A new poll by Ipsos-Reid delivers more bad news to the Liberals in Canada. One of their pet projects, the national gun registry, now has a clear majority across the nation declaring that the program doesn't work, is badly organized, and should be eliminated -- and they blame the Liberals for the mess:

A new Ipsos Reid survey for CanWest/Global News reports that most Canadians (54%) feel the “gun registry is badly organized, isn’t working properly, and should be scrapped” – a level of opinion essentially unchanged from what was recorded nearly four years, and two Prime Ministers ago (53% expressed this opinion in a December 2002 Ipsos Reid survey).

And, if the Auditor General of Canada produced a report that indicated that there had been widespread mismanagement and waste within the gun registry itself:

* 56% say they would most blame “the former Liberal Government and elected politicians who built the gun registry and oversaw it”, while

* 37% say they would most blame “the government workers who were put in charge of administering the gun registry on a day-to-day basis”.

A majority of Canadians still believe in a gun registry of some kind, and that support is strongest in predictable provinces: Ontario, Quebec, and Atlantic Canada. Alberta, Sasketchewan, and Manitoba have the most opposition to such a program, again hardly a surprise. Other internals of this poll are less predictable. Elimination of the program gets majority support in almost all provinces except Quebec and Atlantic Canada, the latter of which still rejects the current gun registry by a plurality (49%). Liberal blame gets majority support in all provinces, with only Quebec seeing employee incompetence rise over 40% support for the reason the registry has failed.

This news cannot provide much hope for the Liberals in their effort to quickly turn their fortunes around. They took a program that enjoys fair to good support throughout most of the nation and fumbled it so badly that a majority want it dumped. It demonstrates a lack of trust in Liberal competency that gives voter dissatisfaction a new dimension apart from the ethical debacle of Adscam. It suggests that getting rid of the crooks may not be enough, but that the Liberals have to show that new leadership must have a track record of success in policy implementation.

Right now, Harper and the Tories have begun to build that reputation after years of getting smeared by Liberals as radicals with hidden agendas. The new and professional government of Stephen Harper, with its modest demeanor and ambitious policy, provides a stark contrast thus far to the incompetency of the Gun Registry and the party that created it.

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