun registry is gun control and that this is a wise way to spend police and public funds.  Well, it’s neither and only the Liberals don’t seem to get it.  This government out of control and we should be putting more police on the street