NEWS RELEASE

January 30, 2004                                                                                      For Immediate Release

NEW DOCUMENTS PROVE PARLIAMENT STILL BEING MISLED ON GUN REGISTRY

“Reports prove that gun registration was NOT successfully completed as Parliament was led to believe.”

Yorkton – Today, Garry Breitkreuz, Official Opposition Critic for Firearms and Property Rights, released statistics from the Canada Firearms Centre (CFC) that prove the government’s reports to Parliament have been very misleading.  “The Justice Minister’s report to Parliament last October left the impression that the registration phase of the program had been successfully completed.  Nowhere in the report was this false impression clarified.  The Performance Report should have told MPs the truth as the government Ministers repeatedly promised.  Instead they continued the cover-up,” exclaimed Breitkreuz. 

Why were these facts left out of the government’s reports to Parliament on the firearms program?

• Total number of valid firearm license holders that still haven’t registered a gun = 414,283.
• Total number of gun owners that still have to re-register or dispose of their handguns = 318,846.
• Total number of firearms that still have to be registered = 1,100,000 (based on gov’t estimates).
• Total number of handguns that still have to be re-registered = 625,829.
• The CFC admitted they do not collect statistics on the 288,688 guns brought into Canada by visitors.
• Non-compliance is so bad that the CFC developed a “National Compliance Strategy & Program”.

“All of these important details were left out of the government’s reports to Parliament,” reported Breitkreuz.  “The government failed to report this vital information in the Estimates tabled last March 27^th when the government requested MPs to vote on another $113 million for the firearms program.  And these statistics weren’t in the Minister’s Performance Report on the Firearms Program tabled in Parliament last October 31^st.”  It should make everyone wonder:  What else are they hiding?”

“It’s time to force the government to come clean on the firearms file,” demanded Breitkreuz.  “I’ll be rising on a Question of Privilege next Tuesday at 10 AM. “This continual cover-up and contempt of Parliament has to stop!”

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