Category: Government

Well, at least no one can say that they’re surprised. A couple of hours ago, AG Sheila Fraser has produced her annual report to parliament and, just like we all expected, it was a doozy. Click on the AG’s photo to see some of CTV’s coverage.

The taxpayer’s favourite parliamentary ass-kicker found that the hand-wringing Grits’ little white elephant not only went tens of millions of dollars over budget in 2004/2005 (with the government lying to parliament and scrambling to hide the overruns), but that it is virtually impossible to see us getting anything at all in terms of value for our money. In 2004, when the CFC realized that its money sucking had balooned out of control yet again, officials were told to find “an accounting treatment that would, if possible, avoid having to record all the costs,” which everyone knows is Gritspeak for “cover our asses.”

Among some of the other skulduggeries that the AG found in the CFC were:

* $21.8 million gobbled up in 2004-2005 but not charged to the centre’s budget.

* Not only is the CFC’s new computer registry three years overdue and running at triple its estimated cost ($90 million and climbing so far), but there is no way to know if it’s actually doing anything.

* Nobody checks to see if the info that gun owners give is complete or even accurate.

* The volunteers that verify owners’ firearms don’t go through background checks and nobody audits their work.

* For 62% Of the people that had their licences yanked in Q3 of last year, the CFC has no goddamn idea where the hell their guns are or what happened to them.

Now all we need to do is wait to hear from the Tories just how they intend to put this Grit fiasco out of our misery. Stay tuned, folks.

It’s almost here. The big day. I can’t remember the last time I was this optimistic about something happening in Ottawa. Tomorrow we get ourselves a good peek at just how bad the Grits flushed our cash on, amongst other things, the been-going-on-too-long gun registry, and you can bet your britches that the Tories will be finally zeroing in on what’s probably my favourite thing to hate and finally putting it out of our misery.

As for myself, and a whole lot of other folks I know, I had figured that this white elephant would have been taken out to the woodshed and shot before the guys on the hill could change the name on the sign in front of the PM’s office. But no, that didn’t happen. Because there’s so much opposition coming from other parties to trashing this monumental waste of your money and mine, Harper seems to have decided to leave this dogfight to the most feared and respected of all the parliamentary pit bulls. Yup, you guessed it: Sheila “your-sorry-ass-looks-like-milkbones-to-me” Fraser.

You probably remember her as the one that found, back in 2002, that the Grit government had been lying through their teeth about the cost of the registry and that it had, in reality, balooned to over 500 times (nope, that’s no typo) what they had said it would cost, with no sign of slowing down. The Grits had cooked the books so bad that she wouldn’t even sign off on her audit.

Come tomorrow afternoon, Fraser lifts the lid on the bowl that our money has been circling and gives parliament a good, long whiff of what dwells within. Granted, the AG doesn’t have the clout herself to put a silver bullet into this money-eating beast but her recommendations will give the Tories plenty of match grade ammo to unload on the usual chattering suspects that want to keep this shambling farce lurching through our wallets in the delusion that it actually does something to prevent gun crime. And if a little leak from the AG’s office is any hint, the pro-registry handwringers are up a well known creek with nary a paddle in sight: “In carrying out our audit of the Canada Firearms Centre, we noted a matter with significant implications for Parliament’s control of public spending.” I can’t wait.

There are some people though, who think that even with Fraser giving artillery support to the assault on the registry, the Tories are going to hold off on putting the last nail in the coffin because they think that Harper has his eye squarely on a majority government in the forseeable future. Here’s the logic that they use:

Folks that want the registry tossed into the dustbin of history already vote Tory and aren’t likely to change anytime soon. The ones that want it kept around, mostly urban voters in Ontario and Quebec, are the ones that Harper needs to get on the Tory bandwagon if he wants to form a majority in the next election (which most people agree isn’t as far away as you might think). Harper may have made killing the registry a major campaign promise, but he never set a deadline for it.

The way I see it, whether the Tories manage to kill it outright or if they just suspend all fees and declare amnesty for those that didn’t renew their registrations, this thing is deader than last week’s meatloaf.

And not a minute too soon, either.