PUBLICATION: National Post
DATE:
2004.02.18
EDITION:
National
SECTION:
Editorials
PAGE:
A19
SOURCE:
National Post
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The
quiet scandal of the gun registry
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Paul
Martin, the Prime Minister, has gone to great lengths to express his outrage
over the sponsorship scandal plaguing his government. This past Sunday, for
instance, Mr. Martin declared on CBC's Cross Country Checkup that those
responsible "don't belong in public life." The same day, he told an
interviewer that "Canadians are mad as they can possibly be, and I am as
mad as I can possibly be."
Whether
Mr. Martin's fury is real or mostly just for public consumption is debatable.
But given his reaction to the government's misuse of $100-million, we can't help
but ask: Why isn't he equally "mad" about another government program
that will soon have quietly wasted 10 times as much money, if not considerably
more?
Granted,
the federal gun registry is less a question of ethics than of gross
mismanagement. But regardless of whether one believes that the registry will
help save lives -- and it won't -- its cost overruns are outrageous. Projected
to have a net cost of just $2-million when it was announced in 1994, its 10-year
cost was projected at $1-billion by Auditor-General Sheila Fraser in 2002. As
usual, Ms. Fraser appears to have been right on the money: Irene Arsenault, a
spokeswoman for the Canada Firearms Centre, said Monday that the cumulative cost
from the program's launch in 1995 to the end of this March will be $947-million.
Meanwhile, Ms. Arsenault -- while denying a report by Radio-Canada that the
government has actually committed or spent $2-billion on the program --
acknowledged that the registry will wind up $20-million over its $113-million
budget for the current fiscal year.
Along
with the opposition Conservatives, some Liberals seem to understand that it's
time to pull the plug. Roger Gallaway, an Ontario MP and parliamentary secretary
to the government House leader, expressed hope that funding for the program
would be eliminated in a free Commons vote when departmental spending estimates
come before Parliament this spring. But he was soon contradicted by Jacques
Saada, the House leader, who said there would be no free vote on the matter. Mr.
Saada later backpedalled slightly.
The
message is clear: The Martin government has no intention of scrapping the
registry. And as for major changes, registry opponents who have met with Albina
Guarnieri, the minister for emergency preparedness assigned by Mr. Martin to
review the program, have come away discouraged.
Given
his supposed commitment to tighter, more efficient government, even before the
sponsorship scandal broke, Mr. Martin's indifference to the absurdly bloated gun
registry is baffling. Unlike the sponsorship scandal, this is a problem that
could easily be put to rest.
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NEWS RELEASE - November 24, 2003
GUN
REGISTRY TO REACH A BILLION DOLLARS – A YEAR AHEAD OF SCHEDULE
“But
newly released numbers still don’t include ‘major additional costs’
identified by the Auditor General.”
http://www.cssa-cila.org/garryb/breitkreuzgpress/guns102.htm