PUBLICATION:
The
Ottawa Sun
DATE: 2005.02.03
EDITION:
Final
SECTION:
Comment
PAGE:
12
COLUMN:
Editorial
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REPORT
FULL OF BLANKS
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A
cynical person could be forgiven for believing that the government's promise to
look into the exorbitant cost overruns at the federal gun registry was nothing
more than a convenient way to sweep the matter under the rug during last year's
federal election.
Already
under fire over the auditor general's report about massive misspending on its
advertising budget, newly minted Prime Minister Paul Martin clearly needed to
find a way to take the heat off his government as he prepared to go to the
polls.
So
in late 2003 he asked Veterans Affairs Minister Albina Guarnieri (at the time
the associate minister of defence), to travel across the country asking
Canadians what had gone wrong with the registry -- which was originally supposed
to cost $2 million but was running up a tab of 1,000 times that much -- and how
it could be fixed.
Canadians
apparently had plenty to tell her. Guarnieri spent three months on her study,
promising journalists that her final report and its recommendations would be
made public, but someone who outranked her had different ideas. Since her
findings were contained in a report to cabinet they were considered
confidential.
Maybe
the government was worried that taxpayers -- who by then had put up $2 billion
for the registry -- couldn't handle the truth.
The
findings of Guarnieri's investigation might never have seen the light of day if
the Sun had not filed an access to information request for the report. But we
still haven't been told anything close to the whole story yet. Our copy of the
report was heavily censored, with 32 of the original 48 pages deleted.
The
pages that were missing? Oh yes, they contained the recommendations to bring
costs under control and make the registry accountable.
And to think that Paul Martin campaigned on a promise to bring openness and honesty to government.