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Auditor cites gun registry as 'inexcusable failure'
By DARREN YOURK
Globe and Mail Update
POSTED AT 4:41 PM EST Tuesday, December 3
Source

Auditor-General Sheila Fraser
holds a news conference Tuesday
after the release of her report in Ottawa.
Photo: Fred Chartrand/CP

Auditor-General Sheila Fraser took aim at the Liberal's billion-dollar federal gun registry Tuesday, citing it as a glaring example of the government's "inexcusable failure" to account for how it spends Canadians' tax dollars.

Ms. Fraser, in her report tabled Tuesday in the House of Commons, singled out the lack of information provided to Parliament about the Canadian Firearms Program as an example of how miscommunication undermines Parliament's ability performance.

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Posted: 12/ 04/ 02 2:49 am Post subject:

The Auditor-General's Report for 2002
http://www.oag-bvg.gc.ca/domino/reports.nsf/html/02menu_e.html
_________________
"If Martin doesn't surprise us by becoming a principled leader, then at least we can be comforted that he is preparing his lips for a whole lot of American butt kissing."

--Greg McNeely

Posted: 12/ 04/ 02 2:52 am Post subject:

Freedom and Liberty demonstration January 1st, 2003

Posted: 12/ 04/ 02 3:01 am Post subject:

Posted: 12/ 04/ 02 3:24 am Post subject:

I fully support Gun Control

The ability to flick a switch to go from semi to fully automatic

And also I will give the Government my Guns Bullets first!!!!!
_________________
Canadian Rebel Alliance

Fighting for the Freedom of all Canadians

We are Canada's Last Chance for FREEDOM !!

E-mail
canreballian@wwinmail.com

Web Site
http://www.geocities.com/canreballian/index.html

Posted: 12/ 04/ 02 12:28 pm Post subject:

Allan Rock: Gun registry Architect and head huckster.
Parliament’s leading Pinocchio and peerless MORON!!!

NEVER forget who perpetrated this fraud on Parliament and the public! I just regret this lying, defrauding scum won't see jail time soon. However, I know there is a concerted effort in the organized firearms owning public to prosecute the political perpetrators of this parliamentary fraud before the Charter challenges bring down the regulatory regime. Rock can spin in the wind for a while. I get the feeling his retirement years will be filled with lawsuits. We will NEVER forget and NEVER FORGIVE Allan!
_________________
Of all tyrannies a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive; those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience. - C.S. Lewis, In Freedom .

Celebrate Hard Likker and Handgun week here at the Shadowy GroupTM

Posted: 12/ 04/ 02 1:28 pm Post subject:

From Letters To The Editor
Toronto Sun Dec.4/02

ALMOST $1 billion later, we now know that law-abiding Canadians own firearms! We also know where they live, etc. I'll sleep better now. Am I now entitled to a rebate for all the money I spent since 1979 on the old Firearms Acquisition Certificate (FAC). You see, since 1979 all firearms sales were written in a gold book at the dealer's: Name, FAC number, address, serial number, make and model. This was registration of guns. Once in the gold book the provincial firearms office agent would go to the dealers and verify all the data. Now I have to register these firearms again, so I didn't really get any value from my FAC fees, did I? So I should have $125 coming back to me, correct? Oh, wait. I'm a Canadian. I'll just assume the position and take it, as usual. All this so citizens will think the Liberals have done something about illegal firearms on the street. They have done nothing at all!

R. Eplett

Posted: 12/ 04/ 02 1:35 pm Post subject:

Toronto Sun
Dec.3/02

Gunning for the truth

Department lost its grip on $1B-plus cost of firearms control

By MARIA MCCLINTOCK, OTTAWA BUREAU

OTTAWA -- The real costs of gun control will remain a secret because the federal government feels it isn't "useful" information to keep tabs on, Auditor General Sheila Fraser revealed in her annual report yesterday.

The quality of justice department records were so poor and unreliable Fraser said she was forced to make the unprecedented move of calling off the review almost a year after it started.

Even the $1-billion figure the department estimates it will cost to run the firearms program by 2005 isn't reliable and will likely be higher, Fraser said.

"I find it particularly troubling when we see a program that was supposed to basically break even, and now will cost significantly more than that -- up to $1 billion or more," said Fraser.

When former justice minister Allan Rock introduced the Firearms Act in 1995, he said it would only cost $2 million, and billed it as a program that would pay for itself through licensing fees.

Fraser said MPs have never been given a full picture of the ballooning pricetag and the reasons.

"The (justice) department, even though they were tasked with doing it, never saw themselves as being the co-ordinators for this program ... they made a decision that the costs and the effort to do it wasn't worth the effort," she said.

Justice department officials told auditors that by the end of this year the price of gun control would be $688 million and the department expects to collect estimated $59 million in fees.

Fraser said those numbers do "not include all the financial impacts on the government" and demanded the justice department issue an annual report to Parliament detailing the program's costs and revenues. In addition, the department should give MPs an annual roadmap of all past, current, and forecasted expenditures linked to the program.

Justice department officials told auditors the escalating costs of the program were due to the government overestimating the rate at which gun licence applications would flow and overemphasis on regulation and enforcement.

Justice Minister Martin Cauchon said yesterday he agreed with Fraser's concerns and announced he's going to spend more cash to sort out the problem.

"What we decided to do is proceed with an external audit in order to make sure we organize the books in a way that will satisfy the auditor general," said Cauchon. "There's no wrong-doing at all."

Canadian Alliance MP Garry Breitkreuz said the audit validates his longstanding beefs with the program.

"You can only fix this now by scrapping the whole system," he said. "It's such a big mess that there's nothing really the government can do, unless they're going to pour $2-$3 billion more into it."

Allan Rock said Canadians should focus on the value of the firearms legislation, not only the cost.

"If you take that over 10 years, that's a lot of Canadian lives and you have to ask yourself the value of that," he said.

In 2001 the government estimated there were 2.46 million gun owners in Canada packing 7.9 million guns.

Under the Firearms Act, owners were to license all guns by Jan. 1, 2001, and register them by Jan. 1, 2003. Last week the licensing deadline was extended to June 30, 2003.

Posted: 12/ 04/ 02 1:48 pm Post subject:

Posted: 12/ 04/ 02 2:47 pm Post subject:

WHAT DID TAXPAYERS GET FOR $1,000,000,000?
(One billion dollars)

By Garry Breitkreuz, MP
November 29, 2002

Just this week we have seen a headline in the Globe and Mail saying: "Gun registry to cost around $1-billion," an editorial in the National Post titled, "Time to ditch the gun registry," and the Edmonton Sun reported, "Firearms centre won't work: City Cop." We hate to say we told you so.

Back in 1995, when Bill C-68, the Firearms Act, was being debated in the House of Commons, twenty Reform MPs took that opportunity to warn the government that it would cost a billion dollars to register all the guns in Canada. Then Justice Minister Allan Rock pooh-poohed our projections saying: "We have provided our estimate of the cost of implementing universal registration over the next five years. We say that it will cost $85 million.

We encourage the members opposite to examine our estimates. We are confident we will demonstrate that the figures are realistic and accurate." (Hansard Page 9709 - February 16, 1995).

After seven years, all Canadians now know who was right; unfortunately, the Liberal's still don't get it. On November 28, 2002, Justice Minister Martin Cauchon was still claiming in the House of Commons that the gun registry is, "...worth proceeding with such a fantastic value as protecting our society."

On Tuesday, December 3, 2002, the Auditor General of Canada, Mrs. Sheila Fraser will present her report to Parliament documenting what she uncovered in her year-long financial audit of the gun registry. She has confirmed with my office that her audit only examined the costs and did, "not examine the efficiency and performance of the program."

The Auditor General's report won't tell you, so I'll try to give you a snapshot of what taxpayers got for their billion-dollar "investment" in the Liberals' gun registration scheme. The most important question now is, will the Liberals waste another billion before they actually admit the complete and utter failure of their gun registry to do anything to reduce the criminal use of firearms?

(1) Taxpayers got a gun registry that concentrates almost exclusively on law-abiding, responsible hunters and sport shooters instead of criminals, gangs, smugglers and terrorists;

(2) taxpayers got a gun registry that has so infuriated the provincial and territorial governments that eight of them have opted out of the administration of the gun registry and the Western provinces refuse to enforce it;

(3) taxpayers got a gun registry that doesn't keep track of the current addresses of the 131,000 persons prohibited from owning firearms and fails to check if their guns have been removed from their possession;

(4) taxpayers got a new gun registry based on the failed 68-year-old legally-owned handgun registry that has seen a steady increase in firearms homicides committed with handguns from 27% in 1974 to 58% in 2000. Statistics Canada also reported that between 1997 and 2001, 74% of the handguns recovered from the scenes of 143 homicides were NOT registered;

(5) taxpayers got a gun registry that is attempting to register all the legally-owned long guns in Canada while Statistics Canada tables show that firearms homicides with rifles and shotguns that have never been registered dropped steadily over the last 27 years, from 64% to 31%;

(6) taxpayers got a gun registry that has licensed only 2 million of Canada's 3.3 million gun owners and as of February 27, 2002, had already lost track of 38,000 of them;

(7) taxpayers got a gun registry that has only registered 5 million of the estimated 16.5 million guns in Canada;

*( Cool

taxpayers got a gun registry that has a firearms licence refusal and revocation rate that is one half the results achieved with the 23-year-old Firearms Acquisition Certificate program;

(9) taxpayers got a gun registry that issued 5 million registration certificates that don't even have the gun owners' name on them. Eighteen million vehicle registrations have the owners' names;

(10) taxpayers got a gun registry with 3.2 million registration certificates with blank and unknown entries - three-quarters of a million with no serial numbers;

(11) taxpayers got a gun registry that admits to issuing 15,381 firearms licences to persons with no proof of having passed a firearms safety course;

(12) taxpayers got a registry that admits to issuing 26,800 duplicate Firearms Registration Certificates, issuing 832 duplicate firearms licences and issuing 259 firearms licences with the wrong photograph;

(13) taxpayers got a gun registry that prohibited more than 568,000 legally owned and registered firearms, but left police without the resources necessary to combat the criminal use of illegally-owned firearms in our major cities;

(14) taxpayers got a gun registry that has increased red tape and the regulatory cost of buying a hunting rifle to $279.00 which in turn has driven hundreds of thousands of hunters out of their sport and cost our economy many millions;

(15) taxpayers got a gun registry that hands out boxes of ammunition to Aboriginal people who do NOT hold a valid firearms licence; and finally,

(16) taxpayers got a gun registry that will never do what the government promised - namely, tell police where the guns are.

In closing, I would like to challenge taxpayers to ask themselves the next question: Where would they have liked this wasted billion dollars to have been spent - health care, defence, more police on the street, etc? Here are a couple of examples. According to the Solicitor General of Ontario, we could have put more than 10,000 police officers on our streets and highways. A billion dollars would have bought, installed and operated 238 MRIs for a year. How much pain, suffering and worry would have been alleviated and how many lives would have been saved? What a sad, sad choice the Liberal MPs and our government have made for Canadians.

*********************************************

Garry Breitkreuz is the Member of Parliament for Yorkton-Melville, Saskatchewan, and the Official Opposition Critic for Firearms and Property Rights.

For more information you can visit Garry's website at: [url]http://www.garrybreitkreuz.com[/url]
_________________
Hall Monitor of the Shadowy Group^TM
The most effective way to stifle democracy is to transfer decision-making from the public arena to unaccountable institutions: activist judges, human rights tribunals, parliamentary committees, civil service bureaucrats and political party hacks.

Posted: 12/ 04/ 02 5:17 pm Post subject:

This will be just a little off track:

The original cost of the gun resistry was to be $2 million and so far it is estimated to cost $1 billion. That is 500 times it's estimated initial cost.

The federal budget is $180 billion annually. If we assume that the government is as inept at running all of its departments, as it is at running a gun registry, then we can assume that the annual government budget could, in fact, be done for 500 times less money!

Therefore, as Canadian taxpayers, we should only be giving the federal government $360 million, a savings of about $179 billion.

Now wouldn't that solve health care!

editted to say: Canadians have got to ask themselves one question: Where did all the money go? Even if the program was to have cost $200 million, where did the extra $800 million go? Really people, how much does it cost to ask a prairie farmer to fill in a form and mail it with his own 50 cents? Why do you think the auditor-general can't get the answeres to her questions about accurate costs? Why are the Liberals demanding a committee investigation of their own? Who put $800 million in their pockets?

Posted: 12/ 04/ 02 6:16 pm Post subject:

Comments:

letters@globeandmail.ca

Cc:
jibbitson@globeandmail.ca

Regards, Zorro
____________________________________________________________________
Lies and contempt for Parliament at root of scandal in gun registry

By JOHN IBBITSON

Wednesday, December 4, 2002 – Page A8

Auditor-General Sheila Fraser has exposed a scandal within the Department of
Justice of Enronesque proportions.

For years, the department has been perpetrating a fraud on the Parliament
and people of Canada, hiding the true costs of the National Firearms
Registry as they spiralled more than 400 times beyond the first estimate.

And the Auditor-General blames this chaos in part on an antigun ethic within
the program that sees weapons possession of any kind as "a questionable
activity" that needs to be rigorously controlled.

"If you look at the report there's no wrongdoing at all," Justice Minister
Martin Cauchon insisted yesterday. Criminal wrongdoing, no. But as for
incompetence and deception -- well, you be the judge.

In 1994, when Allan Rock, the justice minister at the time, introduced the
Canadian Firearms Program, he projected the net cost of licensing gun owners
and registering every long gun in the country to be $2-million (about $119-
million to implement, offset by $117-million in fees). The Department of
Justice now estimates that the net cost will be $860-million through 2005
(or $1-billion in costs offset by $140-million in fees). The Auditor-General
doubts even this figure is accurate, though, since she reports that the
department's books are in such a mess that a complete assessment of costs is
impossible.

How could a program go so far wrong, so fast? The Justice Department offers
a litany of excuses. The government expected the provinces to co-operate in
establishing the system -- a tad naïve, since several of them challenged the
legality of the registry in court.

Fees were supposed to cover the costs of the program. But to lessen outrage,
the fees were reduced and often refunded. The department also somewhat
underestimated the cost of processing the forms. They put one estimate at
$5.50 a form. It turned out to be $23.75.

The government also expected gun owners to apply for their licences and
permits early and properly. But the forms were so badly designed that 90 per
cent of them were incorrectly filled out, and gun owners hate the program so
much they have waited until the last minute to file, causing huge backlogs.

All this is simple incompetence. What makes the affair so contemptible is
the contempt in which the government held Parliament. From the very
beginning, the Justice Department and the government itself used every
conceivable means to hide many of the cost overruns, deceiving the House of
Commons in order to prevent it from exercising its right to scrutinize and
criticize government expenditures.

Some of the Justice Department's deceptions were breathtaking. In May of
2000 the department told a parliamentary committee that the program's costs
had escalated to $327-million. Internally, the department was warning the
government that costs would exceed $1-billion.

In one ingenious slush fund, the department set aside $126-million to help
Correctional Services Canada and the National Parole Board adapt to the
program's requirements, without bothering to tell Parliament. Then the
department redirected all but $7-million of that fund back into the program.

The department also conspired to hide the registry's true costs by
offloading them to other programs, and by financing 70 per cent of the
program through supplementary estimates, which are only supposed to cover
unanticipated expenses.

At the heart of this deception, however, was an antigun attitude within the
program itself. The registry was initially supposed to focus on a small
minority of gun owners who posed a risk to society. Instead, by the
department's own admission, the focus changed "to excessive regulation and
enforcement of controls over all owners," making it "difficult for owners to
comply with the program."

And here is the sentence justifying every conspiracy theorist who argues the
purpose of the registry is ultimately to confiscate the nation's firearms.

"The department said the excessive regulation had occurred [in part] because
some of the program partners believed that the use of firearms is in itself
a 'questionable activity' that required strong controls."

Space does not permit a full explanation of the foul-ups accompanying the
selection of a computer to manage the registry. Suffice it to say the
department has concluded the three-year-old machine is "expensive,
inflexible, out-of-date and could not be modified at a reasonable cost." All
or part of it will have to be replaced.

There is more to pore over, more to explore, much, much more to decry. But
we know this much. This Liberal government sold us a bill of goods on the
firearms registry. They low-balled the estimates, and when the estimates
rose, they hid the problem.

They lied to us.
jibbitson@globeandmail.ca
_________________
Canadian Rebel Alliance

Fighting for the Freedom of all Canadians

We are Canada's Last Chance for FREEDOM !!

E-mail
canreballian@wwinmail.com

Web Site
http://www.geocities.com/canreballian/index.html

Posted: 02/ 16/ 04 12:55 am Post subject:

Posted: 02/ 16/ 04 1:28 am Post subject:

Gun registry now to cost $2b.

1000 times its original cost.

Imagine what could have been done with that kind of money. Cry

_________________
"You, on the other hand, are clearly pro-al-Qaeda scum, since you have - quite knoiwingly [sic]- become an active agent of the enemy. If this were a just world, there would be swift punishment for people such as yourself, who spread lies and dissenssion [sic] and undermine the war effort." -Adam Yoshida on my pro-terrorist credentials, and endorsing a fascist worldview

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