Quote: Originally Posted by bluealbertaLets see, gun registry initial cost $2million, actual to date cost, $2billion. Gee, sounds legitimate to me 
"Conservative" reform-alliance supporters do the parties ("conservative" reform-alliance parties) a disservice, if that's possible, by parroting marketing without knowing the facts.
Where did you get that $2 billion number from? The "conservatives", Bloc and NDP were trying to get a ballpark figure as to how much over-budget the gun registry was and kept getting, "The member knows that it is against the law for the federal government to dislose how it spends the money of Canadian taxpayers under the Privacy Act."
The NDP took ads out. No one could get an answer so they picked $2 billion and took ads out, to force the government to respond or we just pick a number out of a hat and, oh well, that's how much it's over-budget (as in, setup and administration costs, not what people are paying for fishing, hunting, vehicle registrations, driver's licenses, or to register their firearms).
It forced the government to produce the real number, which of course, leads to documentation, don't just tell us, get it in writing and table it.
But we have things called auditors and an Auditor General to combine it all and report anything to. The department of the Auditor General looked over the Canadian Firearms Board with a fine-toothed comb and never came anywhere near $100 million let alone $2,000 million ($2 billion).
There are three issues:
- The budgeted setup cost and costs of administering the "gun registry" (Candian Firearms Board);
- How much over-budget the administration costs are;
- Irrelevant: How many gun owners (or fishers or people driving cars and having to register them and get driver's licenses, hunters and hunting licenses, etc.) there are and what they have to pay in some total as though that has anything to do with the cost of administering the registry.
Only 1 and 2 "costs taxpayers" -- who don't even own guns. So the ones who do should at least cover the setup and administration costs. But how many people in Canada own how many firearms? You want to cover the costs, but what's the price per license to do that when it costs money to process every registration and the program is new, so there's nothing to base anything on.
How much does it cost to process a registration? They can run trials on that, assuming they keep the same human capital to enter the information into the computers; assuming that the computer systems analysts contracted did their jobs properly and they didn't. [Read a "little" software contract from Microsoft of anything else and see how legally responsible anything around computers are.]
Oh ya, the little gun registry thing. I almost got mixed up with real economics there for a second.
Quote: 1995
Bill C-68, the strictest gun control legislation in Canadian history, receives Senate approval. It calls for harsher penalties for crimes involving the use of guns, creates the Firearms Act and also requires gun owners to be licensed and registered. At the time, the government says the registry would cost about $119 million, but the revenue generated by registration fees would mean taxpayers would only be on the hook for $2 million.
So what? How are they supposed to know how many gun owners there are until the registration fees start coming in and they'd better at least cover the cost of setting up and administering it. $119 million is all "Canadian taxpayers" have a right to give a crap about. How much over-budget are the setup and administration fees that "all taxpayers" (uh huh; south Ontario) have to chip into, whether they own guns or not -- particularly if all gun owners are only paying $2 million out of the $119 million in costs. They should be paying all of it and then some because it costs money to keep the administration going and it's not fair to charge taxes to people who don't fish or hunt for the adminstration of fishing/hunting licenses anymore than it is to charge taxpayers who don't own firearms for the administration/enforcement costs of those who do.
It's $75 to renew my driver's license this year. The Ontario government "had to" raise the fees on that and raise other taxes and make more cuts because of SARS and the power outage, along with $23 billion in tax plundering just around transfer payments (
tax returns to Ontario, pittances of tax returns, always -- no jurisdiction in this "federation" is capable of "transferring" one cent into Toronto let alone Ontario and
never has.
$23 billion is 23,000 million dollars. In one fiscal year, and just around "transfer payments" that the other 9 provinces got back (from where?) in transfers per capita that Ontario did not get back in transfers per capita. The City of Toronto paid out $11 billion of that; about a billion more than the province of Alberta paid out in taxes last year (debatable with handouts Alberta gets that Ontario doesn't and never has and never will get and are called "federal" expenses but they don't benefit Ontario -- or Quebec for that matter -- at all so they are not federal they are provincial subsidies).
$119 million, is lunch money. Ontario's real GDP, still not economy, which is elsewhere creating/maintaining jobs, is almost $500 billion or 500,000 million dollars. $119 million? $2 billion? Just out of the taxex plundered from the City of Toronto last year alone, even if the administration costs of the gun registry were $2 billion, the City of Toronto paid for over 5 years of it last year alone.
But the cost (to taxpayers who don't own fishing rods, automobiles, restuarant/liquor licenses, hunting licenses, or firearms) is nowhere close to $2 billion.
Quote: 2000
In a report released early in 2000, the Canadian Firearms Program notes that implementation costs are rising, and cites the following as contributing factors:
- major backlogs in registration, largely as a result of firearm owners waiting until the last minute to apply
- general increase of costs
- fee waivers for early applications
- high error rates in applications submitted by firearm owners
Great. Firearm owners can't even fill out forms properly and are increasing expenses as a result. Do firearm owners deserve to have them if they can't even fill forms out properly? I'd like to see the breakdowns of exactly
where all of the high error rates in applications submitted came from. Probably not Toronto. And it's already paid for $11 billion on it, last year alone so there's lots more money to spend to find out who the idiots with firearms are who can't even find someone to fill a form out for them are and where they are so we can blame them.
A commission should be established immediately to find out where all of these stupid idiots with firearms are: and they're probably the same ones doing most of the bitching about the costs. As usual.
Quote: April 2002
An estimated $629 million has been spent on implementing the gun registry program. [Setup costs.] Here is a breakdown of the costs:
- $2 million to help police enforce legislation
- at least $60 million for public relations programs, including television commercials
- $227 million in computer costs. Complicated application forms are filled with personal questions, slowing processing times and driving costs higher than anticipated
- $332 million for other programming costs, including money to pay staff to process the forms.
Wow. I've never heard of such a thing. A government program, corporate contract, the U.S. military spending $1,000 each on hammers and toilet seats? It could never happen, this is just an outrage.
Quote: January 2003
January 1, 2003, was the deadline for gun owners to register their non-restricted firearms. According to the federal government, 75 per cent of all gun owners met the deadline, registering 5.8 million of the estimated eight million unrestricted firearms in Canada. But that didn't stop gun owners and politicians from expressing opposition.
Days after the deadline passed, Ontario's public safety and security minister called on Ottawa to put the program on hold. Bob Runciman criticizes the program as an "unconscionable waste of taxpayers' money," (which tends to mean OUR MONEY) and calls on the government to cease further spending until an audit can be conducted. His demands are later echoed by provincial justice ministers in New Brunswick, Newfoundland and Labrador and Nova Scotia. [No Alberta?]
Others who seem to doubt the efficiency of the gun registry include Toronto police Chief Julian Fantino, who says the program will neither prevent crimes nor help solve them.
But Ottawa's chief, Vince Bevan, countered this in a speech on behalf of the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police. [Which means what? RCMP everywhere but in Ontario and Quebec of course.]
Quote has been trimmed
Not while it along with other insane "confederate" expenses, like Ontario paying 50% of the expenses on a federal debt it doesn't owe one cent of, or other real "federal" expenses, let alone all the handouts to jurisdictions that are worth nothing, have no markets to speak of, not only don't belong in an economic union with the Windsor-Quebec City Corridor but make it impossible, and after a hundred years of it and looking around at nothing but failure and our own cities crumbling due to tax plundering, with SPAIN having a higher GDP than this stupid country does, Japan with no resources, it has to import them and the Outer Canadas are only too happy to hand natural resources away along with all of the jobs, spin-off jobs, new markets, expanded economies/tax bases, like every Third World country.
If the resources were actually
intercepted and used, such as the Windsor-Quebec City Corridor does, adding value to everything, creating all of the real economic growth, new full time non-seasonal and higher paying jobs (higher the value of the whatever, the higher the value of the employees) and looking at Japan makes me want to puke looking at this pathetic mess, so rich in resources but throwing them all away.
Oh ya, the stupid gun registry again.
I tended to agree with Fantino given that Toronto has more problems with guns than any other province, let alone city. A lot of it has to do with tax plundering to pay for this sorry "federation". As is.
But we're paying for it, Ontario (south, the north would be on equalization and would have RCMP "federal"-provincal law enforcement in it overnight if the south separated from it; rather, when and if it simply separated as a province it'd have to pay for the equalization and law enforcement anyway, so what good would that do?) by far pays for the bulk of everything so if anyone has a right to bitch about, we do.
Alberta doesn't even amount to the City of Toronto proper let alone the GTA, in GDP, revenues paid out or anything else; not even highways and roads to maintain and the Toronto police force (on down and up to everything, academies, the lot), paid for entirely out of residential propety taxes, would have no problem looking after Alberta. They'd just be more spread out, because the population is quite a lot more spread out in Alberta with its 3 million people in the 642,317 square km of land, and the Toronto police marine units would have no problem with the water either. They have to patrol "federal water" in Lake Ontario.
Quote: March 2003
Despite the outrage and widespread condemnation of the rising costs, the Liberals vote to bolster the gun registry with an additional $59 million in funding.
On March 24, the bill is approved on two separate votes – 173-75 and 173-76.
The additional funding is for this fiscal year ending March 31. The registry is expected to cost $1 billion by 2005.
Some Liberal backbenchers threaten to vote with the opposition against the funding, but sit out the vote after Chrétien threatened to expel them from caucus. [He not only "threatened" Martin -- he fired him for disagreeing with every word that came out of Chretien's mouths a thousand too many times.]
Liberal whip Marlene Catterall says that, because the vote involved the spending of money, the prime minister considered it a vote of confidence in the government. [All the more reason to make political parties illegal and dump the confederate feds outright; with a 21st century union of republics to replace them.]
No Liberal voted against the bill but three who were in the House abstained. Most of the Bloc Québécois supported the motion. The Canadian Alliance, Progressive Conservatives and most New Democrat MPs opposed the funding and continue to say it is a misuse of taxpayers' money.
That $1 billion includes registration fees. And I don't want the thing, but what is poor Ontario supposed to do against the confederate feds? it can't even get as much of its own taxes back, in total, let alone per capita, as Newfoundland and Labrador was handed overnight for flag flapping.
We could pull every flag in Ontario down, dump them on the "Royal Lawn" of confederate mound, pour raw sewage and gasoline on them and light them on fire and would get fined $5 billion for it.
Then the Ontario feds would make more cuts in Toronto and raise provincial taxes to pay for it; and Toronto pays for most provincial taxes too and Toronto always means the GTA unless it's predeced by "inner city" or City of due to the forced amalgamation of the former five suburbs then six cities of Toronto, six city halls into one, no more Metro Toronto, which became the dysfunctional semi-new "GTA thing" whatever it's supposed to be other than intentionally dysfunctional to keep the city councillers in the city halls yelling and throwing things at each other, with a powerless mayor of Toronto (over the City of let alone whatever this GTA thing is; no body other than the Greater Toronto Airports Association, oversees whatever this "GTA" thing is other than the Ontario feds -- and they're from all over the freaking province from places I've never heard of let alone anyone outside Ontario) and each city hall fighting with each other, giving the Ontario and confederate feds a break while they plunder taxes.
I thought "conservatives" didn't support the NDP. They took the ads out claiming $2 billion on the gun registry, it's what you're quoting, nothing real and backed up with nothing as usual, but aligning with the NDP when it's convenient.
And the harper has done the same spewing the $2 billion number out that has absolutely no basis in fact, let alone as the budget overrun to administer costs that were not budgeted properly for many reasons -- including idiotic firearms owners not filling forms out properly, filing late, filing early and getting a break, and as with fishing and hunting licenses -- something has to enforce them.
OH. I'm quite against the ridiculous gun registry but that doesn't entitle me to make up BS; particularly around here because no one cares anyway; other than wherever all of the hoards of senior citizens come from when voting time comes around.
And Martin wasn't even in government when it went down. Chretien fired him as Finance Minister for disagreeing with just about every word that came out of Chretien's mouth. They were/are quite bitter enemies and the Minister of Finance isn't the Minister of Defense or Minister of Aboriginal Affairs or Minister of an Anglican Church or Minister of Justice or the Canadian Firearms Board/gun registry. And that makes the harper look like he has no clue how the government even works -- or makes him look like a joke, trying to insult our intelligence on purpose as though the current government came up with it.
Then Chretien finally stepped down after "the longest farewell ever" because he knew his hated foe Martin would be taking his job:
Quote: Jan. 7, 2004
Prime Minister Paul Martin says the gun registry is under review. "We are committed to gun control [which means old people with grandkids, old people who are from another planet, who vote in force and actually believe that the thing works and amounts to "gun control" that affects criminals or the kids in gangs in Toronto due to disasters around public schools and everything to do with keeping kids/teens occupied and out of trouble -- due to tax plundering and the Common Sense Revolution, which would have made plenty of sense and did: until we again figured out which ridiculous socialist mess of an excuse of a "country" we're in, that penalizes ecomonic success to reward failure, automatically and with zero accountability] and we are committed to the registration of weapons, but at the same time, common sense dictates that there have been a number of problems," says Martin. "They will be looked at and dealt with."
Feb. 13, 2004
Documents obtained by Zone Libre of CBC's French news service suggest that the gun registry has cost $2 billion so far.
Including registration fees, which are totally irrelevant. And the NDP took ads out over it but it turned out to be a load of ****e.
Quote: May 20, 2004
The Liberal government eliminates fees for registering and transferring firearms. Ottawa will also limit its spending on the gun registry to $25 million a year, spending which has averaged $33 million a year and reached as high as $48 million. Licensing of gun owners and firearms will continue.
"Reached as high as $48 million" in adminstration costs, and that is according to the Auditor General not some news that "suggested" anything. $2,000 million ($2 billion) is a long way from the peak of $48 million, or the average of $33 million a year. And if you think that $33 million is a lot of money, well, it says a lot about your lack of knowledge of everything federal, along with where all federal revenues come from -- and it's not Alberta.
And you wonder why the harper isn't trusted and why "conservative" boosters (not you personally, I have no idea what you wonder but I see a lot of "wondering" around "conservative"-socialists) are laughed at for swallowing the marketing hype of an
opposition party whose sole job is to try to discredit and embarrass the government?
If they could get their facts straight it'd be one thing. But if they think that we're as stupid as they are they are sorely mistaken.
Quote: Originally Posted by bluealbertaAnd this coming from a man who preaches fiscal responsibility?
I assume you mean that Martin set up the gun registry and personally ran the whole thing, had nothing better to do, as with the lunch money over the advertising campaign by the Quebec Liberal Party?
And you actually expect people to believe that? Or you do and are demonstrating exactly why the harper should try running for mayor of Stampede Town and if he could pull that off, he could try for Finance Minister of Alberta and would still end up with not the faintest clue about the Windsor-Quebec City Corridor or the federal Department of Finance. How much did it cost Canadian taxpayers when Dubya Bush visted from D.C.? Probably about $10 million. Lunch money. And he brought his own security and transporation.
I wonder how much it cost us for the irrelevant Liz of Queen of Brittania to visit for no apparent reason? Probably triple what it cost for Bush to visit; and actually discuss some business; not that it matters around the moronic confederate feds. We have to pay for every cent of what some irrelevant Queen costs to visit; they bill us for it all. And florists made some money off of it, but will they cover the costs if anything ever bothers asking/telling anyone what it cost south Ontario taxpayers for Liz to visit Saskatchewan and Alberta? I'd be all over it, and the less than worthless Governor General (she blew over $2 billion in 2002, unaccounted for, got not even a slap on the wrist for that so blew $4.6 billion in 2003 unaccounted for) ... and for what?
It travels around and says, "Hello, I'm the Governor General of Canada." And others say, "You're what? What are you doing here?" And it says, "I don't know. I'm here to say, Hello, I'm the Governor General of Canada." And then people walk away. That's certainly a good use of taxes.
Given that Martin, the "mastermind of the gun registry" (as Finance Minister of Canada? Why not the Minister of Defense? Why not the Minister of Justice? What did the Minister of Foreign Affairs do? I bet it ran the whole show ... Liz called the "governor general" to tell it to tell the Dept. of Foreign Affairs, via the elected public relations elected "minister" that Britannia wanted similar and would use the colony of Canada as an example) turned out balanced or better budgets while paying down the last $42 billion Conservative "deficit" to zero and...
Quote: Government Announces First Budget Surplus in 28 Years
Finance Minister Paul Martin today announced that, for the first time in 28 years, the Government of Canada has recorded a budget surplus. The surplus was $3.5 billion for the fiscal year 1997-98.
"This is an historic milestone. And it is an achievement that belongs not to government but to Canadians themselves," Mr. Martin said. The $3.5 billion surplus has been applied directly to the debt – the first time the Government of Canada has paid down the debt in more than a generation.
And looking at "conservative" Klein and poor Alberta, while Libya does better, a "conservative" who keeps a higher "rainy day fund" than the federal government does, over $10 billion as opposed to the $4 billion the feds try to keep in place for economic downturns, you're not standing on any ground to be making any judgements from.
Quote: Budget vows to slash debt, banks on stronger growth
Sandra Cordon
Canadian Press
Tuesday, March 23, 2004
OTTAWA -- Finance Minister Ralph Goodale promised to keep the federal books in balance well into the future with a budget Tuesday that pledged to pay down the federal debt [not just pay the interest on it] at a brisk enough clip to reduce the national debt to just 25 per cent of GDP within a decade.
Analysts said that goal will require balanced books for a decade [which means keeping Harper away from anything, he's worse than the NDP] with enough left over to keep paying down the country's $510.6 billion debt while counting on continued economic growth.
''Some [I wonder who?] have suggested [over and over to the point of being nauseating] we will throw fiscal caution to the wind,'' Goodale said in his maiden budget speech, coming only weeks before an anticipated spring election call.
''We will not,'' he said in presenting Ottawa's seventh consecutive balanced budget - the first such string since Confederation.
...
This budget anticipates spending in fiscal 2004-05 of $183.3 billion, about 4.4 per cent higher than the previous years, with a surplus projected at $4.2 billion. [But with another "liberal" Finance Minister who uses conservative economic forecasts, quite unlike the harper, when the economy performs better than conservative estimates predict, the $4.2 billion turned into over $9 billion in surplus -- more revenues than were spent, which allowed more to be spent this year -- and on what Canadians wanted it to be spent on and what Toronto NEEDS it to be spent on, even though it's just a pittance of its own taxes back over 5 years -- this year's budget, not last year's in this document. Budgets are just that. You have to wait until the fiscal year is over to see how they worked out and around any long-term investments, many years.]
The year's document is built around predictions of GDP growth of just 2.7 per cent this year, rising to an economic expansion of 3.3 per cent in 2005.
That's not exactly a barn-burning pace but much stronger than the 1.7 per cent recorded last year. Then, the economy was rocked by a series of crises ranging from SARS and mad cow to forest fires in British Columbia and a massive power blackout in central Canada.
That will be just enough to ensure that Goodale has the cash to restore the full $4 billion rainy-day fund that Prime Minister Paul Martin initiated when he was finance minister. [Before being fired by Chretien for disagreeing with every word that came out of Chretien's mouth 1,000 too many times.]
Most years, that was left over at year-end to become a debt payment.
Beginning in this budget, Goodale pledged that the $3 billion contingency reserve would once again be used for debt [repayment] if unspent at year end while the $1 billion economic prudence reserve would be used for extra spending. [Until the economy out-performed the conservative economic forecasts, um created by economists not "the conservative reform-alliance", used to create the budget. Harper uses the most liberal economic forecasts around and still comes up short, with dithering numbers that he can't even make sense out of.]
Despite all the troubles in the economy last year [Ontario, 2003, SARS and a power outage], Goodale was able to scrape up about $1.9 billion in fiscal 2003-04, which officially ends March 31, for debt repayment, offering proof [not hearsay that makes no sense around Harper who has never run anything but his mouth off] of his credentials as a good fiscal manager.
That would help reduce the debt to $508.7 billion in 2004-05.
Ottawa [Martin, Manley] has already paid down roughly $52 billion [of the federal debt] to reduce its debt-to-GDP ratio to 42 per cent in fiscal 2003-04 from a peak of 68.4 per cent in 1995-96.
...
Social activists, health and environmental organizations have all argued that the government should be less concerned with paying down debt than with reinvesting in social programs.
$42 billion paid to zero from the last Conservatives then $52 billion paid down on the federal debt, and with balanced or surplus budgets and that's not fiscally responsible?
You need some learnin'.
Quote: Originally Posted by bluealbertaHoo boy, what a joke.
Ya, and it's on you. Perhaps start learning facts as opposed to listening to whatever drivel the "conservative" (around what? I've asked enough times) reform-alliance marketers spew out. And the NDP too. What's next, Bloc marketing propaganda?
Quote: Originally Posted by bluealbertaBoth issues are wrong, its just that there are so many things to go after with this government that its hard to keep them all straight.
You've got that quite backwards. Harper has no hope now and if the "conservative" reform-alliance wants to be anything but a minority party until south Ontaro and south Quebec work out their deals and kick the confederate feds off our land, they're going to have to get someone from the Windsor-Quebec City Corridor, urban, successful, with experience running something real to run that party. And they're going to have to kick all of the former reform-alliance members out and restructure the party around where all the votes are, where the economic backbone of the Canadas is, where 70% of all federal revenues come from -- and that's not in the western Canadas combined or all of the rest of the Canadas combined.
Someone like Belinda Stronach would have been a good choice to try to lead those parties out of the doom and gloom, but it's quite obvious that no one with a clue or hope can stay with that party/parties. The old PC's are washed up with no clue (or they would never have joined an even more clueless party) and the reform-alliance has no hope, never has, never did, never will.
The two-bit players in the advertising campaign in Quebec will be banished to work as corporate lawyers and the like, Stronach is a hero not a villain, but the rural west doesn't and never will understand the most successful region of Canada, the Ontario section of the Windsor-Quebec City Corrridor, which is where Stronach is from and she proved that it's impossible to represent this region while being in the "conservative" reform-alliance mess.
She's a hero for Newfoundland and Labrador, saving the Atlantic Accord, was received quite well up there but the bi-election, whenever it is, wherever it is, the people will vote and probably not for the party that tried to force an election that the majority of Canadians didn't want, yet, because the Gomery inquiry is not being run by the harper and its minions, but a justice with lots of experience (does the harper have a degree in law? No, he has nothing but a "career" that is as mixed up as the "parties" he tries to run) while refusing to pass a budget that the majority of Canadians did want, and standing up to be counted with the Bloc Quebecois, and it doesn't matter if you "get it" or not.
How to gracefully get out of it...
