Prime minister Jean Chrétien appears to have been making it up when he proclaimed in late 2002 that some bureaucrats had paid the price for massive cost overruns in the federal gun registry program.
“Some people have been demoted, some lost their jobs in the process,” the prime minister said in a year-end interview on Global Television.
“It’s not the same people who are in charge today.”
Last week, the bureaucrat then in charge of the Canadian Firearms Centre said no one lost their job.
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“I was still the chief executive officer at the time,” Gary Webster told the House of Commons public accounts committee May 7.
“I cannot comment on that.”
But was anyone fired or demoted, asked Saskatchewan Canadian Alliance MP Gerry Ritz.
“No,” replied Webster.
In the House of Commons later, Alliance gun registry critic Garry Breitkreuz said the reality is that instead of bureaucrats being demoted or fired, most were promoted.
Solicitor general Wayne Easter, a former farmer and gun registration critic, insisted that the dispute over who paid the price is irrelevant.
The Alliance critic “likes to stick with the past,” Easter said in the Commons May 8. “The government has moved on since those days.”
Critics fired back that the government has moved on by imposing unpopular, unnecessary and costly gun registration rules.
Meanwhile, Breitkreuz has demanded that any government studies prepared in the past on the potential cost of the program or its growing problems be provided to MPs. Officials have made the promise.
They tabled the 1995 analysis that underestimated costs, overestimated revenues and concluded the registration system would cost just $400,000 a year for five years to implement.
Instead, the gun licensing and registration system is projected to have cost more than $1 billion by next year.
At the committee meeting, former gun registry chief official Maryantonett Flumian said there is a recognition that the policy was poorly planned. Almost from the beginning, assumptions were being revised and cost estimates were being expanded.
“I don’t think there was an intention on anyone’s part to say there weren’t problems,” said Flumian, now associate deputy minister in the human resources development department, and one of those mentioned by Breitkreuz as having been promoted.
Officials from the auditor general’s department insisted internal justice department studies showed developing problems but the studies were not passed on to the government beyond the department.
Flumian said such internal studies are normal and help bureaucrats amend policies. She denied complaints of a coverup.
“There has been no attempt not to answer your questions fully,” she told a skeptical Breitkreuz May 7.
