Ah, yes, remember the Chrétien years?
Allan Rock's $2-billion fiasco
Kevin Gaudet, National Post
Published: Thursday, March 19, 2009
Many jokes get played on April Fool's Day. This year, however, April 1 brings a chance to end one long, painful and expensive joke that has been played on Canadian taxpayers and law-abiding gun owners. On that day, Parliament is expected to debate ways to improve the federal gun registry, and to save tax dollars; in part by ending the long-gun registry, a move that can be made without compromising public safety.
The debate will involve voting on a private member's bill moved by Garry Breitkreuz, the veteran Conservative MP for Yorkton-Melville. Members of Parliament will have a genuine opportunity to end this outrageously wasteful program.
Back in 1995, then-Justice Minister Allan Rock sold Canadians a false bill of goods with Bill C-68, establishing the Canadian Firearms Registry. The idea was to create a national registry to license long-gun owners and their guns, much like provinces do with cars and drivers.
Minister Rock declared the grand scheme would cost only $119-million to build and run, and that gun owners would cover $117-million of that through registration fees, leaving taxpayers on the hook for only $2-million. Supporters of the registry applauded its low costs, their opponents were dismissed as gun nuts, and Canadians quietly accepted the registry.
How wrong they were. Costs soared, and no improvement to public safety resulted.
In response, the Canadian Taxpayers Federation launched a petition that garnered over 14,000 signatures demanding the program be audited by the Auditor General. It was, and the findings revealed astounding waste. For over 14 years, taxpayers have been soaked to the tune of no less that $2-billion.
A large part of the $2-billion was for a computer system to track registered guns. Officials initially estimated it would cost about $1-million. In 2004, documents obtained through Access to Information revealed the cost was up to $750-million. By 2006, Canada's Auditor General, Sheila Fraser, released a report revealing costs were easily over $1-billion, and even that figure covered only a few elements of the program. These costs did not include enforcement costs, compliance costs, economic costs and costs incurred by other government departments. (Other errors and unforeseen expenses included $8-million in refunds, and millions more in legal fees that mounted during court challenges.)
Despite this waste and mismanagement, no government has since succeeded in scrapping wasteful elements of the program.
Mr. Breitkreuz's bill before Parliament, Bill C-301, would accomplish a number of notable innovations to lower the excessive costs and unnecessary complexities of the Firearms Act without having any negative effect on public safety.
It would eliminate the useless long-gun registry for non-restricted firearms; authorize the Auditor General to perform a cost-benefit analysis every five years; streamline the process for "authorizations to transport" for licensed individuals; combine the possession-only licenses and possession and acquisition licenses; change the license renewal period to 10 years; and change the grandfathering dates for now-prohibi ted handguns.
The 2002 Auditor's report argues that the registry's broad focus means that the social burden associated with the regulation of high-risk gun owners now falls on duck-hunters and farmers who use their firearms for legitimate purposes. The department itself concluded that, as a result, the program had become overly complex, costly to operate, and that it had become difficult for owners to comply with the rules.
The long-gun registry has been a wasteful fiasco from inception through execution. Mr. Breitkreuz's Bill C-301 would supply at least some measure of relief for taxpayers. MPs should be allowed to vote freely on the bill, without following party lines. If they are permitted to do so, then overdue change may finally be at hand.
- Kevin Gaudet is federal director of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation. www.taxpayer.com |
