Prime Minister Stephen Harper clearly wasn't looking for any more ammunition to put Canada's bloated and wounded gun registry out of its misery, but auditor-general Sheila Fraser handed it to him anyway.
Fraser reported to Parliament yesterday that the former Liberal government hid more than $60 million in unexpected costs racked up by the firearms program, left no written record of its officials' important decisions and might have broken numerous rules in awarding contracts. If this keeps up, the well-intentioned registry could go down in history as Canada's most bungled federal program.
Yesterday's findings plus those in the 2002 report give Prime Minister Stephen Harper all the excuses he needs to push ahead with his plans to suspend the registry. The word is that the Tories will declare an immediate amnesty for all those who have refused to register their firearms and then introduce legislation scrapping the whole program except the parts that pertain to handguns.
The first part of the plan will be easy, but scrapping the program for long guns will be more difficult. The registry's supporters - who include most of the nation's police chiefs - maintain that it saves lives and helps prevent violent crime.
And polls show that Canadians - particularly urban Canadians - overwhelmingly want some kind of gun registration. In fact, no issue has defined Canada's urban-rural split more clearly than the gun registry. City-dwellers tend to see guns as a threat, country-dwellers as just another tool, like a plough or a pickup truck. Source
