On October 25, 2011 Public Safety Minister, Vic Toews, introduced Bill C-19 in the House of Commons, that when passed will finally abolish the wasteful long-gun registry. It is hopefully the final chapter in a 16-year battle the Canadian Taxpayers Federation has waged to abolish the wasteful and intrusive long-gun registry.

The CTF's long campaign   

In 1995, when Jean Chretien's Liberal government introduced Bill C-68 creating a long-gun registry, Canadians were promised it would lower crime and only cost taxpayers $2 million dollars. We now know, 16 years later, that this wasteful program has cost Canadians an estimated $2 billion dollars. That's five times larger than what was wasted in the Sponsorship Scandal!

Of course we don't even know if the figure is $2 billion. In 2002, the CTF presented Auditor General Sheila Fraser a petition with over 14,000 signatures demanding her office audit the program. She did. And her findings revealed astounding waste.

In a second audit of the registry conducted in 2006, Ms. Fraser found that whenever gun registry costs ballooned beyond what Parliament had authorized, or above what the government had publicly promised, the true amounts were hidden from legislators and the public.

Hiding these costs broke the law and violated the government's own accounting practices. It also meant that Parliament's constitutional power to decide how tax dollars are spent, was usurped by bureaucrats. 

The Auditor General's investigation could only go so far. Only a proper inquiry, like Gomery, with powers to probe much deeper, would ever reveal the full extent of the long-gun registry's waste and expose any corruption.

To keep the government's feet to the fire, the Canadian Taxpayers Federation presented a new petition to Ottawa in 2006. This time our petition garnered over 28,000 signatures and called on the federal government to shut down the long-gun registry and reallocate budgeted gun registry spending to front-line policing and effective controls against illegal firearms at our borders, airports and ports.

The petition was received at the time by then Public Safety Minister Stockwell Day, but it wasn't until 2009 that abolition of the registry really picked up momentum.

The start of the end

Manitoba MP Candice Hoeppner's Private Member's Bill C-391 – that would have killed the registry, while still requiring people who want to purchase long-guns to be licensed – passed second reading on November 4, 2009.

The Bill passed second reading in no small part because the CTF organized its 70,000 supporters to blitz Parliamentarians and demand its passage. Especially opposition MPs. Fully one-third of the NDP caucus voted in support of the measure! In all, eight Liberals and 12 New Democrats and one independent MP voted with 143 Conservatives to pass second reading of the Bill.

The Bill then went to Committee stage where former-CTF federal director Kevin Gaudet presented before the Public Safety and Security Committee. Six MPs – all of whom voted against the bill in second reading – held the majority (the Committee Chair can only vote in the event of a tie). And here's where the games began.

The committee voted to put a motion before the House of Commons to kill Bill C-391. Supposedly, six Opposition MPs on a Committee knew better than 155 MPs in the House of Commons.

Yet, advocates of abolishing the registry were emboldened, public opinion was clear. Seventy-two per cent of Canadians told pollster Angus Reid that the long gun registry has done nothing to prevent crime. An unscientific – but revealing – survey of rank and file police officers was even more decisive, with 92 per cent of them wanting it scrapped.

The CTF undertook every imaginable effort between May 2010 and the September 22nd vote to scrap Bill C-391 to support and encourage those brave MPs who stood for their constituents and against their party bosses. We had supporters and identified local constituents contact those MPs. We ran targeted radio ads, wrote commentaries, organized on social networks and conducted dozens of media interviews.

On September 22nd we learned just how powerful the top-down-government-knows-best-elites are in our country. Of the 21 Opposition MPs who had committed to vote with their constituents and abolish the wasteful long-gun registry; 14 of them changed their vote. Bill C-391 died 153 to 151.

The CTF polled our supporters following the 2011 federal election and found that they wanted us to keep up the heat and not let this issue fall by the wayside. 

While we would have preferred a more robust repeal of Bill C-68, this 16 year battle is seemingly coming to an end.

But as former CTF-federal director John Williamson says “in public policy no defeat is forever, no victory everlasting.”