Junius explains that gun-registry math
By Colby Cosh - Wednesday, September 22, 2010 - 0 Comments
The Globe and Mail has finally explained where a Toronto Chief of Police and dozens of gullible journalists and politicians got the idea that the national firearms registry costs $4 million a year. I’ve watched this figure get repeated countless times over the past month or so, and every single time I kept returning with furrowed brow to the Treasury Board estimates, which put the combined operating and transfers cost of firearms registration at $22 million, just to the RCMP, for 2010-11. (The overall cost for registries and licensing infrastructure comes to $78 million.)
That’s not counting the costs to other federal agencies—most especially the cost to Corrections Canada, estimated loosely at $10 million for fiscal ’08-’09. Certainly the commentators who were soiling themselves over the PBO’s estimates for penological costs of Conservative law-and-order measures wouldn’t want to just ignore the money spent on keeping gun-registry offenders locked up longer, would they? Including the cost in registrant time and effort would drive the figure higher still; surely the Globe is bound to be giving the program a break in only revising the cost upward by a factor of 16½.
If the Globe is right, it seems only a bit of sloppily written verbiage in the new report on the registry—interpreted by dissimulators with badges, and faithfully broadcast by writers with poor financial instincts—could possibly have led anyone to believe the gun registry is a bargain. (The Firearms Centre in Miramichi has 240 federal employees, guys! $4 million wouldn’t cover 12 weeks of payroll expenses, right?) And maybe I’m just some Western flake, but in retrospect it does seem as though the propagation of $4 million figure was possible only because the RCMP played undisguised politics with the report, dawdling over a “translation” (a tactic that the Conservatives somehow ended up taking most of the blame for) and making sure to pass it around to friendly, gullible media outlets in a timely way before the vote on C-391. All of which, now, can serve only the electoral interests of the Conservatives themselves—keeping alive the hated totem and allowing them to exploit the real financial numbers in their search for a Commons majority.
[UPDATE, 10:22 am: Or not. The Citizen's board smacks down the Globe this morning, and the Globe seems to have mis-identified the source of the figure within the report—the actual source being a reference to another report to the RCMP by a government IT consultancy, Pleiad Canada. So could we have that document, or is it already too late to bother?]
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'Just recently'
By Aaron Wherry - Saturday, November 7, 2009 at 12:32 PM - 47 Comments
Peter Van Loan, Thursday. I received it and looked at just recently, in recent days.
Toronto Star, today. Responding by email to questions from the Star, RCMP Sgt. Greg Cox said late Friday the force submitted its 2008 firearms report on Oct. 9, four weeks ago.
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For it before he was against it, Easter edition
By Aaron Wherry - Friday, November 6, 2009 at 2:46 PM - 14 Comments
Fun facts. From 1892 to 2005, Canada had a solicitor general. From Oct. 2002 to Dec. 2003, Liberal Wayne Easter, as noted here, held that title. From April 2003 to Dec. 2003, that position put Easter in charge of the federal firearm registry. And on Wednesday night, Easter voted to have long guns removed from that registry.
In July 2003, six gun owners showed up at Easter’s constituency office, reported that they had not registered their weapons and invited him to take action. He declined. “I don’t direct police operations,” he told Canwest at the time, “that’s up to the police to decide. And as I’ve said a number of times, the police know the difference between somebody trying to make a point politically versus concerns for public safety.”
Three months later though, with the release of statistics showing a drop in gun-related deaths, Easter was sought out for comment and seemed generally supportive of the registry’s general purpose. Canadian Press dispatch after the jump. Relevant portion in bold. Continue…
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'That was totally useless. Thank you.'
By Aaron Wherry - Friday, November 6, 2009 at 10:49 AM - 46 Comments
Strolling casually around the House of Commons foyer yesterday, Public Safety Minister Peter Van Loan happens upon a group of reporters. A delightful exchange of pleasantries follows.
Question: How long have you had the report from the Commissioner of Firearms?
Hon. Peter Van Loan: The report from the Commissioner of Firearms has to be tabled tomorrow which it will be. I know that some information – some information on it will be coming out shortly. Some of it has already been released in the public accounts. The one that I know has attracted some interest is the number of times that the police access it which is close to three and a half million times. What’s very interesting about that statistic is of those three and a half million times only 2.4 percent of the time is it actually information about the registration of a long-gun that would eliminated by the long-gun registry. If the bill to eliminate the long-gun registry is passed and becomes law, 97 percent of the times that the police utilize that information from the firearms centre would continue to be in place because of course the bill does not eliminate the requirement for licensing of gun owners and only, as I said, 2.4 percent of those queries had to do with information related to long-gun registration.
Question: (Inaudible)
Hon. Peter Van Loan: I am referring to the 2008 statistics. And what’s more interesting -
Question: (Inaudible)
Hon. Peter Van Loan: If I could finish, what’s more interesting -
Question: You haven’t answered my question once yet though.
