Monday, September 26, 2005

Oh, how well it works in Canada!

Their gun registration program, that is. The one that was supposed to cost a few million, and at last audit- in which the information had to be dragged out kicking and screaming- was up to five hundred million dollars? And that doesn't work? I was looking at Captain's Quarters and found this post on the matter, which links to this article in the Winnipeg Sun.

"Originally expected to be self-financing by 1999-2000, Fraser and her auditors discovered the target for the firearms program to break even was pushed to 2013 -- an assumption that the program collect $419 million in fees in 2002-03 and about $828 million by 2007-08." Don't you just love that? The 'assumption' that it will break even in eight years, at hundreds of times the cost it was estimated for?

The previous audit? "The last time her office attempted to look into gun registry spending was 2002 and the results were explosive. In fact, her team was forced to abandon its attempts to follow the spending on the gun registry because of the absence of records." Nice, transparent government up there, wouldn't you say? And about as honest as, oh, Louisiana levee boards?

But it makes them safer, you say? "Worse than that, he added, it doesn't work. "No one has ever connected it to public safety. If you put the equivalent money or resources into front-line policing, into training, public awareness and general policing resources that, to me, would be a far more effective means of addressing firearms-related violence," MacKay said."

And the Captain points out something else: the program has drained a huge amount of money and resources from the RCMP, which is the only LE agency up there that can investigate the Canadian executive branch. Considering what's turned up the last few months in the form of corruption, he may be right that that was one of the aims behind pushing this waste of resources.

Ain't it just a wonderful example of how well crap like this works?

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