Cofa

Jeff Green | May 25, 2006

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Scott Reid addresses COFA

by Jeff Green

In his first visit to the North Frontenac/Addington Highlands region since being re-elected, this time as part of the governing party, last January, Scott Reid spoke to a sympathetic audience at the Annual General Meeting of he Conservationists of Frontenac Addington about changes the Conservative government is making to the much-maligned long gun registry.

Reid explained that the Conservatives are not able to scrap the registry at this time because they don’t have the votes in the house, but that they have announced changes that will make the registry less onerous on people. He pointed out that requirements for safe storage of firearms and ammunition will remain, but that other onerous parts of the registry will be changed.

He also said that the data that has been collected by the registry is inaccurate, noting that a researcher for one of his colleagues had done a study which showed that “80% of the entries in the registry contained at least one error” and predicted that once the registry is finally scrapped the data that has been collected will quickly fall into disuse.

“If we really did want to have a gun long gun registry,” Reid said, “we would likely shut this agency down and start all over again.”

Ed Giffin, a COFA executive member, said that “many people in this room believe that all the bureaucratic inefficiencies within the registry centre are a plot to get us all to give up on owning guns entirely.”

To this Scott Reid said “there is an adage that I think applies in cases like this. ‘Never attribute to Machiavellianism what can be explained by incompetence.’”

Earlier in the meeting, a discussion of the difficulties with the Ministry of Natural Resources (MNR) and the COFA Walleye hatchery took place, and a proposal is being prepared to try and bring back the hatchery for 2007. It did not operate this year.