Canada ping.
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Posted on 05/16/2006 1:49:30 PM PDT by Clive
OTTAWA — The Harper government plans to fulfill its pledge to gut the federal long-gun registry by providing amnesty to gun owners who don't sign up and eventually unveiling legislation to eliminate it.
Auditor-General Sheila Fraser will release her report on the controversy-plagued registry today.
Sources said the amnesty would be announced imminently and legislation would come some time this spring. They were unclear what the legislation would say, but it's assumed the law would not get rid of the handgun registry, merely the portion of the registry that deals with long guns.
The Conservative election platform included an unequivocal promise to scrap the registry, but the minority government is concerned that it might lose a vote on legislation to kill it in the House of Commons, hence the apparent need to introduce an amnesty to make the registry essentially inoperable.
Even if the government managed to unveil a bill before the summer break, as sources say is its intention, it is unclear when — or if — the law would pass.
All three opposition parties have expressed support for the registry, even if some of that support has been qualified.
Although the Tories are 31 seats short of a majority, sources said the government may be able to count on enough Bloc Québécois MPs, some Liberals and even the odd New Democrat to eventually pass the bill.
Meanwhile, Borys Wrzesnewskyj, a Liberal MP from Toronto, has formally asked the RCMP to investigate last week's leak to the media of details included in the Auditor-General's report on the gun registry.
But Ms. Fraser, who was called before a Commons committee yesterday to discuss the information that appeared in a number of Canadian newspapers, said she did not believe a criminal investigation is appropriate.
"In our opinion, there is no breach of the law," Ms. Fraser told the Public Accounts Committee. Instead, she called the leak a statutory disregard for Parliament.
The journalist who wrote the story about her report did not appear to have an actual copy in hand, she told MPs. "There are serious inaccuracies. So, if it was a physical copy of the report being available, one would presume it would have been more accurate."
But Ms. Fraser also cast doubt on the prospects of the people responsible for the leak ever being identified. During her tenure, eight of 128 reports have been subject to leaks, she said. And, to her knowledge, none has been traced to its source.
Ms. Fraser said last week that she had suspicions about who gave her report to the media. But she refused to put names to her hunches yesterday.
"I am not sure that those suspicions can ever be confirmed unless the person who spoke puts up their hand or the journalist reveals their source," she said, adding that neither scenario would seem likely.
And, while serious efforts are made to prevent leaks, the consultation process that is conducted with government departments before any report's release means that "dozens and dozens of people" would have access to the information contained within them, she explained.
The Conservative government has said it is investigating how a reporter got the information — something Ms. Fraser said she is eager to see concluded.
The Liberals have accused Conservative political staff of being a likely source because the resulting news story suggested the Auditor-General will say that the former Liberal government hid cost overruns at the registry from the public. That could be used, they say, to bolster the Conservative case that the registry should be scrapped.
But three Conservatives on the Public Accounts Committee suggested yesterday that, in fact, a Liberal leaked the information in an effort to diffuse the damage the report could cause.
Conservative MP John Williams, for instance, opined that it was a "disaffected Liberal embedded in the government," who breached the government privacy rules.
But New Democrat David Christopherson said it is important that people who leak these kinds of documents feel some heat.
"There needs to be some kind of follow-up," he said. "I, for one, am not going to let this go."
It would have been in the Tories best interest for the Auditor General's report to be filed without prior disclosure of its contents. It has more impact that way.
Note that there have been a pattern of leaks, most during Liberal governments. I think that Clinton's sherpas had a practice called "telling the truth slowly". So, it seems, do the Liberals.
Hell, I think that I have a "statuatory disregard for Congress."
Ping.
So if you actually obeyed the fascist garbage they forced on the country, and registered your gun, the jokes on you.
Canada ping.
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Of course we have to register the ax.
What purpose does the delay serve? The most obvious purpose is the same as the purpose that delay serves in confidence games.I think that Clinton's sherpas had a practice called "telling the truth slowly". So, it seems, do the Liberals.After a fraud has been perpetrated and it is only a matter of time before the victim finds out, it can still make a big difference whether the victim finds out suddenly or slowly over an extended period of time. This is called "cooling out the mark."
If the mark (the victim) finds out suddenly and immediately, instant outrage may lead to a call to the police, who can then get hot on the trail of the con man.
However, if the realization of having been taken begins to emerge at first as a sense of puzzlement, then as a sneaking suspicion, and ultimately -- after a passage of some time -- as a clear conclusion that a fraud has taken place, then the emotional impact is not nearly as strong.
. . . If the truth about Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky had come out the very next day after he made that dramatic declaration -- "I did not have sex with that woman" -- it would have been far more of a shock than it was months later, after more and more bits and dabs of information came out, leading many to suspect the truth long before it all came out.
One of Clinton's press secretaries called these delaying tactics "telling the truth slowly."
Sowell seems to call it a trait common to con artists. And since that term includes socialist politicians generally . . .
Right on Clive.
Liberal Utopianism is in its ultimate evolution, nothing short of fascism.
The idea that the tools of self defence need be restricted by expensive and redundant processes, courses, pschiatric evaluations, and restrictions on transport of firearms is balderdash. Law abiding citizens need no such restriction unless the government requires the option of seizure to prevent tha formation of an armed resistance to the federal government.
Are future government policies to be so onerous as to cause such an uprising among law abiding citizens?
The liberals planning their Utopia thought so, and sought the means to establish a data base usable to disarm law abiding Canadian citizens.
This is the crux of the matter.
And Harpers signal in axing the long gun registry is a signal that he will act against such fascist, liberal socialist Utopian initiatives.
It is a great day for freedom of the Canadian people, and the message that our government trusts law abiding citizens of the nation.
Do the gun control freaks, whether they be here or in Canada, really think that criminals will register guns? It is even less rational than believing in the tooth fairy!
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