***Anywhere else there would be lawsuits, but we haven't even been treated to Paul Martin reminding us he's as mad as we are about this. No threat to "get to the bottom of this." No public inquiry. Yet the problem in financial terms is more significant.***
My observation is that even the harshest critics of the gun registry don't get the real problem, and certainly those that support it don't want to.
[. . . .] But the point being missed is that the money blown in the gun registry goes beyond incompetence. You simply can't get from estimates of $2 million to expenditures of over $1 billion solely through mismanagement. This fact has barely rated a mention because I suspect that too many of us simply don't appreciate the significance of the numbers.
[. . . .] Originally, the database was projected to cost $1 million, but even allowing for an underestimation in the magnitude of 1,000 per cent (or $10 million), the results are unfathomable.
[. . . .] According to the CBC and other news organizations, the gun registry database cost $750 million. It cost 3-times-3-times-3-times-3-times the original estimate, which we allowed to be 1,000 per cent above the government's original forecast.
[. . . . The] gun registry database can't legitimately cost $750 million. I emphasize the word "legitimately."
Given the project has taken eight years, that works out to $250,000 per day, every day, of each of those eight years. I have found nobody familiar with that kind of project in the private sector who has the faintest idea as to how that can happen. It works out to $94 million per year for eight years, simply to run a database. In other words, every four days for eight years they spent the equivalent of the total original estimate of $1 million.
As Olekshy points out, it simply can't take the equivalent of 7,500-man years to build a gun-registry database for three million owners. The point is that bad management alone can't produce overruns like we've paid for.
Update: Snippets of Letters to The Star, Mar. 05, 04
Federal/Ontario Provincial Liberal Responses to Scandals:
1. One quote I found interesting, if not perplexing, is that of Sen. Jerry Grafstein whose recommendation was, "Change the subject. I don't think we should be talking about this any more." Wow, when confronted with the various options as to what to do about the ripoff of millions of dollars by a handful of people within our government, this senator's advice is to "Change the subject." [. . . . ] Since senators are appointed, he doesn't have to answer to his employers - the taxpayers of Canada. DB
2. Unfortunately, the practice of years of honourable men resigning went by the wayside with Pierre Trudeau and the federal cabinet blustering their way through scandals and has never regained currency. It is time our premier and finance minister reverted to an honourable practice which would gain them much political capital. DJM
Note the term "honourable men" (or "women"); we never hear it used about politicians any more, do we? Nor the term "statesmen" -- the kind of politicians who would put love of country above their own love of money and power -- above selfish interests. NJC
