http://www.garrybreitkreuz.com/publications/whatdidtaxpayersget.htm
WHAT DID TAXPAYERS GET FOR THEIR BILLION DOLLARS?
By Garry Breitkreuz, MP � November 29, 2002
Just this week we have seen a headline in the Globe and Mail
saying: �Gun registry to cost around $1-billion,� an editorial in
the National Post titled, �Time to ditch the gun registry,�
and the Edmonton Sun reported, �Firearms centre won�t work:
City Cop.� We hate to say we told you so.
Back in 1995, when Bill C-68, the Firearms Act, was being debated
in the House of Commons, twenty Reform MPs took that opportunity to warn
the government that it would cost a billion dollars to register all the
guns in Canada. Then Justice Minister Allan Rock pooh-poohed our
projections saying: �We have provided our estimate of the cost of
implementing universal registration over the next five years. We say that
it will cost $85 million. We encourage the members opposite to examine
our estimates. We are confident we will demonstrate that the figures are
realistic and accurate.� (Hansard Page 9709 � February 16, 1995).
After seven years, all Canadians now know who was right; unfortunately,
the Liberal�s still don�t get it. On November 28, 2002, Justice Minister
Martin Cauchon was still claiming in the House of Commons that the gun
registry is, �...worth proceeding with such a fantastic value as
protecting our society.�
On Tuesday, December 3, 2002, the Auditor General of Canada, Mrs. Sheila
Fraser will present her report to Parliament documenting what she
uncovered in her year-long financial audit of the gun registry. She has
confirmed with my office that her audit only examined the costs and did,
�not examine the efficiency and performance of the program.�
The Auditor General�s report won�t tell you, so I�ll try to give you
a snapshot of what taxpayers got for their billion-dollar �investment� in
the Liberals� gun registration scheme. The most important question now
is, will the Liberals waste another billion before they actually admit
the complete and utter failure of their gun registry to do anything to
reduce the criminal use of firearms?
(1) Taxpayers got a gun registry that concentrates almost exclusively on
law-abiding, responsible hunters and sport shooters instead of criminals,
gangs, smugglers and terrorists;
(2) taxpayers got a gun registry that has so infuriated the provincial
and territorial governments that eight of them have opted out of the
administration of the gun registry and the Western provinces refuse to
enforce it;
(3) taxpayers got a gun registry that doesn�t keep track of the current
addresses of the 131,000 persons prohibited from owning firearms and
fails to check if their guns have been removed from their possession;
(4) taxpayers got a new gun registry based on the failed 68-year-old
legally-owned handgun registry that has seen a steady increase in
firearms homicides committed with handguns from 27% in 1974 to 58% in
2000. Statistics Canada also reported that between 1997 and 2001, 74% of
the handguns recovered from the scenes of 143 homicides were NOT
registered;
(5) taxpayers got a gun registry that is attempting to register all the
legally-owned long guns in Canada while Statistics Canada tables show
that firearms homicides with rifles and shotguns that have never been
registered dropped steadily over the last 27 years, from 64% to 31%;
(6) taxpayers got a gun registry that has licenced only 2 million of
Canada�s 3.3 million gun owners and as of February 27, 2002, had already
lost track of 38,000 of them;
(7) taxpayers got a gun registry that has only registered 5 million of
the estimated 16.5 million guns in Canada;
(8) taxpayers got a gun registry that has a firearms licence refusal and
revocation rate that is one half the results achieved with the
23-year-old Firearms Acquisition Certificate program;
(9) taxpayers got a gun registry that issued 5 million registration
certificates that don�t even have the gun owners� name on them. Eighteen
million vehicle registrations have the owners� names;
(10) taxpayers got a gun registry with 3.2 million registration
certificates with blank and unknown entries � three-quarters of a million
with no serial numbers;
(11) taxpayers got a gun registry that admits to issuing 15,381 firearms
licences to persons with no proof of having passed a firearms safety
course;
(12) taxpayers got a registry that admits to issuing 26,800 duplicate
Firearms Registration Certificates, issuing 832 duplicate firearms
licences and issuing 259 firearms licences with the wrong
photograph;
(13) taxpayers got a gun registry that prohibited more than 568,000
legally owned and registered firearms, but left police without the
resources necessary to combat the criminal use of illegally-owned
firearms in our major cities;
(14) taxpayers got a gun registry that has increased red tape and the
regulatory cost of buying a hunting rifle to $279.00 which in turn has
driven hundreds of thousands of hunters out of their sport and cost our
economy many millions;
(15) taxpayers got a gun registry that hands out boxes of ammunition to
Aboriginal people who do NOT hold a valid firearms licence; and finally,
(16) taxpayers got a gun registry that will never do what the government
promised - namely, tell police where the guns are.
In closing, I would like to challenge taxpayers to ask themselves the
next question: Where would they have liked this wasted billion dollars to
have been spent � health care, defence, more police on the street, etc?
Here are a couple of examples. According to the Solicitor General of
Ontario, we could have put more than 10,000 police officers on our
streets and highways. A billion dollars would have bought, installed and
operated 238 MRIs for a year. How much pain, suffering and worry would
have been alleviated and how many lives would have been saved? What a
sad, sad choice the Liberal MPs and our government have made for
Canadians.
Garry Breitkreuz is the Member of Parliament for Yorkton-Melville,
Saskatchewan, and the Official Opposition Critic for Firearms and
Property Rights.
For more information you can visit Garry�s website at:
www.garrybreitkreuz.com
_______________________
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