Gun registry costs piling up, and out of control.
Might top $1 BILLION, one year early! -
November 25, 2003
Costs are piling up at the troubled federal firearms registry and could top the $1-billion mark a year earlier than originally forecast, government figures show.
The new expense numbers are contained in the most recent government estimates, which show the total program cost will rise to $814 million by next March, which marks the end of the 2003-04 fiscal year.
That figure doesn't include the $130 million in planned expenditures for the current year and other costs associated with the program, according to the opposition Canadian Alliance, which says the cost spiral is continuing unabated.
Last year, federal officials estimated the total cost
of the registry, which was originally budgeted at $2 million, would hit $1
billion in early 2005.
"This is going to go over the $1-billion mark a full year ahead of schedule, and
most of it is due to the astonishingly poor management of the program," said
Alliance MP Garry Breitkreuz, a fierce detractor of the program.
A spokesperson for Solicitor-General Wayne Easter, whose department is in charge of the registry, referred calls for comment to the Canada Firearms Centre, which did not respond yesterday.
Federal auditor-general Sheila Fraser savaged the
firearms registry for unexplained cost overruns in a report she tabled in
December 2002, and predicted the total bill to taxpayers would reach more than
$1 billion by 2005.
Breitkreuz said Fraser will now have to revise that figure.
He pointed to a previously undisclosed $47.2-million allotment for "indirect costs" that was revealed this month, and said the government's own cost estimates have been exceeded by $33 million this year.
"And none of this even includes what the auditor-general called major additional costs," Breitkreuz said.
The opposition also criticized the government for not
being more forthcoming with the registry's books. Breitkreuz said he has filed
more than 400 requests under federal Access to Information rules in order to
find out more about the program.
[Please note that the RCMP {CSIS} received an additional 7 (SEVEN) BILLION DOLLARS to their budgets as part of the so-called "anti-terrorism" Act, that was passed by "Royal Accent" by the government of Canada. This money is, among other things, intended to be used to collect YOUR firearms beginning in 2005, as mandated by the UN, who wrote our "anti-terrorist" Act.] [Click here to learn more]
Who is really threatened by law abiding gun owners?? Terrorist governments and criminals... that's who.
When the Nazis entered the Warsaw Ghetto, the only Jews and peasants who weren't rounded up and forced into Auchwitz and the other camps were the ones who refused to disarm. History testifies that disarmament of the populace always leads to dictatorship.
Gun registry loses $46M to backlog
Licence giveaway
Adrian Humphr
CREDIT: Allen Mcinnis, the Gazette
Of the 1.3 million people registered with a "Possession Only Licence," 770,000 of them will get a break on the application. eys, Scott Stinson and Jacques Bourbeau
National Post and CanWest News Service
Saturday, October 23, 2004
The cash-strapped federal gun registry will miss out on more than $46-million in fees from gun owners this year by giving away 770,000 free licence renewals so that bureaucrats can catch up on their paperwork.
Those firearms owners who were randomly chosen by the Canada Firearms Centre for the free extensions of up to four years should receive their notices in
the mail next week.
The unusual move is to head off an expected deluge of applications to renew
licences -- which are normally valid for five years -- as the fifth anniversary of the original Jan. 1, 2001, firearms registration deadline approaches.
"In order to comply with that specific deadline under the new firearms act there was, of course, a flood of applications close to the deadline," said Thomas Vares, a spokesman for the firearms centre.
"We're now in the window of that expiry date for maturation of licences," he said.
The gun registry faced a rotating feast-or-famine cycle every five years unless something was done to level out the load, Mr. Vares said. "To ensure that we are able to process these applications in an orderly fashion and offer service to Canadians by being able to settle with them in a timely manner, at random we set up a system that extends certain people's licences for an additional maximum of four years.
"It sort of avoids a big crunch and backlog."
But Garry Breitkreuz, a Saskatchewan Conservative MP and one of the gun
registry's harshest critics, said the decision to confer free licence renewals "is another example of poor planning by the Liberal government," which should have anticipated the renewal glut.
"Did no one in the Liberal braintrust ask themselves what they were going to
do when all these firearms licences came up for renewal in five years?"
David Tomlinson, a member of the National Firearms Association's executive
committee, said he suspects the automatic renewals are part of an effort to reduce costs in the short term so that the CFC does not have to ask the government for millions of dollars to cover its ongoing expenses.
"Every spring, they ask the government for $115-million to pour down the black hole of badly run gun control, so this year they will be able to ask for a number that's a little smaller," he said in a telephone interview from Edmonton.
"This had nothing to do with reducing a workload, and everything to do with
lowering operating costs. They painted themselves into one hell of a corner."
The free renewals, which normally costs $60, will affect the majority of registered possession-only gun owners.
Of the 1.3 million people registered with a "Possession Only Licence,"
770,000 of them will get a break on the application. The 700,000 people registered with a "Possession and Acquisition Licence" will not be affected and will have to apply for a renewal as regularly scheduled.
There are about 7 million guns registered in Canada.
Gun owners in British Columbia, Alberta, Northwest Territories and the Yukon
who are receiving free renewals had their notices and stickers mailed out
this week.
Those in Ontario, Saskatchewan, Manitoba and Nunavut will be sent their free
stickers early next month and those in Quebec and the Atlantic provinces will be sent notices in late November and early December.
The firearms centre will send out notices as regularly scheduled -- about three months before the date of expiry -- to those gun owners not being granted a waiver.
The gun registry has been a source of frequent criticism for the government after its costs swelled from less than $10-million to an estimated $1-billion.
Mr. Breitkreuz said the renewal issue is indicative of larger problems with the registry and its bloated costs.
"It is totally focused on tracking millions of law-abiding gun owners instead of individuals who have proven themselves to be too dangerous to have guns."
Mr. Tomlinson echoed those concerns.
"All this thing does is track the honest citizens. Does the government really think that Uncle George from East Elbow, Sasktachewan, is going to be dissuaded from murdering someone because he registered his duck gun?"
In May, the government announced the costs of running the program were being
capped at $25-million. The annual cost of the registry itself is "already down to $33-million from a high of $48 million in [fiscal year] 2001/02," the government said at the time in a release.
"Recognizing that enhancements can be made to improve the firearms program
for law-abiding citizens, the government intends to further streamline firearms licence renewal processes," the release from May said.
The firearms registry spokesman in the office of Anne McLellan, Minister of "Public Safety" and Emergency Preparedness, and a spokeswoman from the office of Irwin Cotler, Minister of Justice, did not return telephone calls yesterday afternoon. A spokeswoman for Reg Alcock, president of the Treasury Board, referred calls to the firearms centre.
(Global National)
© National Post 2004
[Note: Under our Constitution [Magna Carta, 1215, 1225, 1297, which was redundantly affirmed by edict as our Supreme Law of the Land (1368) by Edward III, and AGAIN in 17th century by King James as part of requirement of the Coronation Act] AND confirmed AGAIN in the "Charter of Rights and Freedoms" in s.26 and s.7 of the Canada Act, 1982] you have an unalienable and Common Law right to possess, carry and USE a Firearm for lawful purposes [i.e. self-defence, concealment for lawful purpose] and this right is ABSOLUTE, and can only be waved by expressed or implied consent, or by a judgement of one's peers [s. 39 and 40 of Magna Carta under Anglo-Saxon common law conviction].
Simply put, the government has NO LAWFUL AUTHORITY WHATSOEVER to FORCE you to obtain a "possession license" because there is nothing illegal about possession of property that the government agrees [by its own usage] is a reasonable device for self-defence. [See Supreme Court judgment on right to conceal weapon]
What the government does, therefore, is [by way of lies, intimidation and assault] get you to "voluntarily" send in your request for a "firearms license". It then uses this as a proof that you indeed needed their authority, and have [in asking] implicitly waved your inherent right to possess a firearm for a lawful purpose. [NOTE: the only reason for a "LICENSE" is to obtain permission for an act that is ordinarily illegal - i.e. hunting on Crown land, driving a commercial vehicle on the public highways, etc.]
If you have not already asked for "permission" [via license] to obtain and possess a firearm for a lawful purpose [see "public peace" or King's peace"] you would do well not to ask for such, as the process of "asking" is used against you in the puppet courts of this country to steal your unalienable right.]
Government has now found yet another way to blow billions of your money on
setting up a massive socialist police state surveillance and control grid.
OTTAWA (CP) - A high-tech system to prevent terrorists and other criminals from
obtaining passports will eventually contain the photos of some 21 million Canadians,
new documents show.
Canada's passport office has officially begun looking for a vendor to supply a computerized
tool to screen applicant photos against images of suspects on security watch lists.
Passport Canada's facial-recognition project, in the works for three years, represents one
of the first large-scale federal forays into the sphere of biometrics.
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