NEWS RELEASE
June 15, 2000
For Immediate Release
SUPREME COURT RULING DOESN’T CHANGE A THING - THE GUN REGISTRY IS USELESS
"Elect a Canadian Alliance government and C-68 and the Firearms Act, is history," vows Breitkreuz
Ottawa –
Garry Breitkreuz, MP for Yorkton-Melville, wasn’t the least bit deterred in his quest to kill the Liberal government’s gun registration scheme after the Supreme Court of Canada today ruled unanimously against a constitutional challenge by six provinces and two territories. "The quickest way to kill this useless bureaucratic mess is to elect a Canadian Alliance government," said Breitkreuz. "This is just the first of many challenges to the gun law that will find their way to the Supreme Court. The Liberals simply refuse to admit their mistakes. We told them why it wouldn’t work in 1995 and every one of our predictions is coming true. Except the registry costs which will reach a billion dollars much sooner than we forecast. The government projects at least a 25% non-compliance rate. This alone will make it impossible for the government to licence all the gun owners and register all the guns, and together with the huge error rate, makes the whole exercise completely useless.""In 1995, the government defended the impossibility of the task by saying it would be no more complex than the Income Tax system. In fact, it’s proving to be even more complex and riddled with errors that compound themselves every day. So far more than $400 million and more than 1,500 employees have been diverted from real law enforcement priorities. For these reasons and more, police on the street continue to oppose the gun registry and will eventually withdraw their ‘official’ support for this firearms fiasco."
For the last two days in a row, the Prime Minister of Canada has refused to answer Breitkreuz’s questions about which of his Ministers of Justice is responsible for the $320 million gun registry deficit. In the House of Commons on Tuesday, Breitkreuz asked Prime Minister Chretien: "In 1995, the Justice Minister tabled a document titled Financial Framework for Bill C-68 that projected a deficit of $2 million over five years for implementation of the gun registration scheme. It is now five years later and the deficit is $320 million. That is 150 times larger than the deficit first projected. What is responsible for this huge waste of money, the previous minister's ridiculous estimate or the current minister's mismanagement of the scheme?" Breitkreuz commented, "Chretien ducked the question and asked the person responsible for the ballooning billion dollar boondoggle, Justice Minister Anne McLellan, to answer the question – She didn’t."
"Today, the Minister of Justice also announced her second ‘Stay-Out-of-Jail Sale’ in a hopeless attempt to get law abiding firearm owners to buy into her registry. The Possession Only Licence used to be $10 to encourage compliance – it failed. Then the government increased the fee to $45 and applications dropped. Now they put it back down to $10 again. The results will be same," predicted Breitkreuz. "With even lower fees, I wonder exactly how will the Minister keep her promise that ‘user fees will cover the total cost of the program’ ?
Breitkreuz’s colleague, Lee Morrison, pointed out another obvious fly-in-the-ointment on Tuesday when he asked Anne McLellan and she refused to answer this question: "Mr. Speaker, as of June 4, the Canadian Firearms Centre had issued only 183,353 personal licences and had a backlog of about 144,000 applications in process or awaiting attention. At that rate, even using the Justice Department's lowball estimate of three million gun owners in Canada, it would take about 25 years to complete the licensing process. I ask the justice minister, what is going to happen on the deadline date of December 31 of this year?"
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For more information:
Yorkton Office: (306) 782-3309
Ottawa Office: (613) 992-4394
e-mail:
breitg0@parl.gc.caWeb Site:
www.garry-breitkreuz.com