From: "Gunter, Lorne (EDM_EXCHANGE)", [EMAIL PROTECTED] appeared Friday 21 April 2000 The first three days of next week, senior officials from the Department of Justice and the Canadian Firearms Centre (CFC) will meet in Toronto with the nation's leading gun-owner groups, fish and game associations and shooting sports organizations. Among those expected to attend will be representatives from the National Coalition of Provincial and Territorial Wildlife Federations, the National Firearms Association, the Responsible Firearms Owners of Alberta, the Shooting Federation of Canada, the Canadian Institute for Legislative Action and the Law-Abiding Unregistered Firearms Association. As recently as two months ago, Justice Minister and Edmonton MP Anne McLellan insisted there would be no negotiation. She would bull ahead with her government's plan to license all of Canada's three million gun owners by the end of this year, despite the project's out-of-control costs and dubious usefulness. When the invitations first went out for the TO meeting, there was some hope McLellan had changed her mind. Perhaps the gun owners were being asked to gather to discuss alternatives to the federal gun registry.... But, alas, such does not seem to be the case. The gun groups appear to have been summoned so Ottawa, as improbable as it sounds, can try to convince them to help encourage owners to seek licences and registration certificates. The CFC has a new boss, Maryantonett Flumian, once an assistant deputy minister of fisheries. It seems to be the hope among McLellan and others in Ottawa that this fresh face will change gun owners' opposition to the intrusive, cumbrous, obnoxious and bungled registry. Three-quarters of the Toronto meeting will be devoted to designing initiatives to reward those owners who register. Another 90-minute session will ask participants how they might become involved ``in reaching out to firearms owners throughout Canada that need to be licensed by the end of the year.'' That doesn't sound like an offer to renegotiate. It sounds like a syrupy attempt to co-opt Ottawa's major opponents. Fat chance of that working. So far, the registry has been an enormous waste of money and effort, and none of the groups invited to Toronto has any interest in helping the government sell its mess. Since it opened Dec. 1, 1998, the registry has managed to license just 142,000 gun owners in 16 months. The government claims it has licensed 409,000 gun owners over that period, but 267,000 of those are merely people who held and continue to hold valid firearms acquisition certificates issued under the old licensing system. Since there were 405,000 valid FACs in circulation when the new registry opened, it's not too much of a stretch to argue that all the CFC has managed to accomplish in nearly a year and a half is renew 138,000 old licences and issue 4,000 new ones. It has also managed to register just 306,000 of the estimated seven to 10 million guns in Canada -- just four per cent of the owners and three per cent of the guns. On Monday, Canadian Alliance MP Garry Breitkreuz released a report written by the non-partisan Library of Parliament that reveals more than 1,400 people are currently employed full time at this task, though. That's just six owners registered per month per employee.... The CFC employs 280 people at its central registry in New Brunswick and another 73 in Ottawa. Canada Customs has 19 officers working on the registry, too. There are another 242 full-time contract positions, mostly involved in writing computer software for the registry, and nearly 100 more federal agents stationed in the four provinces and three territories (including Alberta) that refuse to help administer the new scheme. But most troubling are the nearly 400 members of the RCMP who have been diverted from crime fighting to paper pushing. Not all, or even most, of these staffers are uniformed Mounties. Most are civilian members of the force. But the Mounties do not have enough money, according to the federal Auditor General, to fight organized crime, crack criminal gangs, stop international money laundering, end drug and refugee smuggling, halt the trade in sex slaves, prevent Canada from becoming a haven for terrorists or even stop high school kids from acquiring guns to settle schoolyard disputes. McLellan has repeatedly claimed that her registry has not diverted money from front-line policing, particularly from the RCMP. She has insisted the money spent on 400 gun registration staff in the RCMP is new money, as if, because it is new, it could not be spent on fighting real crime instead. And all of this for a startup cost that is rapidly approaching half-a-billion dollars and annual operating charges 10 times the original estimates. Good luck getting owners' groups to join in that kind of fiasco. ____________________ Lorne Gunter, Columnist The Edmonton Journal -------[Cybershooters contacts]-------- Editor: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Website & subscription info: www.cybershooters.org
