Gun registry should be shot

To the editor:
 When Prime Minister Paul Martin told a Liberal audience that his government must “have the will to shut down what doesn’t work and the discipline to focus on what can,” you would think he was taking direct aim at the worst of the several billion-dollar boondoggles that took place under his nine-year watch as Finance Minister:  the federal gun registry.  You would be only partially correct.
 Martin has clearly stated that he will not scrap this disaster of a program, which soon will have swallowed up a billion tax dollars.  Instead, the Martin Liberals announced that they would be undertaking a “review” of the program.  Of course, in 1993, Martin and the Liberals promised first to actually scrap such things as the GST and free trade.  Reneging on those promises, they decided instead to “review” the policies, and upon review, concluded that they were just fine, thank you very much. 
 Fast forward to 2004.  Albina Guarnieri, Minister of State for Civil Preparedness, will head up the hastily called review of the gun registry, with promises to consult Liberal backbenchers.  The Prime Minister’s furious back-pedalling from his dismal record of gun registry waste, as a federal election looms, smacks of political opportunism.  But I’m equally unsure of those Liberal backbenchers who for years have lamented the misplaced priorities and overspending on the registry.
 Don’t forget that under Martin, these backbenchers are supposed to hold all the power.  Now they’re involved in the review process.  The message they should be delivering, from their constituents and Canadians at large, is to scrap the registry.  No longer will it suffice for these Liberals to return from Ottawa and tell constituents, “Well, I tried.  I opposed this thing in caucus, and it passed anyway.  What more could I do?”
 They certainly could have done a lot more.  In the past ten years, I’ve filed over 400 Access-to-Information requests to try to get to the bottom of the firearms fiasco.  I’ve spoken at town hall meetings from coast to coast, many of them in ridings held by the same Liberals who voice lip-service opposition to the program.
 It remains to be seen whether Martin’s backbenchers will have the influence promised to them.  And if they do, will they have the determination to voice the will of the millions of Canadians who want to see the registry relegated to the dustbin of history?  Given Martin’s staunch support of the registry, the hundreds of millions he poured into it as Finance Minister, and his past record of broken promises, I’ll remain sceptical about those prospects.  But unlike those Liberal backbenchers, my Conservative colleagues and I won’t stop fighting this outrageous waste of money until it’s scrapped completely.
 
Sincerely,
 Garry Breitkreuz
MP for Yorkton-Melville and Opposition critic for firearms and property rights