PUBLICATION WINNIPEG FREE PRESS 

DATE :  THU JUN.19,2003 

PAGE :  A14 

CLASS :  Focus 

EDITION :  

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Editorial - Still trying

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In what looks like an attempt to attach credibility to Ottawa's gun registry, Solicitor General Wayne Easter this week announced the formation of a 13-member committee to advise him on how to make the law work better. The committee might start by advising the government on how it can make the registry work at all. By any useful standard, the registry is an abject failure. This dismal fact becomes obvious when the two usual standards for evaluating legislation -- cost and effectiveness -- are applied.

The cost is now a billion dollars and counting -- counting the millions of additional dollars as the government seeks, every few months, further financing to keep the registration effort running. While the cost is now obvious, the effectiveness of the law is more elusive. The Liberals have spent a billion dollars on a program -- a program which was supposed to pay for itself -- that has yet to register more than a fraction of gun owners.

Mr. Easter, whose department inherited this political hot potato after the Justice department had bungled it through three successive ministers, believes that "Canadians ... want a well run, fiscally responsible program" of gun registry and that his new committee will help him offer them that.

Perhaps it will, although the odds seem unfavourable. It draws its members from a wide spectrum of opinion about gun laws, people who at first blush seem unlikely to arrive at any consensus that might help Mr. Easter. In fact, until the federal government admits that the gun registry has failed, the various factions have no need to seek common ground or reasonable compromise.

There are several alternatives to the gun laws as they stand. The most obvious is to abandon the grand registry and simply register every gun as it changes hands. In the fullness of time, almost every gun would come into the registry with a minimum of expense and controversy. But until Ottawa admits that, and makes it clear that it will seek an alternative, no committee will have the incentive and no budget, however open-ended, will be generous enough to give Canadians the registry the government has been trying to create.