NOTE:  This Ottawa Citizen editorial also appeared in The Edmonton Journal today.

PUBLICATION:        The Ottawa Citizen

DATE:                         2003.06.10

EDITION:                    Final

SECTION:                  Editorial

PAGE:                         A14

SOURCE:                   Ottawa Citizen  

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This dog won't hunt

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If you're applying for a firearms licence in Canada, you'd better be more accurate in filling out your form than the people who run the long-gun registry. And more consistent.

The federal government has long touted the thoroughness of its background checks for those who register their guns. Yet Solicitor General Wayne Easter has now admitted that far from being automatic, reference checks are carried out "at the discretion of the investigator, based on the issue being assessed." How often? He doesn't know or care. Maybe thorough checks really aren't necessary. But why didn't they tell us from the beginning?

It's a disturbing pattern. First Allan Rock ridiculed warnings of a billion-dollar price tag. Then, when the auditor general blew the whistle on a 500-fold cost overrun, we were told it was worth it. But why didn't they tell us up front it would cost a lot?

In December, the prime minister said people had "lost their jobs" over the cost overrun. Then the former chief executive officer of the Canadian Firearms Centre told Parliament he hadn't fired or demoted anyone and, "I don't know to what the prime minister may have been referring." Nor, it seems, does anyone else.

Bureaucratic bungling, huge cost overruns, no accountability for mistakes: Surely even the Liberals must now admit that it's time to end this fiasco, once and for all.

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