February 14, 2004
Deeper and Deeper
The federal gun registry, which was supposed to cost just $2 million, didn't end up costing a billion dollars after all.
It cost $2 billion - so far:
Nearly $2 billion has either been spent on or committed to the federal program since it was introduced in the mid-1990s, according to documents obtained by Zone Libre of CBC's French news service.
The figure is roughly twice as much as an official government estimate that caused an uproar across the country.
The gun registry was originally supposed to cost less than $2 million. In December 2002, Auditor General Sheila Fraser revealed that the program would run up bills of at least $1 billion by 2005.
But the calculations remained incomplete, so CBC News obtained documents through the Access to Information Act and crunched the numbers.
A large part of the $2 billion expense is a computer system that's supposed to track registered guns, according to one document. Officials initially estimated it would cost about $1 million. Expenses now hover close to $750 million and the electronic system is still not fully operational.
Other errors and unforeseen expenses include $8 million in refunds to people who registered their guns, and millions more in legal fees that mounted during court challenges.
On a smaller scale, but still infuriating enough, Adrienne Clarkson's vice-regal jaunt around the Arctic Circle cost $5.3 million. We were angry enough when we thought it would only cost one million dollars.
Posted by damian at February 14, 2004 12:43 PM