LAST week hundreds and perhaps thousands of Canadians – farmers, ranchers, hunters and people of assorted other occupations – became criminals.
Their crime is one of omission, not commission. They failed to register their firearms, or announce their intention to do so, by Dec. 31, 2002. Now they are “paper criminals,” as firearms registry opponent Jim Turnbull, of Jarvie, Alta., termed the collective group during a New Year’s Day protest.
There are other words to describe the new federal gun registry law. A government snafu. A boondoggle. A farce.
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Bob Runciman, Ontario public safety and security minister, has put the crux of the matter most succinctly of late. He calls the legislation “a billion-dollar black hole,” and “an unconscionable waste of taxpayers money on an initiative that focuses primarily on law-abiding citizens.”
The federal gun registry was supposed to have a net cost of about $2 million. Implementation costs of about $119 million were to be largely offset by fees paid into it by gun owners, estimated at $117 million.
Last month federal auditor general Sheila Fraser estimated the cost of the registry will be $1 billion by 2005. Fraser deemed the government’s available cost figures to be unreliable so she called off a full audit.
Now Ontario is calling for suspension of the registry until the auditor general does a cost-benefit analysis. Western provinces will likely join in that call, for either suspension or outright revocation of the law.
As well they should.
The registry is projected to cost many times the original estimate, yet hundreds of thousands of gun owners are still not registered. The system has proven so cumbersome that many who try to register are unable to do so. Problems within the registry have eroded what little confidence anyone had in its reliability.
The government has botched the implementation of the registry and failed to inform parliament, and by extension the Canadian taxpayer, about its escalating costs.
And the government still cannot produce evidence that the registry has justified its raison d’tre by reducing the number of crimes that involve firearms.
Canadians had gun laws before this one. Handguns, automatic and semi-automatic weapons required registration long before this bill. Yet today, we are almost $1 billion poorer and not at all safer. This government owes Canadians an apology – for waste, for hiding information and for making criminals out of citizens who are inclined to obey laws yet are unable to do so because of a flawed system.
In the meantime it should suspend the registry and see if anything can be salvaged. If not, it should follow Reform party founder Preston Manning’s advice: When you’re in a hole, the first thing to do is stop digging.
