I Concede

I just can't stand this vacuum! So I'm hoping to elicit a debate about an article that appeared in Maclean's this week - "Predators Still Loose" - page 29 - Jan. 19, 2009 edition. The bottom line is that we have a national sex offender registry that doesn't work. But, we have a provincial one that does.` Salient points:

• "the Ontario system, which was introduced in 2001...is widely considered the Cadillac of all sex offender registries"
• "Four years after the federal government unveiled the (national) registry as a state-of-the-art crime-fighting tool.........the system remains horribly broken"
• "Unlike the national database, the Ontario registry is cutting edge, inclusion is mandatory, and police are allowed to access the system to prevent crimes - not just solve them"
• "the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police....is calling on the Feds to adopt the Ontario system....as a model to maximize public safety in all of Canada's provinces"

Care to guess why the difference in the two systems?

"When Ontario's program was first launched seven years ago, then-premier Mike Harris offered the software, free of charge, to his federal counterparts. But Jean Chretien's Liberals insisted a national registry was not worth the effort - until some of the provinces threatened to sidestep Ottawa and follow Ontario's lead. Forced to save face, the Liberals decided to build their own program from scratch, and it has been a disaster ever since".

These are the same Liberals who spent a billion dollars to give us a National Gun Registry which also doesn't work. They are now part of a coalition that also doesn't work! Andy, how can you defend this record?