August 1, 2002

 

OPEN LETTER TO CANADA’S POLICE OFFICERS

By Garry Breitkreuz, MP – Yorkton-Melville, Saskatchewan

 

In August of 1999, I had the pleasure of attending the Annual General meeting of the Canadian Police Association in Regina.  Unfortunately, I won’t be able to be with you in St. John’s, Newfoundland this August.  I respectfully request that you revisit one of the resolutions passed by your members in 1999 to see whether the government has met your “conditions”.

 

IN 1999, THE MEMBERS OF THE CANADIAN POLICE ASSOCIATION GAVE THEIR "CONDITIONAL" SUPPORT FOR THE LIBERAL GOVERNMENT'S CONTROVERSIAL GUN REGISTRY AND RESOLVED THAT:

A. The Auditor General of Canada conduct a thorough review of the firearms registration system and release a public report on their findings to the people of Canada. 

B. The accuracy of the information that is collected in the firearms registration database be verified. 

C. The CPA receive confirmation that the registration system has the capacity to meet the legislative timeframes established for firearms registration.

D. The CPA receive confirmation that the cost recovery plan for registration can be achieved.

E. Meaningful consultations with the User Group take place to ensure that the concerns of stakeholders are addressed in the review process.

F. The CPA receive confirmation that the implementation and operation of the system is not taking officers off the street.

 

THE GOVERNMENT HAS NOT MET THE CPA’S “CONDITIONS”

 

A.  The Auditor General is now conducting a “financial audit”

 

On March 20, 2002, I met with Mrs. Sheila Fraser, Auditor General of Canada.  She informed me that she had assigned an audit team to conduct a “financial audit” of the Canadian Firearms Program and that she would report the results to Parliament in November of 2002.  One of the reasons the Auditor General is conducting this financial audit is because she suspects that the government has hidden gun registry expenses in other departments.  After we had discussed registry error rates, operational problems and cost effectiveness she agreed to consider her financial audit as a “first step” in her review of the controversial gun registry.  Only after an operational audit and report by the Auditor General will this CPA “condition” be fully implemented.

 

B.  The Government said: “Too time-consuming and costly to verify every firearm”

 

In the summer of 2001, most of the administrators of the RCMP’s “Verifier Network” were laid off and the 3,807 volunteer verifiers recruited by the RCMP were left high and dry.

 

In response to one of my Access to Information Act requests the Department of Justice provided a document titled “Firearms Registration” dated January 9, 2001 - Justice ATIP File: A-2001-0156.  The department made some startling revelations in this document:

 

In a Justice Department letter dated May 22, 2002 (ATIP File – A01-051/ok) the government admitted to the following error rates in gun registry applications: “The error rate for applications received up to July 18, 2001, was 90% of a total of 362,375.  In addition to errors detailed in Appendix A, 42% of firearms registration applications contain errors in the firearms description, in comparison to the Firearms Reference Table.  The sum of the errors exceeds the number of applications received because the application is only counted once even though it may contain multiple errors.”

 

C.  Government has proven they can’t meet the legislative time frames

 

In the summer of 2000, while the government was publicly stating that they would have all firearms licences issued by the legislative deadline of January 1, 2001, documents obtained from the Department of Justice pursuant to the Access to Information Act prove that they had already decided to extend the licencing deadline to June 30, 2002.  Even with the extension there are still more than a million gun owners who failed or refused to obtain a firearms licence.  

 

Another Justice Department document shows 304,375 owners of registered weapons don’t have a valid firearms licence: Documents obtained through Access to Information [ATIP File: A-2002-0063] show that as of May 27, 2002:

(1) The total number of individuals in the Restricted Weapons Registration System (RWRS) that own firearms registered in the RWRS: 429,316.

(2) The number of confirmed licences in CFRS for firearms owned in the RWRS: 124,941.

(3) The total number of individuals that have re-registered their firearms: 96,237.

 

As an admission of their own incompetence the government has been forced to privatize the gun registry at an estimated cost of $300 million over the next 15 years.

 

D.  Government has abandoned their promise of “cost recovery”

 

In her August 13, 1999 letter to CPA President, Grant Obst, Justice Minister Ann McLellan promised: “When the development costs are recovered, the fees will be set at a level sufficient to cover the annual operating costs.”  It’s now clear that the costs of the program are wildly out of control and the government has abandoned all hope of keeping this promise.

 

On June 3, 2002, the government provided the following response to my Order Paper Question Q-149 [Hansard Page 12044] Question: (a) what is the total amount of money spent on the program since 1995.  Government Response: (a) The firearms program is a national investment in public safety that is supported by the vast majority of Canadians.  Over the first seven years of operation, approximately $610 million has been invested in this program.  This includes expenditures for the last fiscal year (2001-2002), which have not yet been finalized but are estimated to be about $140 million.  Overall, this still represents less than $3 per Canadian, per year of operation.

 

It’s strange, that seven months earlier, on November 21, 2001, Mr. Richard J. Neville, Deputy Comptroller General, Comptrollership Branch, Treasury Board of Canada appeared before the Standing Senate Committee on National Finance and stated the total spent on the Canadian Firearms Program as of that date was $689,760,000.  Mr. Neville testified: “For previous years - if you care to jot this down - before the beginning of this fiscal year, it was $541,262,000.  In the Main Estimates - that is, the Main Estimates for this year, 2001-02 - there was a planned additional $34,611,000. The amount in these Supplementary Estimates, as I have already explained, is $113,886,000. The total at this point is $689,760,000. I trust, Mr. Chairman, that answers the senator's request.”

 

Makes one wonder where the $79.7 million went between November 21, 2001 and March 31, 2002?  No wonder the Auditor General is now doing a financial audit of this fiscal firearms fiasco.

 

E.  Minister ignores most of the recommendations from his “User Group on Firearms”

 

Members of the Minister’s User Group on Firearms admit that the vast majority of their recommendations to the Minister have not been implemented.  In fact, the new Minister of Justice, the Honourable Martin Cauchon has so far failed to meet with his own User Group.  I can assure you that the “concerns of stakeholders” have not been addressed.  I urge you to ask the members of the CPA that sit on the User Group for their honest opinion.

 

F.  Gun registry can’t help but take police off the street

 

Using the Access to Information Act, we obtained a Briefing Note to Justice Minister, Anne McLellan, dated April 12, 2001 that stated: “There are currently just over 1,800 employees associated with the firearms program.  Earlier this year, approximately 135 RCMP employees were deployed to the Department of Justice in the North West Region.  RCMP operations in Ottawa, which houses the office of the Registrar, has about 400 employees.”  How many more provincial, regional and municipal police officers have been assigned to work on the gun registry?

 

The cost of the gun registry will soon surpass a billion dollars just as we warned Parliament in 1995 and as I predicted at the CPA meeting in Regina three years ago.  The government has abandoned any hope of recovering any of these “developmental costs” from user fees and operating costs of a hundred million a year are so high that taxpayers will be on the hook for any future expenditures for decades to come.  So now police officers know that the billion dollars spent so far have come at the expense of other real crime fighting police priorities. 

 

On July 3, 2000, The Toronto Sun reported: Toronto and other major police forces nationwide are losing valuable front-line officers to Ottawa’s new gun registry, say Canadian police and union executives.  Toronto Police chairman Norm Gardner said six officers from his force have been assigned full-time to conduct police background checks for the registry.  “We are being affected,” Gardner said.  “The registry is taking away some of our manpower.”  He said the officers will have to conduct about 250,000 checks this year.  The checks are required before a person is granted a permit to own a firearm.  Toronto Police are required to conduct checks on potential gun owners in the GRA.  “These officers could be doing other jobs,” Gardner said.  He said Ottawa has dished out $350,000 to the force to pay for the six officers, but the sum is not enough.”

 

I suspect the “other jobs” that Mr. Gardner was talking about was investigating real criminals with illegal guns - not harassing completely innocent citizens who own legally acquired firearms. 

 

Every year Statistic Canada publishes statistics showing that the number of Criminal Code incidents per police office have doubled since 1962.  This proves what the highest priority of the Federal Government should be.  See attached Statistics Canada table: Trends in Police Personnel and Expenditures – 1962-2000

http://www.cssa-cila.org/garryb/publications/PolicePersonnel20020212.pdf

CONCLUSION

 

Finally, I would like to say that if you need more evidence that the gun registry can never work, please visit my website at: www.garrybreitkreuz.com and check out the following documents:

 

1.  WHAT POLICE HAVE SAID ABOUT THE GUN REGISTRY

http://www.cssa-cila.org/garryb/publications/policequotes.htm

 

2.  GOVERNMENT RESPONSE TO ORDER PAPER QUESTION Q-149

http://www.cssa-cila.org/garryb/questions/june-3-2002response.htm

 

3.  PRESENTATION TO CIVITAS “BILL C-68 FIREARMS FIASCO” – APRIL 27, 2002

http://www.cssa-cila.org/garryb/publications/Civitas.htm

 

4.  FIREARMS QUICK FACTS

http://www.cssa-cila.org/garryb/firearmsquickfacts.htm

 

For the safety of police and all Canadians, I respectfully request you re-visit the resolution the CPA passed in 1999.  Like all taxpayers, police and public servants, have an obligation to ensure that tax dollars are being spent in the most cost-effective manner – benefits must outweigh the costs.  Canadians deserve to know what the police on the street really think about the Liberal’s billion-dollar gun registry – only you can tell them.

 

Sincerely,

 

Garry Breitkreuz, MP

Yorkton-Melville