The Canadian government has announced that it will try to salvage the financially-plagued federal gun registry—already hundreds of millions of dollars in the red—by spending even more money to hire a consultant for $92,000 to find ways to fix the system.

According to The Hamilton Spectator, the consultant will study ways to “streamline” the process, even while there is growing evidence that Canadian gunowners are balking at registering their guns. Gun Week and other publications recently revealed that Canada’s gun registration system is in financial chaos, plagued with scandal and way beyond schedule. The system, originally pandered by Prime Minister Jacques Chretien, former Justice Minister Allan Rock and supported by his successor, Ann McClellan, was supposed to have cost only $2 million. Canadian Auditor-General Sheila Fraser published a report that showed costs for the registry have now soared to $1 billion, and still the system isn’t working. In fact, Parliament already has backed away from some other additional expenditures, after the Fraser audit became public.

Canadian police groups and gun rights organizations oppose it, and even some provincial governments continue to scoff at the registry, even though their court challenge to its constitutionality failed several months ago.

In early January, eight of the nation’s 10 provinces asked the federal government to put the registry on hold, according to The National Post. Even the province of New Brunswick, where some 400 residents are employed by the firearms registry, urged Ottawa to stop the registration process until auditors can get a grip on costs.

“Is the registry meeting its public policy objectives,” asked Brad Green, the Justice Minister for New Brunswick. “If not,” he said, “the federal government needs to go back to the drawing board for a new gun policy.”

Earning the big bucks for this study is former government bureaucrat Raymond Hession. He will be supported by the HLB Decision Economics Inc. consulting firm.

The $92,000 contract to Hession is in addition to a $60,000 review by the accounting firm of KPMG. That was reported in the Dec. 20 issue of Gun Week.

The registry system which originally was supposed to be finalized by 2001 now will not be fully operational—in a “steady state” as the government says—until sometime between 2004 and 2006, according to the Justice Ministry.

Ironically, it is the kind of expenditures for these studies that have left many members of Parliament furious. Hundreds of millions of dollars have been spent to set up the system, and nobody really knows where much of the money went. Despite all the waste and mounting pressure from opposition members of Parliament and provincial governments, present Justice Minister Martin Cauchon insisted that the registry will not be scrapped.

Anti-gun Ottawa Police Chief Vince Bevan, speaking for the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police, supports the gun registry. However, Toronto Police Chief Julian Fantino argues that the money squandered on the registry could be better spent in other ways to fight crime.