From: owner-can-firearms-digest@sfn.saskatoon.sk.ca (Cdn-Firearms Digest) To: cdn-firearms-digest@sfn.saskatoon.sk.ca Subject: Cdn-Firearms Digest V5 #354 Reply-To: cdn-firearms-digest@sfn.saskatoon.sk.ca Sender: owner-can-firearms-digest@sfn.saskatoon.sk.ca Errors-To: owner-can-firearms-digest@sfn.saskatoon.sk.ca Precedence: normal Cdn-Firearms Digest Wednesday, December 4 2002 Volume 05 : Number 354 In this issue: Globe: Lies and contempt for Parliament at root of scandal in gun registry Cost overruns in gun registry shocking -- auditor general: Globe Editorial: What Canadians pay for a gun registry Column: Gun registry in trouble 2nd submission to Brockville R& T Mike Ackerman's Critique of ACICR [CFD v.5 #350] peace Officers - pilots ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 4 Dec 2002 08:31:40 -0600 (CST) From: "Breitkreuz, Garry - Assistant 1" Subject: Globe: Lies and contempt for Parliament at root of scandal in gun registry PUBLICATION GLOBE AND MAIL DATE: WED DEC.04,2002 PAGE: A8 BYLINE: JOHN IBBITSON CLASS: Column EDITION: Metro DATELINE: WORDS: 807 - ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- - ---- Inside Politics Lies and contempt for Parliament at root of scandal in gun registry - ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- - ---- 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 naive, 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 ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 4 Dec 2002 08:31:38 -0600 (CST) From: "Breitkreuz, Garry - Assistant 1" Subject: Cost overruns in gun registry shocking -- auditor general: PUBLICATION: The Guardian (Charlottetown) DATE: 2002.12.04 EDITION: Final SECTION: Canada PAGE: A8 SOURCE: Canadian Press DATELINE: OTTAWA ILLUSTRATION: Photo: Canadian Press / Television cameramen focus onAuditor General Sheila Fraser as she holds a news conference after the release of her report Tuesday in Ottawa. - ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- - ---- Cost overruns in gun registry shocking -- auditor general: Watchdog's annual report states that program projected at $2 million could reach $1 billion. - ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- - ---- OTTAWA (CP) -- The bloated billion-dollar federal gun registry is just one example of the government's "inexcusable failure" to account for the way it spends taxpayers' money, says a new auditor general's report. Sheila Fraser singled out the controversial program, which was supposed to cost only $2 million net, but will likely exceed $1 billion by 2005, as a glaring example of unaccountable government spending. She called the runaway plan to register firearms "an inexcusable failure to provide complete information -- one that undermines Parliament's ability to make informed decisions." Justice Minister Martin Cauchon responded quickly to her report Tuesday, saying his department will spend another $60,000 to gather evidence of expenditures on the program from all government departments -- information Fraser couldn't obtain from a confused mass of incomplete data. "It seems clear to me that we have to be accountable for all the other departments, which we will do," he said, adding that accounting firm KPMG has been hired and has already begun an audit with results expected in February. But opposition politicians called for an immediate halt to the beleaguered program, saying too much money has already been wasted. "This entire government, beginning with the prime minister and every minister in cabinet, knew that they were way over budget, and they've just proceeded along the same path, withheld that information, and they have no intention of stopping," said Alliance Leader Stephen Harper. Tory Leader Joe Clark said the program is not serving public safety and should be terminated. "They pretend that it contributes to public safety in the country -- it doesn't," he said. Fraser's report Tuesday also criticized loopholes that allow multinationals to avoid hundreds of millions of dollars in taxes each year, a burgeoning employment insurance surplus and government demands for a "crazy quilt" of First Nations spending reports that are seldom even used. Throughout the report, she stressed that elected decision-makers don't know enough about where money is going and how much programs are costing. "Canadian taxpayers expect more," she told a news conference Tuesday. Fraser noted that officials in the gun registry program say costs will hit the $1-billion mark by 2004-2005 -- an "astronomical cost overrun" from its original $119-million price tag. When it was proposed in 1995, the Justice Department said most of that money would be recovered through registration fees, leaving a net cost of only $2 million. Even Fraser's cadre of auditors couldn't penetrate an incomplete morass of data from Justice about the gun registry, introduced by then-minister Allan Rock in 1995 to help stem gun violence, Fraser said. Fraser said the massive overrun was bad enough, but the fact Parliament was not informed was far worse. "The issue here is not gun control," she wrote in her summary. "And it's not even astronomical cost overruns, although those are serious. What's really inexcusable is that Parliament was in the dark." Cauchon dismissed suggestions the government deliberately concealed figures that would make the controversial program look bad. "If you look at the report, there's no wrongdoing at all. I mean, the numbers, as I said, have been reported through Justice Canada or other ministries involved," he said. "Now, obviously, it's not to the satisfaction of the auditor general. That's why we're proceeding with the audit." He agreed with the recommendations but defended the overruns saying they resulted from consultations with Canadians, costs for expensive technology and provinces opting out of the program. Wendy Cukier, president of the coalition for gun control, said Fraser didn't pass judgment on the program's effectiveness, and that there is evidence to suggest it is working. She added that opposition MPs added to the problems by trying to block improvements to the program at every turn. ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 4 Dec 2002 08:31:59 -0600 (CST) From: "Breitkreuz, Garry - Assistant 1" Subject: Globe Editorial: What Canadians pay for a gun registry PUBLICATION GLOBE AND MAIL DATE: WED DEC.04,2002 PAGE: A24 BYLINE: CLASS: Editorial EDITION: Metro DATELINE: WORDS: 762 - ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- - ---- What Canadians pay for a gun registry - ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- - ---- The theory behind gun registration is to make Canadians safer by helping police keep closer track of the millions of guns in people's homes. It is anyone's guess whether we will wind up safer, but, as Auditor-General Sheila Fraser reported yesterday, we are sure to wind up poorer. In paragraph after paragraph, she details the mismanagement and incorrect assumptions that fuelled the meteoric rise in the cost of the Canadian Firearms Centre's gun registry. In 1994, the Justice Department estimated the cost of licensing people to own guns and then registering each gun at $2-million -- the difference between $119-million in expenses and $117-million in projected fees paid by gun owners. By 2001-02, the department had spent $688-million and collected only $59-million in net revenues. Latest word is the program will cost more than $1-billion by 2004-05, to be reduced by only $140-million in fees. Ms. Fraser's chief concern is that the Justice Department hid the cost overruns from Parliament, but she notes that the "astronomical" overruns are serious in themselves. Indeed they are. Her findings vindicate those critics who predicted from the start that the official cost forecasts were unrealistically low. The Fraser Institute, for one, predicted in 1995 that the registry would cost $1-billion once enforcement and operational costs were factored in. Why the cost explosion? You name it. The department delayed proclamation of the law for three years because the regulations were so complicated. Several provinces refused to co-operate. Alberta, backed by a few others, challenged the constitutionality of the registry. (They lost their case, in Alberta and in the Supreme Court of Canada.) Instead of keeping its promise to concentrate on high-risk cases, the Justice Department focused on "excessive regulation and enforcement of controls over all owners and their firearms." So few people had applied by 1999 that the department feared a last-minute rush that would take years to process; so it reduced or waived fees to encourage early filings, forfeiting millions of dollars. The government couldn't even be certain how many gun owners there were, and therefore what the compliance rate was. The original estimate of 3.3 million was scaled back to 2.5 million. Oh, and the department couldn't handle its computer system. It has hired an outside contractor who proposes to replace the system's software "with existing private-sector approaches." (Omi- nous line: "The eventual cost of the solution is still to be determined by the Department.") But outsourcing raises privacy concerns of the sort voiced seven years ago by opponents who didn't want all sorts of people knowing which guns they did or didn't have at home. The Justice Department has told the Auditor-General it will do better, but adds: "It is worth noting that under the new program, 50 times more licence revocations from potentially dangerous individuals have occurred as compared to the last five years of the old program." That sounds encouraging until one reads the RCMP's own 2001 assessment of the information used to deny licences to unfit gun owners. Some of the people are on the list by mistake and may wrongly be denied a licence. And "some persons who should be in the database are not, and these individuals could be issued licences and subsequently use firearms to commit a violent offence." The system could survive being expensive if it could be shown to be effective. There are anywhere from seven million firearms (the official estimate) to between 20 million and 25 million firearms (the National Firearms Association's number) in Canada. Criminals aren't about to register their guns, but a top-notch registry could help police keep tabs on all the other guns in Canada. Those are the ones owned by heretofore law-abiding citizens: the firearms that spouses use against spouses, that children fatally play with, that suicides use and that thieves steal for use or resale. But if even that purpose is being thwarted -- see the RCMP's self-assessment - -- the country is spending a fortune on a burgeoning bureaucracy to little practical effect. Now that the Auditor-General has listed the failures on the cost-accounting side, will someone in government offer a clear, honest picture -- beyond lofty platitudes -- of how effective or ineffective the registry is proving to be at the very job it was designed for: making this country safer? ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 4 Dec 2002 08:33:43 -0600 (CST) From: "Breitkreuz, Garry - Assistant 1" Subject: Column: Gun registry in trouble PUBLICATION: The Moncton Times and Transcript DATE: 2002.12.04 SECTION: Opinion/Editorial PAGE: A2 COLUMN: Campbell Morrison BYLINE: CAMPBELL MORRISON Ottawa Insider DATELINE: OTTAWA - ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- - ---- Gun registry in trouble - ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- - ---- It would appear that the federal gun control scheme's days are numbered. The program is fifty times more expensive than the government first suggested. Furthermore, the value of the information in the expensive gun registry is of dubious value, according to the RCMP itself. Born in adversity in 1995, it will probably shrivel and die, abandoned by a government that can no longer defend an inexcusable abuse of public trust. But instead of disappearing in a flash, with the government admitting it had made a mistake, the gun registry will more likely be trimmed of duties, restricted to registering handguns and restricted weapons, essentially the type of program to reflect the one it had replaced. There has been gun control in Canada for 70 years. Most Canadians support gun control for dangerous weapons. But there are also many Canadians who own guns that are not dangerous. Hunters and farmers use guns for legitimate purposes, but when the government decided that all guns needed to be registered, even their shotguns and rifles, rural Canadians suddenly felt as if the government considered them criminals. The move had strong political implications. In the 1997 election, for example, Liberals were mowed down in the Maritimes in no small measure because of the gun control bill. Prior to the election, there were nine Liberals in New Brunswick. In Nova Scotia there were 11 Liberals, a full slate. After 1997 there were only three Liberals left standing in New Brunswick and none in Nova Scotia. Now with a scathing report from Auditor General Sheila Fraser, the gun control issue is sure to rise again. Her report has found that far from paying for itself, the gun registry will cost taxpayers $1 billion by 2004-05, a decade after the government suggested that in the first five years of operation it would cost government $119 million but would raise $117 million in fees, leaving Canadians with a fancy new tool to fight crime for the tiny price of $2 million. It was naive at best. Instead, the government miscalculated the real costs and then hid them from Parliament for the next seven years, until Fraser used her powers to ask the right questions. What she found is that the government under-estimated the cost of conducting investigations on applications to own firearms (instead of $5.50 it was $23.75) and applications for the firearms themselves (instead of $4.60 it was $16.28). The increased cost was, in part, due to forms so complex that 90 per cent of the time they were filled out incorrectly or incompletely. The government also over-estimated the number of firearms owners and guns in the country, and therefore over-estimated the amount of fees it could collect. Furthermore, in an effort to get reluctant Canadians to comply, it waived the fees for years, which inflated the cost again. It also had to implement it alone in five provinces and fight an expensive court case for its very existence. But even more ominous is the admission from the RCMP that it does not have faith in the information it has been providing the gun registry, which is subsequently used in determining who can and cannot own a weapon. The RCMP provided one million of the four million records on the gun registry data base. Yet the RCMP has "serious concerns about the accuracy and completeness of the information." An internal RCMP review found that there were those included on the lists who should not be there, and others who should be on the list who are not. "The review concluded that a tragic incident could arise as a consequence of the poor data quality and that the RCMP therefore faces serious legal risks." It is suddenly very hard to defend the gun registry, although Justice Minister Martin Cauchon made a show of trying while, at the same time, he promised never to mislead Parliament again. Tory John Herron has indicated he will re-introduce a private member's bill that would return the gun registry to its original use: a registry of handguns and restricted weapons. Long guns would be exempted from the registry. Given the divided Liberal caucus, it would easily sit as a time bomb waiting to go off. There are many Liberals who are uncomfortable with the gun registry, and many others who were defeated because of it. And with the Liberal whip defanged, there is essentially no control over the caucus. A bill exempting long guns may just succeed. ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 4 Dec 2002 08:38:00 -0600 (CST) From: Maurice Curtis Subject: 2nd submission to Brockville R& T 4 Dec. 2002 Well, the auditors report verified what the firearms community has been stating since 1995. The auditor made it clear that the Justice Department under Allan Rock, Ann McClellan and Martin Cauchon have been keeping parliament "in the dark". That's lying in every other part of the country. If they cannot be trusted to tell the truth concerning costs, are we still expected to believe their estimate of the number of firearms owners. If the number of firearms owners is inaccurate, then the compliance rate is way out as well. These people have committed a fraud on the Canadian people. The result is not just an inaccurate and unworkable firearms registry. The loss of this enormous amount of money has other consequences. Law-abiding citizens have been attacked. Those who stand in line at the emergency room, who wait by the phone for a hospital bed. Those who wait for a police officer who shows up too late to enforce a restraining order. = There is a shortage of womens'shelters. Firearms crime has increased in Toronto=96solid proof of a mis-guided justice system. These people and occurrences are also victims of this clique. The problem does not stop with the three incompetents mentioned above. = The Federal Finance Minister through most of this charade was Paul Martin. And he, without a squeak, was doling out more taxpayer funds as his Dictator instructed. Auditor Sheila Fraser stated $2 million was the original amount required by Allan Rock. So far this estimate was missed by a multiplier of 500 times. Just imagine missing the Kyoto Protocol by such an amount. It will bankrupt Canada and there will be no CPP, Health Care or Canada. Worse yet, all four of these people want to be Prime Minister! Perhaps one of the politically correct Gods will jump in and save us! ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 4 Dec 2002 08:38:03 -0600 (CST) From: "Richard A. Fritze" Subject: Mike Ackerman's Critique of ACICR [CFD v.5 #350] Thank you, Mike, for the incisive critique of one of the biggest pieces of BS, anti-gun propaganda on the web [ http://www3.ns.sympatico.ca/mikeack/Critique.html ]. The Alberta Centre for Injury Control and Research [ACICR] has been at this for a long time. I wrote the Alberta Minister, Gary Mar, to complain about two years ago. No response. I urge others [and especially AB voters] to write him, and Premier Klein, to complain some more. Richard A. Fritze Barrister & Solicitor ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 4 Dec 2002 08:41:01 -0600 (CST) From: Rick Lowe Subject: peace Officers - pilots "Mark Horstead" said: > Subject: Re: Cdn Pilots = Peace Officers > > Would anyone on this digest who is a > > pilot or who can refer me to any statute or regulation [other than the > > Criminal Code] that says a pilot is a peace officer please advise asap? > > I couldn't find anything in either the Aeronautics Act or CARs (Canadian > Aviation Regulations). Section 2, which defines terms used in the Criminal Code: _________________________________________ "peace officer" includes (f) the pilot in command of an aircraft (i) registered in Canada under regulations made under the Aeronautics Act, or (ii) leased without crew and operated by a person who is qualified under regulations made under the Aeronautics Act to be registered as owner of an aircraft registered in Canada under those regulations, while the aircraft is in flight, ------------------------------ End of Cdn-Firearms Digest V5 #354 ********************************** Submissions: mailto:cdn-firearms-digest@sfn.saskatoon.sk.ca Mailing List Commands: mailto:majordomo@sfn.saskatoon.sk.ca Moderator's e-mail address: mailto:acardin33@shaw.ca List owner: mailto:owner-cdn-firearms@sfn.saskatoon.sk.ca FAQ list: http://www.magma.ca/~asd/cfd-faq1.html and http://teapot.usask.ca/cdn-firearms/Faq/cfd-faq1.html Web Site: http://teapot.usask.ca/cdn-firearms/homepage.html FTP Site: ftp://teapot.usask.ca/pub/cdn-firearms/ CFDigest Archives: http://www.sfn.saskatoon.sk.ca/~ab133/ or put the next command in an e-mail message and mailto:majordomo@sfn.saskatoon.sk.ca get cdn-firearms-digest v04.n192 end (192 is the digest issue number and 04 is the volume) To unsubscribe from _all_ the lists, put the next five lines in a message and mailto:majordomo@sfn.saskatoon.sk.ca unsubscribe cdn-firearms-digest unsubscribe cdn-firearms-alert unsubscribe cdn-firearms-chat unsubscribe cdn-firearms end (To subscribe, use "subscribe" instead of "unsubscribe".) 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