Thrill as the Conservatives cop out on the one good thing I thought they were going to do:

No, Stockwell. Keep the licencing fee, scrap the registry, not the other way around. Please. If you can't pay 12 dollars a year to confirm that you are qualified to own a gun, I don't want you owning a gun. Do I want a registry? Hell no. Here's my plan that would have cost the same amount of money as the registry over the next 10 years and still reduced crime:

Phase 1: The touchy feeley children phase:

We take the children of 12 thousand single parents earning under 30 thousand a year. 6000 children of single fathers, 6000 single mothers. We give them a 20,000 RESP. Boom! 12 thousand more university grads with a way out of poverty for their children and their children's children. "But Sean, why don't we give that money to students?" Because upper middle income voters hate students. They think students are whiny know it alls who don't work for a living.

This is odd seeing that today's upper middle income voters were yesterday's students and had to work about 2/5ths as long at the minimum wage to raise their tuitions as todays students, but whatever. Apparently money is more important if given to a toddler or a child. Fine, 250 million for the kids.

Phase 2: The rehabilitation phase:

We take the current prison population and a quarter billion and just go on a rehabilitation spending spree! Farms, fine arts, university level seminars, just go nuts spending money, not only to rehabilitate prisoners, but to place them in meaningful jobs in the workforce. That way there's an actual reason to look forward to getting out. If we tell a convict that they are paying their debt to society over a certain term (read: sentence) Then we, as a society, must ensure that they do not continue to pay after that debt has been paid in full. How about some truth in sentencing Vic?

Phase 3: The quicker turnaround phase:

We spend 100 million to build the best forensics and ballistics labs that the country has ever seen. Hell, we may even be able to recoup the costs with a new series: CSI: Soviet Canuckistan. Then we take the extra 150 million and hire 300 new judges and additional infrastructure for their court proceedings. That means that when somebody robs you at work on Easter Sunday 2005, you'll receive a subpoena sooner than May 30th, 2006! That slower turnaround time will make eye-witnesses more reliable. (Am I bitter about this?)

Phase 4: The stupid cash rebate phase:

Cut every canadian a cheque for $7.49 (The stamps are 51 cents) There. There's your sponsorship money back. Even the part of it (at least 60%) where we got value for money. Will you shut up about it now?

Tah Dah!

It's crunch time Canada. Are you guys are madder at $100 Million worth of theft than $1 Billion worth of negligence? Go ahead, prove my creeping cynicism wrong.