Verdict on Canadian Gun Registry

The one point missing from all these facts is that not one single crime has been solved by all this money that was spent. Not one single crime!

Canadian TV

The former Liberal government went to great lengths to hide the true costs of the controversial gun registry, Auditor General Sheila Fraser said in a scathing report released Tuesday.

Though the decade-long expense of the controversial registry through the end of fiscal 2005 has been tallied at $946 million -- coming in below an earlier approximation of $1 billion -- government officials concealed the actual amount, Fraser said in her first report since the minority Conservatives came to power earlier this year. . . . .

Toronto Sun

The former Liberal government cooked the books on the much-maligned gun registry program, ignoring legal advice and hiding the true cost of the registry from Parliament, says the auditor general. . . . .

Calgary Sun

Canada's spending watchdog delivered more damning revelations about hidden cost overruns, sloppy storage of information and broken accounting rules on the gun registry yesterday, but opposition critics insist it's not enough ammunition to justify the Conservative government's plan to kill the controversial program.

In her eight-part spring report, auditor general Sheila Fraser fingered the last Liberal government for keeping MPs in the dark about excessive costs for the registry -- an issue she called "very serious." Her audit found the costs of a computer information system ballooned from an initial $32-million price tag to more than $90 million -- and it still isn't operational.

She also revealed two "significant errors" in financial reporting to Parliament, $39 million in 2002-03 and another $21.8 million the following year, but couldn't say if the Grits deliberately attempted to hide unauthorized spending. . . . .