The federal government last week conceded its gun registration system
will cost taxpayers close to $1 billion by 2005 – 12 times the original
estimate – and hundreds of thousands of gun owners still are not
registered.
In the House of Commons and the Senate, critics, including some
Liberals, insisted the program is too costly and ineffective.
Saskatchewan Liberal senator Herb Sparrow said Nov. 27 that Ottawa’s
refusal to spend enough to support farmers has caused more suicides
than gun control has prevented.
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Saskatchewan Canadian Alliance MP Garry Breitkreuz said Nov. 28 in the
Commons that money spent on a “useless gun registry” could have been
used to buy needed medical equipment.
Justice minister Martin Cauchon insisted the government continues to
support the gun registry system and it does save lives and help the
police do their jobs.
“The program has been a bit more costly,” he said. “We are talking
about the question of some provinces having opted out. We brought some
changes as well to the program following consultation. The technology
has been more expensive but look at the result today. It is valuable to
our society and is protecting our society.”
As the Dec. 31 deadline looms for registering guns and the government
admits more than 600,000 gun owners will be unable to or unwilling to
comply by the deadline, the usefulness of the registry was debated once
again on Parliament Hill last week.
A Senate committee was studying a bill that would create a central
firearms control commissioner and make it easier for gun owners to
register.
There have been bureaucratic problems since many gun owners waited
until the end of the registration period to act and now are jamming the
system and phone lines. Critics say this could make hundreds of
thousands of Canadians into criminals on Jan. 1, 2003, if they fail to
have their guns registered.
Defenders of the system say it is a crisis created deliberately by gun
owners who waited until the last moment to subvert the system.
Last week, the government announced a six-month grace period for people
who have applied for gun registration but do not receive the official
certificates by Jan. 1.
Those who have not applied do not qualify for the grace period.
On Nov. 27, a Senate committee replayed the gun control debate of
earlier years.
Witnesses from the Canadian Police Association said gun registration is
not a panacea but a useful tool that police are happy to have. Gun
control advocates presented figures to suggest that gun-related deaths
have decreased since gun control started to be strengthened under the
last Progressive Conservative government more than a decade ago.
Gun groups insisted it has done nothing to fight crime and instead has
resulted in harassment of average rural, aboriginal and hunting
Canadians who now have bureaucracy and costs to deal with.
With misgivings by some, the Senate will send the gun control
amendments back to the Commons, possibly as early as this week, for
final approval.