Oh Canada!Captain Ed has another
Canadian scandal brewing, this time the result of Canada's controversial gun registration program. Ed focuses on the fact that this program is apparently draining resources from the RCMP to investigate government corruption. But I almost swallowed my gum when I read this factoid:
Originally expected to be self-financing by 1999-2000, Fraser and her auditors discovered the target for the firearms program to break even was pushed to 2013 -- an assumption that the program collect $419 million in fees in 2002-03 and about $828 million by 2007-08.Work it out--they estimate that the collections will almost exactly double in 5 years which implies compounded annual growth of 14%. If we assume that will continue going forward, the estimate is an incredible $1.65 billion in fees in 2012-2013. I'm not sure if that's intended to be a two year total, but let's assume that it is, so that the estimate is roughly $825 million per annum. That's $26 per person in Canada, every year. Just to maintain a registration list! Looked at another way, suppose that we hired people at $50,000 per year to maintain the registry. That would be enough to hire 16,500 people!
No wonder the
article Captain Ed points to says that this will prove to be a bigger fraud than Adscam.
