Keywords Law Law Enforcement

Worse yet, says Fraser, the Justice Department advised the government about the revised estimates, but no one saw fit to keep the House of Commons informed. "The issue here is not gun control," declared Fraser. "And it's not even astronomical cost overruns, although those are serious. What's really inexcusable is that Parliament was in the dark."

Predictably, opposition MPs leapt on the revelations. The Canadian Alliance and the Progressive Conservatives called for the resignation of all three justice ministers who handled the gun registry file - Allan Rock, Anne McLellan and incumbent Martin Cauchon, respectively. More unusual - and yet another sign of the caucus disunity that plagues the federal Liberals these days - was that several backbench government MPs agreed heads should probably roll. Benoît Serré, who represents the northern Ontario riding of Timiskaming-Cochrane, took particular aim at Rock, the godfather of Bill C-68. Serré said he warned Rock at the outset that the legislation was costly and unworkable, but the minister "drove this file with tunnel vision." Rock, in turn, blamed the attacks on "pure leadership politics," suggesting that Paul Martin supporters like Serré were trying to undermine Rock's aspirations to be the next Liberal leader.

Far away from Parliament Hill, long-time opponents of Bill C-68 reflected on what they described as a bittersweet victory. Bitter, because they doubted the Liberals will do anything to staunch the overspending - let alone heed their call to scrap the gun registry entirely. Sweet, because an independent authority has finally substantiated their contention that Ottawa's latest gun control effort is a financial and administrative boondoggle.

As early as 1995, organizations like the Edmonton-based National Firearms Association, which claims to have 125,000 members, predicted implementing C-68 would cost upwards of $500 million. The association's current president, Jim Hinter, is an avid hunter, gun collector and target shooter who heads to an Edmonton practice range three times a week ("it's extremely relaxing," he says). When he does so, he carries with him a five-cm-thick binder of government documents to prove he is legally entitled to own and transport his arsenal, including restricted handguns. Hinter says he has no problem with requiring firearms owners to be licensed, much like hunters and automobile drivers (under the current legislation, gun owners had until Jan. 1, 2001, to obtain licences). But he draws the line at registering every single gun or rifle. Not only is it cumbersome and costly; in Hinter's view, it's dangerous. "The fewer people who know I have guns and where I store them the better," he says. "If it fell into the wrong hands, the registry would be like a shopping list for criminals who want to obtain weapons."

In fact, Hinter's root objection to the gun registry is that it targets the wrong people. "It's a downtown Toronto solution that doesn't work for 99 per cent of Canada," he says. "Look, parts of Toronto are a war zone right now because of imported and illegal guns, drugs and gangs. It's not because of Uncle George with his duck gun in Come By Chance, Newfoundland."

The most recent push for gun control in Canada is indeed directly attributable to the horrors of urban crime. It began with the murder of 14 young women at Montreal's École polytechnique, a tragedy that passed its 13th anniversary last week. And it picked up steam after the widely publicized shooting death of 23-year-old Georgina Leimonis in a trendy Toronto café in April, 1994. Gun control advocates such as the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police argued then, as they do now, that a national registry helps police track the thousands of legal guns that are stolen each year. They also say police cannot be expected to trace illegal guns if they don't know which ones are legal.

But it's probably a safe bet that even the most fervent gun control supporter could not have anticipated the level of resistance to Bill C-68 - and the utter mismanagement of the program it set in motion. As Fraser recounts in her report, six provinces and two territories backed a constitutional challenge to the firearms legislation the Alberta government launched in 1996 (the Supreme Court of Canada ruled in Ottawa's favour in June 2000). At the same time, all four western provinces as well as Newfoundland opted out of administering the firearms program, meaning Ottawa had to directly incur the costs of doing so. Individual gun owners also proved obstinate, waiting until the last minute to apply for a licence or register their firearms and creating backlogs that were costly to unclog.

In an attempt to placate critics, the Justice Department reduced registration fees and offered refunds, forcing the government to foot a bigger portion of the bill. It also spent more than $60 million on television ads and other public relations ploys to try to soft-sell the program.

Responding to last week's uproar, Jean Chrétien blamed the provinces and gun control opponents for making the implementation of Bill C-68 far tougher than it needed to be. As Fraser's report indicates, the Prime Minister has a point - albeit a limited one. According to Fraser, the main reason for the cost overruns comes down to two words: "poor management." Ottawa grossly underestimated the costs of processing licences and registrations. Overly complicated forms resulted in 90 per cent of applications containing errors and omissions, more than twice what had been predicted. The Justice Department's computer systems simply weren't equipped to handle the task at hand.

Faced with all this evidence of incompetence, Chrétien assumed a familiar role as a master of understatement. "Yes, there were some cost overruns," he conceded. "But the system is in place and it's a good system." Still, the Liberals, fearing a backbench revolt, prudently withdrew a request for an additional $72 million for the gun registry that MPs were supposed to approve on Dec. 5. Some opposition members crowed that the flip-flop marked the beginning of the end of the firearms act. More likely, though, it was a delaying tactic designed to ride out the current storm - and allow the Liberals to live to fight another day.

Maclean's December 16, 2002

Author BRIAN BERGMAN