PUBLICATION:        The Edmonton Sun 

DATE:                         2003.12.01

EDITION:                    Final 

SECTION:                  Editorial/Opinion 

PAGE:                         10 

COLUMN:                  Editorial 

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SHOOT REGISTRY DOWN

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Short weeks ago, Paul Martin stood in a corral at the Edmonton Stockyards and lamented about western alienation. This was while he was in the make-believe world before the aged Quebec politician officially acquired the trappings of office and the powers to do anything about western alienation.  He also made an important speech and again raged that the West wants in, without delivering any specific ways he would make it happen. Or even acknowledging what western alienation really is.

Well, last week, Martin's time ran out, with revelations that the cost of the Ottawa Liberals' detested national firearms registry is on track to top $1 billion. For a simple program that the Ottawa anti-gun zealots were boasting would cost as little as $2 million to implement, this is a stunning admission by the feds.

And it certainly falls in line with the price tag Canada's heroic Auditor General Sheila Fraser predicted as long ago as last December in her damning investigation of the out-of-control agency. Like the Kyoto agreement, the Wheat Board monopoly and Senate reform, the registry is perceived by thousands of western Canadians - and Albertans in particular - as an invasive Ottawa evil and a root cause of western alienation.

And so it should be. It's a gross waste of precious tax dollars that would have been far better used in boosting the Royal Canadian Mounted Police budget and fighting real crime, rather than attempting to criminalize law-abiding Canadians because they aren't in possession of the proper piece of paper required by Ottawa's convoluted and ever-changing registry rules.

Not to mention the extremely personal questionnaires that Canadians are compelled to complete, in which they must lay bare the full details of their lives to the crats in order to qualify for a simple possession and acquisition certificate. Yet none of this appears to have substantially quelled the number of crimes committed with firearms. Because crooks do not register their guns!

Whenever the latest cost overruns are revealed by Canadian Alliance MP Garry Breitkreuz, who has done a masterful job in exposing this extreme Liberal boondoggle, the Grits tend to obfuscate, stonewall and as often as not, simply not tell the truth.

This may have been seen a common practice under the departing Chretien. But Martin has been promising a new deal for the West - a government that really wants to listen to our concerns this time.  Well, the gun registry insult is the first place for him to start. Either that or Prime Minister Paul's political honeymoon will be an extremely short one.