2006-05 (May)
BLAINE CALKINS MP REPORT
May 2006
PHASING OUT THE LONG GUN REGISTRY
The Firearms registry was created by the Chrétien government in response to the murder of 14 women who were engineering students at a Montreal university in 1989. It was sold to the Canadian public as gun control, but the registry turned out to be a billion dollar boondoggle.
We knew then, as we do today, that it had little to do with stopping violent gun crime. There are nearly 7 million registered long-guns in Canada, yet of the 549 murders recorded in Canada in 2003, only two were committed with long-guns known to be registered.
Canada’s Auditor General, Sheila Fraser, found that this was a wasteful, ineffective program that cost Canadians over a billion dollars. She also found that Parliament was misinformed over many of the costs and she questioned the reliability of the data.
Canadians want effective gun control, not bureaucratic waste and that is why Public Safety Minister, Stockwell Day, announced a series of immediate changes to the Canadian Firearms Program. The new measures include:
- transferring responsibility for the Firearms Act and regulations to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP), taking over from the former Canada Firearms Centre;
- reducing the annual operating budget for the program by $10 million;
- implementing licence renewal fee waivers and refunds;
- eliminating physical verification of non-restricted firearms; and
- introducing a one-year amnesty to protect previously-licensed owners of non-restricted firearms from prosecution and to encourage them to comply with the law as it currently stands.
The Government will table legislation to repeal the requirement to register non-restricted firearms but because we have a minority government, it will take time to make some of the legislative changes needed to reform the Firearms Act. In the meantime, the amnesty gives owners of non-restricted rifles and shotguns time to comply with current licensing and registration requirements without fear of prosecution.
Firearms owners will still be subject to measures that are designed to help ensure public safety, even during the amnesty period. The amnesty protects individuals from prosecution for possessing a non-restricted rifle or shotgun without a valid licence or registration certificate if:
- they were licensed to possess that class of firearm in the past but their licence has expired since January 1, 2004; or
- they currently hold, or have held, a firearms licence but have not yet registered the firearm.
Detailed fact sheets regarding new long-gun rules are available on the Canada Firearms Centre Web site at www.cfc-cafc.gc.ca, or by calling the toll-free information line at 1-800-731-4000.
If you wish more information on these or any federally related matters please contact my Constituency office at: #6, 4612 - 50th Street, Ponoka, T4J 1S7 tel: (403) 783-5530; toll free at 1-800-665-0865 or check my web site: www.blainecalkinsmp.ca
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