It’ll only cost $2 million.
That was the promise then-prime minister Jean Chretien made in 1995 when introducing Bill C-68, better known today as the federal long-gun registry.
Canadians of a certain vintage won’t need any reminder as to how things turned out in reality: the registry ultimately became a huge political albatross for the Chretien government, and by the time the Harper government ended it off in 2012, the tab had ballooned to a whopping $2 billion. That’s one thousand times the original pledge.
