SOURCE: CHML HAMILTON
PROGRAM: ROY GREEN SHOW
DATE: JANUARY 6, 2003 - TIME: 09:05
LENGTH: 6 MINUTES

GUN REGISTRY

ROY GREEN (HOST): Bob Runciman the Ontario Security Minister on air with us
on Friday just before he made the announcement to the nation that Ontario
was calling on the federal government to suspend the gun registry. That call
has been echoed by Toronto Chief of Police Julian Fantino who joins us this
morning. Chief, good morning.

JULIAN FANTINO (TORONTO CHIEF OF POLICE): Good morning.

GREEN: Happy New Year to you.
FANTINO: And the same to you and your listeners.

GREEN: Thank you very much. Chief your view of the gun registry and why you
believe it should be suspended.

FANTINO: Well obviously I'm reacting or responding to what has been deemed
to be quite a significant problem by the federal Auditor General with regard
to the study or the inquiry they made as to how this whole process has been
ongoing, the extraordinary cost overruns and so forth and so on. So we're
talking about taxpayers' money. We're talking about the greater public good.
We're talking about ensuring that the things we do actually do profit in a
positive way what is expected in our community in terms of safety, security
and those kinds of issues. And I'm very devastated by the amount of
gun-related violence that we're experiencing here in the city of Toronto; a
tremendous increase over years gone by. The difficulty of course is that we
haven't yet come across any situation where the gun registry would have
enabled us to either prevent or solve any of these crimes.

GREEN: Quite a statement.

FANTINO: Well it's a true statement.

GREEN: Chief so if you can give us a bit of an insight into the concerns you
have about the illegal guns entering the city of Toronto. We've been hearing
that, estimates are that illegal gun entries into this country are up fifty
percent in the last several months and that could be, according to some,
even a much larger percentage if we were to know the true figures.

FANTINO: Well the numbers of guns of our streets are indeed significant. Not
only that, there's an element of people in our society, younger folks if you
will, who are predisposed to violence and using firearms very
indiscriminately in public places, and the results of that for us has been
quite a significant impact on violence in the city. But yeah, they are
available. They are readily available. There's no shortage of them and I
believe sincerely that the kinds of money that we're spending trying to put
a bureaucracy together which at the outset I thought would be a tremendous
help, is not helping us in trying to stem the tide of illegal guns, the
crime guns as I call them. And we need help and we need support in order to
go after those who import and smuggle and traffic in firearms that end up in
the hands of criminals, that end up creating death and trauma and mayhem in
our communities.
So when you look at the amount of money that appears to have been spent to
put this gun registry together, I would have liked to have had that numbers
of dollars available to me to put on the street, in terms of police officers
to go after the criminals and the gunmen, and stem the tide and flow of guns
into our communities.

GREEN: Chief Fantino, what happens if someone were to present him or herself
to your police department and say, I have an unregistered firearm with me? I
have an affidavit of ownership and I'm not planning to register it. Calgary
police refused to lay charges against Mr Palmer. What would you do?

FANTINO: Well I haven't directed my attention to creating a policy for my
department. I believe that our people use common sense and I believe that
they are entitled to use discretion, and I would expect that they deal with
every circumstance on the basis of common sense and discretion, and I'm not
about to put out a policy that in essence gives anyone an excuse to break
the law. The law is the law; we know that and I can't help but feel for
those people who are not in compliance. Law-abiding citizens otherwise I
suppose, but you know this is something that is of a political nature. It's
policy that is made at the federal level and as you know we're duty bound to
deal with the laws for what they are - we're not in the position of making
the laws. I just wish that the federal government would respond. We've seen
amnesties before. Maybe this is something that the government should very
seriously consider at this point in time. We don't want to make criminals
out of honest, decent, law-abiding citizens. So I have a lot of concerns
over this whole issue.

GREEN: Chief, one more question for you. You were in favour of the registry
initially. You say, you've quite eloquently expressed your concerns. Is this
a concern that you're expecting to hear from your fellow chiefs of police
across the country now?

FANTINO: Well I'm speaking for myself as Chief of the Toronto Police
Service. I'm speaking on behalf of me solely. I'm not pretending to speak on
behalf of anyone. But I'm very disappointed with the way this whole thing
has gone, the extraordinary amount of money that has been in many respects
squandered.
And I should give you one personal example. I too have registered a long
rifle, a long gun, and during that process I found it to be quite
frustrating and the seesaw back and forth over documentation, and I complied
to the letter, but the bureaucracy caught me up too and the phone calls and
the wait and the paper back and forth over what. I mean for instance the big
hang-up was that I did not put down in the form the town where I was born. I
put the country where I was born, in Italy, but I didn't put down the town.
The town is not even on anybody's map. And that was the big hang-up and I
was threatened that if I didn't comply with this I would not be issued a
certificate. And this is after correspondence back and forth. It is just
ridiculous. I mean, so yes I was supportive. I'm no longer supportive of it.

GREEN: Chief thanks for the time this morning and again Happy New Year to
you.
FANTINO: And the same to you. Thank you.

got a link?

No I got this from another site where it was posted..

Damn thing is I normally listen to this radio show but today I missed it!

bummer

I guess I can look up 'roy green show'...

Before (If) the registry is dismantled Canada will give the gun lists to the UN. Criminals WILL NOT register their guns Ms. Cukier!

CRC

Speaking of the UN....

Hows this quote sound to you...


The registering of hunting rifles is the first step in the social
re-engineering of Canadians". - Liberal Senator Sharon Carstairs.
"...... disarming the Canadian public is part of the new humanitarian social
agenda." -
Foreign Affairs Minister Lloyd Axworthy at a gun control conference in Oslo,
Norway, 1998.