When Will it End?

First, an addendum to yesterday's post about our National Anthem. My friend Ray says that what the aboriginals would like to see is one very slight change that would reflect what they see as reality. Change the 'and ' to 'on' and what you have is "Oh Canada, our home on native land".

Having just read commentaries ad nauseam about the new Federal Budget and how there will be cuts in government spending, here is a 'no brainer' that I can work a rant up against at the drop of a hat. It is our long gun registry enacted by Bill C-68 that was brought in by Jean Chretien's Liberal government in 1995. Remember the promised cost to set that up? For only $2 million we could eliminate gun crime in Canada. The idea as well as the proposed cost was flawed from the start. And, like all new initiatives, this became a sink hole with no bottom.

In 2002 and again in 2006 the auditor general Sheila Fraser, could not find where all the money was going and the costs were now $2 Billion! The Canadian Tax Payer's Federation presented a 28,000 signature petition to the government to do away with the registry and re-allocate funds to 'front line' police work to reduce crime. The gun registry only criminalized law abiding gun owners and never had any effect on the number of gun related crimes committed in Canada.

Now, a private member's bill C-391 is on the long road to being enacted. But don't think that those who are profiting from all the money going into the program will take this sitting down. In fact, nobody even knows who is getting the money so those who oppose this bill will be the first suspects. An Angus Reid poll released in November shows that 78% of us think that the long gun registry has been a failure. But this country is run mostly by special interest groups and lobbyists so it does not even matter much what the majority think.

If parliament is serious about cutting waste and doing the right thing, this bill will pass.