NEWS RELEASE

August 11, 2004                                                                                            For Immediate Release

ANNE McLELLAN STILL CAN’T PROVE GUN REGISTRY IS IMPROVING PUBLIC SAFETY

“Taxpayers have a right to know what results were achieved for more than a billion dollars.”

Yorkton – Today, Garry Breitkreuz, Member of Parliament for Yorkton-Melville, released government documents that show the Liberal government’s billion-dollar investment in the gun registry has produced little in the way of public safety improvements.  “Anne McLellan can spout a lot of statistics, but what good is all this activity and expense if it isn’t producing the results they promised?” asked Breitkreuz.  “The question the Liberals cannot or will not answer is: What did 600,000 hits on the gun registration website do to make our lives safer?  Only Liberals would regard a blizzard of bureaucratic buffoonery as evidence of doing something useful.”

Public Safety Minister, Anne McLellan provided the media with questionable statistics during an announcement on May 20, 2004, in Edmonton.  Breitkreuz, the long-time critic of the Liberal gun registry, filed an Access to Information Act request asking for copies of reports that would show the actual improvement in public safety resulting from the statistics cited. 

“I specifically asked the Minister for reports that would prove the gun registry is actually doing what the Liberals promised it would do when they rammed Bill C-68 through Parliament back in 1995.  I asked for statistics like: the number of crimes solved, domestic homicides prevented, and the reduction in violent crime,” reported Breitkreuz.  “But her bureaucrats couldn’t produce any of the reports I asked for.  Instead, they sent me an NWEST report for the month of April 2004 which is next to useless because it too shows lots of activity but no actual results.”

Since NWEST’s inception, Breitkreuz has repeatedly asked the Minister’s department and the RCMP to produce reports that show NWEST is worth the money being spent on it.  “I specifically requested information with respect to the disposition of charges laid and the disposition of the firearms seized,” reported Breitkreuz.  “But this week the Information Commissioner of Canada confirmed that NWEST does not even produce such reports for the executive in the RCMP who are now paying NWEST’s bills.”

“How many of the charges laid with NWEST’s support were thrown out of court or how many accused were found not guilty?  How many of the firearms seized with NWEST’s support had to be returned like the case out in Winnipeg last December where RCMP were forced to return 152 firearms to their lawful owners?  How much time and money is NWEST wasting chasing gun owners that may be paper criminals but are no threat to public safety at all?” asked Breitkreuz. 

“Taxpayers have a right to know what they got for their billion dollars.  Taxpayers have a right to know why the government is committed to spending another billion or two before the Auditor General will complete her value-for-money audit in 2005 or 2006.  The Liberals have kept Parliament in the dark for far too long about their firearms follies.  If they can’t prove the gun registry is working after ten years and more than a billion dollars spent, then the whole program should be scrapped,” concluded Breitkreuz.

NWEST REPORTS TO RCMP INCOMPLETE INFORMATION COMMISSIONER CONFIRMS

http://www.cssa-cila.org/garryb/publications/Article414.htm

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