FACTS YOUR GOVERNMENT DOESN'T WANT YOU TO KNOW!

Firearms Registration, an $85 million or $2 billion boondoggle?

Canadian Governments, historically, by intention or incompetence, have drastically underestimated the cost of legislative programs. In these times when fundamental programs are being slashed to reduce the deficit from $40 billion to 25 billion, it is unconscionable to cloak a $2 billion firearms registration as an $85 million registration.

What is the Unit cost of registration?

In July 1994 Justice Canada produced a report TR1994 9e, Review of Firearms Registration Table 2 defines the cost of firearms registration in Ontario and Quebec as $82.69 and $104.02 respectively and recommends the Quebec system for all. Let's be generous and say in future it will cost $100.00 to register a firearm.

How many firearms are there?

The Justice Department's document Background Information on Firearms Control says on p4." there are an estimated 7 million firearms in Canada, 1.2 million registered and 5.8 million not registered."

In December 1976 as part of it's gun control campaign for Bill C-51 the government estimated there were 6 million owners of 18 million firearms in Canada. During the 1991 hearings on Bill C-17 Justice officials also testified that the average net import of firearms was 190,000 per year. Restricted firearms ownership increased from 861,571 in Dec. 1984 to 1,221,179 in Dec 1993, an increase of 41% in 9 years. It's not unreasonable therefore to estimate that now there exist 21 million firearms in Canada owned by 7 million citizens, all of voting age.

Cost of Registration

At $100 per registration it will cost $2.1 billion dollars to register 21 million firearms.

Who Pays?

The Minister of Justice States that firearms registration will cost $85 million and will cost the owner $10.00 to register up to 10 firearms. Then in the next breath he says that the system will be user pay so as not to cost the taxpayer anything.

Between the time the program is implemented and it becomes 100% user pay there will be an unfunded liability of 1.9 billion dollars to be financed 500 million by the federal government and $1.4 billion by the provinces on the basis of TR1994 9e. This is the same logic that has brought Canada to the brink of financial bankruptcy. Is it any wonder that financially self sufficient provinces like Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta resist participation in this boondoggle. Other dependent provinces must be dragged into it under innuendo of reductions in other programs.

Are there not more effective ways to reduce crime in Canada than by spending $2 billion on this! Or is there a hidden agenda?

Gun Control is not Crime Control

NEW BRUNSWICK FIREARMS ALLIANCE