NEWS
RELEASE
December
5, 2002
For Immediate Release
CASH
FLOW SHUT DOWN TO FAILED FIREARM REGISTRY
House of Commons pulls $72-million
from program, while Justice Minister refuses to reveal costs
OTTAWA
– “Today, was the first day of the end of the gun registry,” predicted
Garry Breitkreuz, Official Opposition Critic for Firearms and Property Rights. “A program can’t run without money and we’ll keep
pressing the government until all the funding for this useless program is cut
off completely.”
“The
Liberal government admitted defeat today by pulling an additional $72-million in
spending on the gun registry from the Supplementary Estimates before it came to
a controversial vote in the House tonight,” commented Breitkreuz. “This is unprecedented in the history of Parliament.
The taps have turned off. This
is the beginning of the end for this latest billion-dollar boondoggle.”
“This
is a great victory for the Alliance and for Canadians.
We have been critical of the Liberal firearm registry since its
inception, seven years ago. It has
already wasted a billion dollars, despite a scathing audit by the Auditor
General for being horribly mismanaged, and despite criticism by the RCMP for
being riddled with mistakes that render it ineffective.
Today the madness ends,” said Alliance MP Garry Breitkreuz.
"The
problem is that the Minister of Justice is still defending the registry and
still doesn’t know how much it’s going to cost to finish the job and how
much it’s going to cost to maintain it,” reported Breitkreuz.
“The Minister was asked this question nine times today in Question
Period, and he refused to provide any figures at all to justify the gun
registry.”
“The
main point in the Auditor General’s report was that Parliament was kept in the
dark. The Justice Minister hasn’t
learned a thing. He’s still not
answering our questions and as a consequence Parliament and the public are being
kept in the dark,” concluded Breitkreuz.
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