Even in Canada, NOT ALL WOMEN SUPPORT GUN CONTROL>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

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Tories rebuff pleas by police, women to keep gun registry
Date: Jun 1, 2006 7:40 AM
CANADIAN PRESS
DATE: 2006.05.31
CATEGORY: National general news
BYLINE: JIM BROWN
PUBLICATION: cpw
WORD COUNT: 499

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Tories rebuff pleas by police, women to keep gun registry

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OTTAWA (CP) _ Montreal police, women’s groups and gun-control advocates,
backed by the Bloc Quebecois, are calling on the Conservative government
to reverse course and maintain the federal long-gun registry.

But Tory cabinet ministers and backbenchers from Quebec rebuffed the
appeal Wednesday, insisting the registry is a waste of money and isn’t
effective in fighting crime.

Public Safety Minister Stockwell Day, acting in the wake of a critical
report by Auditor General Sheila Fraser, has announced a series of fee
waivers and amnesties for rifle and shotgun owners as a prelude to
abolishing the registry.

The program has been plagued by cost overruns, and critics say its
computerized files are riddled with errors.

But Yves Francoeur, president of the union representing Montreal police
officers, said the registry remains a useful tool.

For example, he told a news conference, offices routinely check it when
responding to a domestic violence call to see whether anybody at the
address is listed as a firearms owner.

It’s true there are some errors in the computer files, Francoeur said,
“But it’s better for a police officer to work with incomplete and
imperfect information than with no information at all.”

Serge Menard, the Bloc justice critic, said he is “scandalized” like
everyone else at the cost of the registry, which ballooned to nearly $1
billion over its first decade of operation.

He has gone so far as to demand a public inquiry into how the former
Liberal government let spending get out of hand in the program’s early
years.

But that’s no reason to kill the registry now that management practices
have improved, said Menard.

He pointed to federal statistics that show a long-term decline in gun
deaths and other firearms-related crime and concluded: “I don’t know
how you can say the registry isn’t working now.”

Catherine Bergeron, whose sister was one of the female students gunned
down in the infamous Ecole Polytechnique massacre, also voiced support
for the program.

“I find it incredible this debate still persists,” she said.
“Possessing a gun is a privilege, not a right.”

Gun control has long been a popular issue in Quebec, where Prime
Minister Stephen Harper hopes to make further inroads in the next
election in his quest to secure a majority government.

But Public Works Minister Michael Fortier insisted Wednesday that
Quebecers are onside with the Tory decision to get rid of the long-gun
registry.

“I speak to all kinds of people in Montreal,” Fortier said outside a
party caucus meeting.

“People understand very well what we’ve done. . . . People realize a
colossal sum was invested in a program that didn’t work.”

Labour Minister Jean-Pierre Blackburn said that, as a hunter, he
supports the move toward abolition.

Similar sentiments came from backbencher Sylvie Boucher, who said that
in her riding of Beauport-Limoilou, near Quebec City, “all the hunters
are happy. They agree with us.”

Fraser’s report has prompted other Tory MPs to draw parallels with the
sponsorship scandal that also erupted on the Liberal watch.

John Williamson, head of the right-leaning Canadian Taxpayers
Federation, took up the same theme Wednesday, calling on Harper to
appoint a Gomery-style inquiry into contracts let by the Canada Firearms
Centre.

But the auditor general poured cold water on such comparisons when Garry
Breitkreuz a longtime Conservative critic of the gun registry
queried her at a Commons committee hearing Wednesday.

Fraser said her office is conducting further analysis of a handful of
registry consulting contracts that appear to have been awarded without
tender.

“I hesitate to make comparisons, though, with the sponsorship program,
which I think was a very exceptional case.”