NEWS RELEASE

September 23, 2003                                                                                    For Immediate Release

UNBELIEVABLE! THE GOV’T ITSELF IDENTIFIES 90 PROBLEMS IN THE GUN REGISTRY

“The additional cost to fix these problems – plus all the ones they missed – should end the gun registry.”

Ottawa – The government’s most recent evaluation of the gun registry identified ninety problems with the gun registry.  “But that’s only half the story,” says Garry Breitkreuz, Official Opposition Critic for Firearms and Property Rights.  “They missed documenting some of the most important problems.  For instance, police will never know where the registered guns are stored – let alone the whereabouts of the millions of unregistered ones,” reported Breitkreuz.  “The Minister didn’t have this report when he issued his so-called ‘Action Plan’ in February or tabled his departmental ‘Estimates’ in March.  Fixing these problems – and the many his bureaucrats missed – will drive the gun registry costs much, much higher than the billion they already wasted,” predicted Breitkreuz. 

The Justice Department document was obtained by the Saskatchewan MP through his 373^rd Access to Information Act request.  Some of the key problems highlighted in the 58-page evaluation were:

• Page iv: “By September 2002, over 200,000 owners had not complied with the legislation by obtaining a licence.”
• Page v: “The Program is not being implemented and applied uniformly across the country.”
• Page viii: “Aboriginal adaptation regulations receive limited use by some Chief Firearm Officers.”
• Page 34: “Firearm officers in the field are often unable to gain access to the system.”
• Page 34: “The police are unable to verify the ATT [Authorization To Transport] via the CFRO.”
• Page 34: “[Firearm] prohibition orders are not automatically captured and entered into the CFRS.”
• Page 34: “Police users observed that when making a query on the way to a residential call, the system only generates a list of firearm registration certificate numbers … and sufficient time to query specific firearm-type information is not always available.”
• Page 35: “The Firearms Interest Police (FIP) Database - The main concern expressed over this issue is that relevant risk data could be overlooked among large amounts of irrelevant/duplicate data.”
• Page 37: “Registration data might not be able to conclusively identify the ownership of a non-restricted firearm.”
• Page 39: “Specific examples included: licences being sent to the wrong person, licences with incorrect information, and licences with the incorrect photographs.”
• Page 42: “Key informants noted that many processing problems resulted from manual data entry errors.”
• Page 44: “Very few [police agencies] reported that they had received CFC legislative training materials.”
• Page 47: “Cuts to research commencing in 1999 and subsequent cuts may have negatively affected the implementation of the Program by limiting insight into key policy issues.  Program research had been reduced to the point of being non-existent.”
• Page 54: “The Quebec processing site is less efficient and more prone to error than the CPS.”

“One of the more amazing things about the government’s internal evaluation is that they uncovered so many problems by talking amongst themselves.  Just think what they would have uncovered if they had actually talked to the firearms organizations and the honest citizens who have been forced – under threat of criminal prosecution – to register themselves and their guns?  There are so many holes in the ship that it’s time for the rats to leave,” concluded Breitkreuz.

PROBLEMS HIGHLIGHTED IN THE CANADIAN FIREARMS

PROGRAM IMPLEMENTATION EVALUATION - April 2003

http://www.cssa-cila.org/garryb/publications/Article168.htm

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