Gun registry fiasco has Liberals red in the face - Opinion

LAST week’s gun registry cost overrun fiasco on Parliament Hill can be

interpreted in many ways but in the space available, let’s confine

ourselves to three principal ones: there was an element of retributive

justice; an other-worldly confluence of bad timing for the Liberals;

and a rebuke to backbench MPs who make a habit of whining about being

powerless.

It was not a judgment by auditor-general Sheila Fraser about the gun

control program. She explicitly withheld judgment on whether gun

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registration is a deterrent to crime.

“The issue here is not about gun control,” she said.

So if it wasn’t a judgment on the effectiveness of gun control, what

was it?

To start, it was vindication for one of Parliament’s most tenacious

MPs. Yorkton-Melville Canadian Alliance MP Garry Breitkreuz has

campaigned against the gun registry since it was announced, warning

about escalating costs and insisting it is wrong-headed.

With his hell-and-damnation lecturing approach to political rhetoric,

Liberals have tended to dismiss the former school principal and farmer

as a figurehead for the gun lobby.

Last week, his predictions came true. Of course, he showed no humour in

his victory and pressed on with demands that gun registration be

scrapped.

That’s the style of this unlikely political figure who in 1993 dealt

New Democrat leadership contender Lorne Nystrom his only electoral

defeat in a 34-year career. But Breitkreuz’s financial warnings were

proven prophetic last week.

Meanwhile, the Liberals had one of their worst political weeks in

memory.

The auditor-general basically reported that one of the government’s

major policy initiatives of the past decade was administratively flawed

and the government’s bookkeepers were so incompetent or so devious that

their costing numbers cannot be believed.

Two days later, the House of Commons was supposed to vote on an

additional $72 million in gun registry funding. A quick retreat and a

withdrawal of the proposal saved the Liberals the embarrassment of

possible defeat but pulling a spending request on the day of the vote

is unprecedented in living memory.

Add to it the fact that three days after the auditor-general’s report,

the nation marked the 13th anniversary of the Montreal massacre of 14

women that gave impetus to the gun control lobby. At the same time, the

Senate returned to the Commons a bill on streamlining the gun registry

bureaucracy that will require debate and a vote this week, just when

the government would like to see the issue disappear. In the Liberal

dictionary, fiasco is spelled g-u-n r-e-g-i-s-t-r-y.

Finally, consider the role of backbenchers in this. There is much

whining from opposition MPs and Paul Martin supporters in the Liberal

caucus that backbench MPs have no power, are excluded from

decision-making and made to feel like voting seals.

Almost all the gun registry spending was approved by MPs in

supplementary estimates, approved without scrutiny.

Breitkreuz kept track. Most didn’t, consumed by their gripe about

powerlessness.

Maybe some of these enslaved seals simply do not have the ambition to

explore the potential of their position.

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