Scattershot

The CP reports that the federal gun registry hasn't yet been implemented at all in Nunavut...and that in fact the territory has no real gun safety program to speak of:

"There is no territorial gun safety program," said Steve Pinksen, director of policy planning and legislation for Nunavut's Environment Department...

Robertson is the lone staff member in Iqaluit for the Canadian Firearms Centre, the organization responsible for the gun registry in Canada.

Robertson arrived in March. Before that, the office was empty...

Officially, Nunavut has no gun safety trainers, so Robertson sends Canada Firearms Safety Course textbooks to volunteer trainers, who are able to ship the books, tests, registration forms and decommissioned gun kits to remote communities...

(The course) has never been translated into Inuktitut, the first language of some 85 per cent of the territory's residents. It has no information on gun safety at -40 temperatures, or how to carry a loaded weapon on a Ski-Doo in polar bear country.

One would think that with the territories falling generally under federal jurisdiction, the federal government would have ensured from the beginning that the program would be funded, and that gun safety information would be available. Instead, it's done nothing but undo whatever good already existed: as noted in the article, there was a territorial gun safety program until the federal government declared that the original program wouldn't be recognized for the purposes of the registry.

It's well and good to have the registry governed by federal standards. But there's no excuse for creating such standards while undermining the ability of significant parts of the country to meet them. And as a result of the Liberals' poor planning, Nunavut residents lack both the ability to comply with the law, and the resources to inform themselves about gun safety as well as other Canadians can.