PUBLICATION:              National Post

DATE:                         2004.05.22

EDITION:                    National

SECTION:                  Editorials

PAGE:                         A23

SOURCE:                   National Post

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Don't fix the gun registry -- kill it

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The Martin government's decision to do some minor tinkering with the failed gun registry is a pre-election sop that will fail. That's because the tiny changes announced this week -- such as dropping gun registration fees and reining in the registry's gargantuan costs -- will not address the heart of the problem: the registry's very existence.

Auditor-General Sheila Fraser estimates the gun registry will be $1-billion over budget by next year. Spending all this money might make sense if any good came out of the project. But little will: During a recent meeting with this editorial board, Toronto Police Chief Julian Fantino told us the registry had not helped his officers nail a single convict. Since most crooks use unregistered, stolen guns smuggled from the United States, that is hardly surprising. Rather, the Canadians who are inconvenienced by the registry are mostly rural hunters and sport shooters.

Mr. Martin and those around him know this. But they can't back off from the registry because they don't want to offend the left-wing, urban constituency that demanded the registry in the first place. So, instead of uprooting the entire mess, they're instituting superficial reforms.

The Liberals are especially sensitive to charges that spending on the gun registry is out of control. Thus has Anne McLellan, the Public Safety and Security Minister, announced that program funding will be capped at $25-million per year. But recall that when the program was launched by then-Justice Minister Allan Rock in 1995, the whole thing was supposed to cost taxpayers just $2-million net of revenues.

Moreover, much of the money has simply been wasted -- including tens of millions of dollars on computer systems that don't work. This week, it was reported that an internal Justice Department review of the program found that rules were routinely broken in the awarding of registry contracts: More than 70% of deals were doled out without tender; paperwork was missing; contracts were given without clear goals; and frequent changes to signed agreements were made.

Costs aside, the most intrusive elements of the registry remain intact. Failure to register a gun is still a criminal offence. Thus, not abiding by the Firearms Act still exposes ordinary citizens to the potential for harsher punishments than some criminals who use a gun in the commission of a violent crime. And warrantless searches of private homes (innocently called "inspections" in the Act) can still be executed by the government if it believes you're harboring your grandfather's unregistered hand-me-down hunting rifle.

If the Liberals want to impress rural voters, they shouldn't bother tinkering with the gun registry. They should eliminate it altogether.