PUBLICATION: The Windsor Star
DATE: 2004.08.19
EDITION: Final
SECTION: Editorial/Opinion
PAGE: A6
SOURCE: Windsor Star

-----------------------

Gun registry's legacy

-----------------------

Some "good" has finally come of the federal Liberal government's $1-billion rifle and shotgun registry -- it's being used by a U.S. project management centre as a case study in incompetence and financial mismanagement.

New York-based Baseline is showing senior corporate executives how the registry went from a relatively simple system that was supposed to cost taxpayers less than $2 million to a bloated billion-dollar mess as costs soared out of control as a result of bureaucratic errors, poor planning, unforeseen expenses and an increasingly complex computer system.

The Baseline analysis also points out that the registry has become "so cumbersome that an independent review board recommended that it be scrapped." Baseline has aptly titled its study, Firearms: Armed Robbery.

What Baseline should be adding to its assessment is the fact that the rifle and shotgun registry is a useless government program that hasn't had any appreciable impact on criminal activity in Canada.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------