From: owner-can-firearms-digest@sfn.saskatoon.sk.ca (Cdn-Firearms Digest) To: cdn-firearms-digest@sfn.saskatoon.sk.ca Subject: Cdn-Firearms Digest V9 #409 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, May 17 2006 Volume 09 : Number 409 In this issue: TORONTO SUN: MISFIRES FOUND AT GUN REGISTRY 'VERY SERIOUS' COLUMN: HARPER CAN'T WIN GUN BATTLE EDITORIAL: MORE HORRORS IN GUN REGISTRY POLICE CHIEF SEES VALUE TO LONG-GUN REGISTRY EDITORIAL: GUN REGISTRY BLASTED Gun centre attracts 'hate mail' National Post Editorial: Kill the gun registry ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 17 May 2006 06:51:54 -0600 (CST) From: owner-cdn-firearms@sfn.saskatoon.sk.ca (Majordomo User) Subject: TORONTO SUN: MISFIRES FOUND AT GUN REGISTRY 'VERY SERIOUS' PUBLICATION: The Toronto Sun DATE: 2006.05.17 EDITION: Final SECTION: News PAGE: 4 ILLUSTRATION: 1. photo by Jonathan Hayward In her latest report to Parliament, Auditor General Sheila Fraser says Ottawa kept politicians in the dark about the true costs of maintaining a registry for long guns, like the shotgun shown. 2. graphics REPORT HIGHLIGHTS Highlights of the Auditor General Sheila Fraser's report to Parliament yesterday. BYLINE: KATHLEEN HARRIS, OTTAWA BUREAU DATELINE: OTTAWA WORD COUNT: 435 - ------------------------------------------------------------------------ MISFIRES FOUND AT GUN REGISTRY 'VERY SERIOUS' HIDDEN COST OVERRUNS: AUDITOR GENERAL - ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Canada's spending watchdog delivered more damning revelations about hidden cost overruns, sloppy storage of information and broken accounting rules on the gun registry yesterday. But opposition critics insist it's not enough ammunition to justify the Conservative government's plan to kill the controversial program. EXCESSIVE COSTS Auditor General Sheila Fraser, in her eight-part spring report, fingers the previous Liberal government for keeping MPs in the dark about excessive costs for the registry -- an issue she called "very serious." Her audit found the price tag for a computerized information system ballooned from an initial $32 million to more than $90 million -- and it still isn't in operation. Fraser also revealed two "significant errors" in financial reporting to Parliament: $39 million in 2002-03 and another $21.8 million the following year. But she couldn't say if the Grits deliberately tried to hide unauthorized spending. "It is more than simply a disagreement between accountants," she said. RED FLAG Fraser raised a red flag about the poor quality of information on the registration database and noted there has been no performance study to determine if the registry has had a positive impact on cutting violent crime. But she noted the expected $1-billion price tag for the program over 10 years came in slightly under at $946 million, and said outstanding concerns with the program aren't much different than those found in any other federal department. "That's why we give them a satisfactory rating," Fraser said. "The Firearms Centre has made very good progress in addressing many of the concerns and many of the issues that they inherited in 2002-03." NO STEPS ANNOUNCED The Conservative government did not immediately announce steps to dismantle the program, but Public Safety Minister Stockwell Day vowed to quickly fix the "billion-dollar disaster." Treasury Board President John Baird accused the Liberals of an abysmal record capped by a "cover-up" of cost overruns. "The Liberal government concocted a way to hide further waste from the long-gun registry from Parliament and from all Canadians. Simply put, this is deplorable," Baird said. "This is an affront to Parliament, an affront to all MPs and members of the Senate." Liberal MP Irwin Cotler denied the Liberals deliberately tried to hide money. AMNESTY POSSIBLE And, he said, it would be irresponsible for the Tories to justify scrapping the registry based on the auditor general's report. "Since the management is now effective and since the value of the registry is demonstrably effective, then I think Parliament would want to continue with it," Cotler said. The government could establish an amnesty for rifle and long-gun owners, since it doesn't likely have enough support from opposition MPs to eliminate the registry. But Cotler said keeping a law on the books without enforcement would send a "troubling signal." NDP MP Joe Comartin, estimating savings would total only $15 million at most, insisted it doesn't make financial sense to scrap the registry. "We don't hire very many police officers for $10 million-15 million," Comartin said, and the security that the registry program "does give those police officers, when they're out on the street wanting to know if there's a gun in that residence or place of business," is well worth that amount of money. ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 17 May 2006 06:52:16 -0600 (CST) From: owner-cdn-firearms@sfn.saskatoon.sk.ca (Majordomo User) Subject: COLUMN: HARPER CAN'T WIN GUN BATTLE PUBLICATION: The Ottawa Sun DATE: 2006.05.17 EDITION: Final SECTION: Comment PAGE: 15 BYLINE: SHEILA COPPS, TORONTO SUN WORD COUNT: 487 - ------------------------------------------------------------------------ HARPER CAN'T WIN GUN BATTLE - ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Prime Minister Stephen Harper is at a crossroads when it comes to action on the gun registry. There is no doubt that public concern about cost overruns coupled with the unpopularity of gun laws among a minority of Canadians combined to create the perfect storm. He promised to scrap the gun laws while in opposition and Auditor General Sheila Fraser's report gives him the cover to proceed under the guise of cost containment. But if the government makes a move in this direction, there are a couple of political problems that will bite back. GENDER THING First, the gender thing. Women and men in Canada do have a different perspective when it comes to guns and politics. Generally speaking, the nurturing qualities that we associate with the fairer sex create a political divide in voting practices that Harper ignores at his peril. Women are generally more supportive of environmental initiatives, public health care and less supportive of military spending. They also have a preoccupation with issues of safety in the streets and are less likely to jump on the pro-gun lobby. Harper is already facing strike one on the environment. Whether or not the Kyoto action plan is ready (and the government is certainly correct in pointing out the limitations in the current plan) women want environmental action. They want ratification of Kyoto and they cringe when Canada's environment minister, Rona Ambrose, appears to waffle on the issue, as she did in Bonn this week. The fact that Ambrose is one of the few high profile women in the Harper government makes her weakness on Kyoto even more dangerous for the government. As the Conservative environmental agenda faces increased scrutiny, popular support for our military role in Afghanistan appears to be declining. As women watch the weekly casualties associated with the war, their natural instinct for support and loyalty wavers, precipitating the kind of drop in public support we have been witnessing. Couple that with a move to scrap the gun registry and you start to detect a pattern. A pattern of government action which appears to go against the grain of popular thinking by women voters. Demographics will show a real urban/rural split on the registry issue. By and large, urban voters support the registry and think the police need every tool in their arsenal to fight crime. Conversely, rural voters generally think the bureaucracy involved was overkill and a waste of hard-earned tax dollars in the long term. LINGUISTIC SPLIT Within those demographics is a real linguistic and gender split. Francophones in general and Quebecers in particular support gun control. The tragic death of 14 women at the hands of an armed classroom assassin heightened initial Quebec support for gun registration and it has never wavered. Women in rural Canada are also more likely to support limitations on gun possession and ownership. Their voices are not as virulent as the Canada-United States gun lobby but their votes are actually more important. If Harper is serious about turning his minority into a majority, he should refrain from engaging in a gun battle he can't win. copps@canoe.ca ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 17 May 2006 06:52:56 -0600 (CST) From: owner-cdn-firearms@sfn.saskatoon.sk.ca (Majordomo User) Subject: EDITORIAL: MORE HORRORS IN GUN REGISTRY PUBLICATION: The London Free Press DATE: 2006.05.17 EDITION: Final SECTION: Opinion Pages PAGE: A8 COLUMN: Our view WORD COUNT: 382 - ------------------------------------------------------------------------ MORE HORRORS IN GUN REGISTRY - ------------------------------------------------------------------------ If Stephen Harper needed any more ammunition to kill the ill-fated long-gun registry, it was served up to him on a platter yesterday by Auditor-General Sheila Fraser. Among Fraser's findings on the registry -- in her first report to the Harper government -- are: - - Government officials went to great lengths to obscure the true annual cost, including spreading accounting of past spending over 15 years. - - Almost $22 million in overspending by the Canadian Firearms Centre for 2004 was hidden. - - Mistakes and cost overruns in the centre's first registration computer system were repeated when a second-generation system was brought in. - - The registry's accuracy cannot be verified and it is impossible to know how well it is protecting public safety. The registry was a political decision by the former Liberal government to appease the anti-gun lobby in the wake of urban shootings. It was wrong-headed from the start. Long guns are mainly used by law-abiding hunters and farmers. Handguns, which have been registered since the early 1930s, are the weapons of choice for criminals -- and they don't register them. That would be akin to leaving their business card at a crime scene. The long-gun registry should be put out of its misery as soon as possible, although it's unlikely Prime Minister Harper will have enough support in the House of Commons to do it. Fraser, who has gained a reputation for her relentless and scathing audits, also found deficiencies with National Defence, whose bill from a private company for unused pilot training over the last four years was $39 million. That came about because there weren't enough spaces available in operational training squadrons for those graduating from basic flight training. Thus, the military cut back on the latter, but was still on the hook for the bill. This is both bad planning on the part of military officials, who should have known they couldn't accommodate graduates of basic flight training, and is more evidence of Liberal neglect of the military in both equipment and personnel. Fraser also found that Public Works spent a staggering $13 million more to lease a Hamilton building than it would have cost to buy it. While the ruling Tories relished one last kick at the Liberal can by the auditor general, a thinly veiled shot at Harper's Accountability Act by Fraser served notice she picks no favourites. "Programs that are mired in controls and reporting requirements are not programs that focus most of their efforts and resources on improving the lives of Canadians," she wrote, in obvious reference to Harper's act that has been panned by Federal Information Commissioner John Reid for imposing more secrecy, not less. "In many respects, the government needs fewer rules, but rules that are consistently applied," Fraser wrote. That's about as subtle as she gets. When she audits Harper's work, he can expect the same brutally frank treatment accorded the Liberals. ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 17 May 2006 06:54:28 -0600 (CST) From: owner-cdn-firearms@sfn.saskatoon.sk.ca (Majordomo User) Subject: POLICE CHIEF SEES VALUE TO LONG-GUN REGISTRY PUBLICATION: The London Free Press DATE: 2006.05.17 EDITION: Final SECTION: News PAGE: A6 ILLUSTRATION: 3 photos 1. photo of MURRAY FAULKNER 2. photo of DAVE MacKENZIE 3. photo of PAUL STECKLE BYLINE: APRIL KEMICK, FREE PRESS REPORTER WORD COUNT: 328 - ------------------------------------------------------------------------ FAULKNER SEES VALUE TO LONG-GUN REGISTRY - ------------------------------------------------------------------------ The auditor general's report on Canada's troubled gun registry drew quick and varied responses yesterday. Some, like Greg Farrant of the Ontario Federation of Anglers and Hunters, found ample ammunition in the report to attack the registry. "The auditor general has once again reaffirmed the fact that this registry system is a huge problem . . . For $1 billion, a registry that was purportedly to deal with the issue of public safety has not been able to demonstrate that it's been in the interest of public safety," he said. But others, including London police Chief Murray Faulkner, were concerned that the registry's benefits not be overlooked. "I'm not going to justify any inappropriate spending, but . . . from the police perspective, the gun registry is a good thing," he said. "There have been a number of situations in which individuals who have had firearms that were registered . . . had them revoked because of criminal convictions, because of health issues . . . because of involvement in violent occurrences . . . "Whether we're talking about handguns or long guns, we should have some regulations in place." Oxford Tory MP Dave MacKenzie, parliamentary secretary to the public safety minister and former Woodstock police chief, said those benefits came at enormous cost. "That money should have been . . . spent on either additional police officers, putting additional tools into the hands of police officers or on . . . securing our borders so that illegal handguns didn't end up in the hands of criminals in Canada. "(Scrapping the long-gun registry) is what (the Conservatives) said we'd do and I . . . don't see us being dissuaded from moving ahead, particularly after that report (yesterday). It adds fuel to that fire." Huron-Bruce Liberal MP Paul Steckle welcomed the auditor's findings. "Finally, we have before the House the auditor's version of what has transpired in the last four years . . . She has herself said we've made some satisfactory progress and that's less than the condemning report I thought we might see (yesterday). "But I certainly am never going to be pleased with the fact that we engaged in this whole exercise in the first place. . . . It's never worked, and I don't know why we ever thought it would work here." ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 17 May 2006 06:54:42 -0600 (CST) From: owner-cdn-firearms@sfn.saskatoon.sk.ca (Majordomo User) Subject: EDITORIAL: GUN REGISTRY BLASTED PUBLICATION: The Edmonton Sun DATE: 2006.05.17 EDITION: Final SECTION: Editorial/Opinion PAGE: 10 COLUMN: Editorial WORD COUNT: 416 - ------------------------------------------------------------------------ GUN REGISTRY BLASTED - ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Federal Auditor General Sheila Fraser - in delivering her latest damning report on the Liberals firearms centre yesterday - reminded politicians and bureaucrats alike why taxpayers pay them. "Reporting of department's expenditures accurately," Fraser wrote, "is the cornerstone of parliamentary control." That's what she was trying to stress four years ago when she withdrew her auditors in frustration when stonewalling managers basically refused to disclose the true costs of the controversial registry. In her latest attempt to get blood out of the bureaucratic Ottawa stones, Fraser determined that the cost of registering firearms owners and their guns has ballooned to $946 million. Which actually isn't as bad as it sounds. Because her original estimate was at least $1 billion. And she also determined that the bureaucrats deliberately cooked the books to hide the true cost of the boondoggle away from Canadians. Not only that, she discovered disturbing flaws in the quality of the data acquired about firearms owners. And verification was apparently left in the hands of volunteers. What a mess. But after Fraser unloaded her latest load of garbage, we don't blame large numbers of Albertans and Canadians for saying "tell us something we don't know." It's been well documented that the firearms registry is an expensive bureaucratic nightmare that has cost taxpayers huge amounts of money with minimum results. Gun crime is still rampant, while law-abiding owners of shotguns and sporting rifles are being victimized and treated like criminals. At the same time those who commit crimes with guns continue as before outside the reach of the registry. Bad guys don't register their guns. So now is the time for action. Canadians have shown that they don't want a total eradication of firearm controls. And neither do we. Putting guns in the hands of dangerous or unstable people is clearly not in the best interests of society. A firearm owners' registry makes far more sense than having a bloated bureaucracy trying to keep track of every gun in the country. Attempting to starve the firearms registry into inactivity with severe budget cuts would only make the situation worse. Mainly because there are laws - including Criminal Code offences - on the books that apply to firearms owners. Which have severe penalties. Yet the realities of a minority government severely restrict what the Harper government can do outside of legislative changes - which will obviously fail with the three opposition parties in favour of the Liberal's flawed firearms law. When Public Safety Minister Stockwell Day speaks later today he must outline a plan to legitimate, law-abiding Canadian firearms owners that will not only lift the burden of the registry off their shoulders. But no longer treats them like criminals. It's a tough job but somebody has to do it. ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 17 May 2006 06:55:34 -0600 (CST) From: owner-cdn-firearms@sfn.saskatoon.sk.ca (Majordomo User) Subject: Gun centre attracts 'hate mail' PUBLICATION: The Windsor Star DATE: 2006.05.17 EDITION: Final SECTION: News PAGE: A8 BYLINE: Chris Morris SOURCE: The Canadian Press WORD COUNT: 317 - ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Gun centre attracts 'hate mail' - ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Having been told that he and the people of Miramichi, N.B., would be better off shovelling cow manure than registering long guns, John McKay has a clear idea of just how contentious the gun registry issue is in Canada. The main processing office for the Canadian Firearms Centre is located in Miramichi and McKay, the city's mayor, is more worried than ever about the centre's future following the latest revelations of mismanagement by Auditor General Sheila Fraser. McKay said Tuesday he has received dozens of letters in recent weeks from Western Canadians who feel he has no business defending the roughly 200 jobs created by the gun registry in the economically depressed region. "It's hate mail," McKay said bitterly. "These letters are directed at me, the registry employees, the Miramichi community and the Maritimes. The employees have been compared to concentration camp guards. One writer suggested that tabulating polar bear excrement in the North would be a more useful job. Another suggested we could spend our time homogenizing cow manure." McKay said he always believed there was a disconnect between Western Canada and the East, but the letters he is receiving indicate a depth of hatred and disgust he never would have suspected. 'LESS THAN HUMAN' "Because the gun registry is here, they're saying we're less than human." In a report released Tuesday, Fraser said the former Liberal government cooked the books on the much-maligned gun registry program, ignored legal advice and hid the true cost of it from Parliament. The auditor's findings give Prime Minister Stephen Harper and the Conservative government more ammunition to dismantle the long-gun registry. However, the Conservatives are promising to maintain jobs in Miramichi, possibly through an expanded handgun registry. Larry Whitmore, executive director of the Canadian Shooting Sports Association, which opposes the long-gun registry, said urban Canada never understood -- and probably never tried to understand -- why the gun registry struck such a sour note in rural Canada. "Take New Brunswick for example -- it's a way of life there," Whitmore said of gun ownership. ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 17 May 2006 06:56:46 -0600 (CST) From: owner-cdn-firearms@sfn.saskatoon.sk.ca (Majordomo User) Subject: National Post Editorial: Kill the gun registry PUBLICATION: National Post DATE: 2006.05.17 EDITION: National SECTION: Editorials PAGE: A20 SOURCE: National Post WORD COUNT: 685 - ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Kill the gun registry - ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Sheila Fraser's audit of the federal gun registry, released yesterday, provides yet more proof that Canada is a better country for having booted the Liberals from power. In the auditor-general's devastating 2002 report, the federal Auditor-General revealed that costs at the Canadian Firearms Centre had skyrocketed out of control. But we now know that, even after that initial audit, the Liberals continued to mislead Parliament about the registry's true costs in order to minimize political damage. According to Ms. Fraser, gun-registry officials have given Parliament "an incomplete picture of how well the licensing and registration activities have performed." The management cannot vouch for the accuracy of much of the information in its databanks. And it has "no formal process for following up with law enforcement on its revocations." Last year, for instance, the federal firearm centre revoked the registrations on nearly 3,000 firearms because it deemed their owners threats to public safety. But in at least two-thirds of those cases, the centre cannot say whether the dangerous owners have surrendered their guns to police. The previous government also deliberately misled Parliament about the true cost of revamping Ottawa's gun-registry computers. Over the first four years of the registry's operation, the Liberals spent $190-million on its databank, only to have to scrap the initial system and start from scratch. So far, $90-million has been spent on a second system, a sum that is "significantly over budget." More troubling still, lessons learned from the failure of the first system were not heeded when developing the second, Ms. Fraser explained. Estimates are that the current system could wind up costing nearly $240-million, with no guarantees it will work better than the abandoned one. In advance of Tuesday's report, the registry's supporters began spinning tales about how the registry need not be scrapped because it is now costing just $10-million a year to operate. But there is nothing in Ms. Fraser's report to support this claim, and it is impossible to tell how organizations such as the Coalition for Gun Control and the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police came up with the fanciful figure. Last year, the government spent $93-million on the Canadian Firearms Centre, and this year it expects to spend at least $83-million more. Nearly half those sums ($43-million) are for contracts to fix the computer system. Another $20-million each year goes to salaries, $4-million to employees benefit plans, $4-million for travel and entertainment expenses and $2-million for "repair and maintenance." The same organizations insisted the registry is vital because police access its records 5,000 times each day. Again, Ms. Fraser's report is silent on this claim. But it is known from the work of gun registry researchers that most of these "hits" are either made automatically -- such as when an officer searches a suspect's criminal record and a police computer, unbeknownst to the officer, also checks the firearms computers -- or are made when police are registering additional guns for owners already in the system. The daily use figures, therefore, are meaningless. Perhaps the most damning statement in Ms. Fraser's audit came not from her staff, but from the firearms centre itself. In response to her query about the usefulness of registration, the centre replied that "there are many statistical and data problems in linking ... licensing and registration activities to public safety outcomes." So, while the Liberals promised both rhetorically and legislatively that the registry would reduce gun crime in Canada, there is no evidence that it has, despite the $1-billion or more it has cost. That is reason enough for the Conservative government to move as swiftly as possible to shut it down. ------------------------------ End of Cdn-Firearms Digest V9 #409 ********************************** Submissions: mailto:cdn-firearms-digest@sfn.saskatoon.sk.ca Mailing List Commands: mailto:majordomo@sfn.saskatoon.sk.ca Moderator's e-mail address: mailto:akimoya@cogeco.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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