January 16, 2003

FACSIMILE

Letter to the Editor

National Post

I’d like to thank the National Post for its continued coverage of the problems with Canada’s firearms registry, and its strong editorial stance against the program.  A quick Internet search from December 4 (the day after the Auditor General’s report) until Jan. 16 easily turns up about 275 newspaper stories from all parts of the country, in which the Canadian Alliance has been front-and-centre with its criticism of the firearms registry boondoggle.  That’s over six per day. 

However, a January 16^th National Post editorial states that the Alliance has been “largely invisible” during the height of the controversy.  While it can be safely assumed that the Post’s editorial page writers may not be up to speed with the headlines in every paper in the country, I would have hoped that they would have been more diligent in reading their own. 

Since December 4th, the National Post has run at least a dozen stories on the gun registry - two on the front page - that have prominently featured quotations from either me, our leader Stephen Harper, or from our other very capable critics including Vic Toews, John Williams, and Grant Hill.  For the benefit of your editorial writers they included 

·         “Gun registry out of control: audit” National Post, Dec. 4, 2002 Page A1

·         “Firearm deaths dropping since '91: Mulroney changed law: Decline predates Rock's registry by a decade” National Post, Dec. 10, 2002 Page A5

·         “Cauchon finds cash for registry: Won't say from where” National Post, Dec. 13, 2002 Page A11

·         “Bureaucrats in gun registry fiasco promoted, not fired” National Post, Dec. 20, 2002 Page A9

·         “MP warns of gun owners' 'rebellion'” National Post, Jan. 3, 2003 Page A4

·         “Anti-gun posturing” National Post Editorial, Jan. 6, 2003 Page A15

·         “MP backs down from refusing to register gun” National Post, Jan. 8, 2003, Page A10

·          “Gun registry 'here to stay,' Cauchon says” National Post, Jan. 9, 2003, Page A4

·         “Rock was warned cost incalculable: 'Very high financial and resource costs' seen in 1994” National Post, Jan. 14, 2003 Page A1

The Canadian Alliance has opposed this legislation from day one, in Parliament and elsewhere, and we will continue to be its most vocal critic.

Sincerely,

Garry Breitkreuz, MP

Yorkton-Melville, SK

Canadian Alliance Critic for

Firearms and Property Rights