“Departmental
documents contradict claims Justice Minister makes in the House of Commons.”
Ottawa
– Garry
Breitkreuz, Official Opposition Critic on Firearms and Property Rights, issued
his third error report on the Canadian Firearms Program.
“Every time I ask the Justice Minister a question in the House of
Commons he always replies that the gun registry is working well.
But almost every report I receive from the Minister’s department
through Access to Information provides statistics that prove the opposite is
true,” said Breitkreuz. “It
happened again in the House on Monday evening while the Parliamentary Secretary
to the Minister of Justice and Attorney General, Paul Macklin, was ducking a
follow-up to a question I had asked the Justice Minister a month before.
Mr. Macklin claimed that 99% of the firearms were correctly registered
and 99% of licences correctly issued – claims that directly contradicted
evidence provided to my office by the Justice Department in several documents
over the past few months including the most recent one dated May 22, 2002,”
reported Breitkreuz. “I’ll make
a point of sending copies of these documents to the Minister and his
Parliamentary Secretary so they can get their facts straight in the future.
The Minister is responsible for every error and every error has the
potential of criminalizing law-abiding Canadians.”
Here
are the headlines from Breitkreuz’s latest error report:
1.
1.Justice
Dept. admits 90% + 42% error rate in firearms registration applications.
2.
Justice Dept. admits to issuing 259 firearms licences with the wrong
photograph.
3.
992 licencing and registration errors reported to the Canadian Firearms
Centre (CFC) and the Central
4.
A legally acquired 9 mm handgun and three shotguns confiscated from the
home of Hell’s Angel leader Maurice
“Mom” Boucher.
5. RCMP
re-registers a handgun as a “machine
gun”.
6. Saskatchewan
man received a Firearm Registration Certificate for a 12-gauge shotgun he never
owned.
7. RCMP
issues nine registration certificates for the re-registration of six handguns.
8.
B.C. gun owner receives firearms identification card for a person living
in Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario.
9. Ontario
firearms owner received 24 registration certificates for his eight rifles.
10.
Ontario
gun owner receives registration certificate for a Winchester rifle he has never
owned.
11.
Saskatchewan
gun owner receives three Possession and Acquisition Licences in three days.
12.
N.B. man still waiting for his firearms licence since applying over 20 months
ago.
13.
Justice Dept. and RCMP have no control over firearms without serial numbers.
14.
Firearms
Officer refuses to correct serial number error.
15.
Manitoba
man gave up trying to get the wrong photo on his licence corrected.
Click
here for the full report and links to previous error reports:
http://www.cssa-cila.org/garryb/publications/gunregistryerrors3.htm
“Canadians
need to ask their government why a billion dollars is being spent implementing a
gun registry that’s riddled with errors.
What is the point of collecting all this garbage that is absolutely
useless to anyone, especially the police? Just
think how many lives could have been saved if we had put this billion dollars
into our health care system,” concluded Breitkreuz.
-30-