The Conservative government has announced steps to significantly restrict the scope of the gun registry by eliminating long guns from it.

"What we're doing is getting rid of this hugely expensive and ineffective long gun registry," Public Safety Minister Stockwell Day told CTV Newsnet's Mike Duffy Live on Wednesday.

While the long guns won't have to be registered, their owners will still have to be licenced to possess them.

Fees will be waived for those who must renew their firearms licences, and those who have already renewed any time after January 2004 will get a refund.

This move will cost the federal treasury about $20 million and affect 320,000 people.

Day said for the next year, Ottawa will not prosecute those who let their licences lapse.

"It's irresponsible for government to put a law in place which citizens cannot live up to," Day explained.

Ottawa confirmed the RCMP will be responsible for administering the Canadian Firearms Centre, the agency that operates the registry. In addition, the government said it will cut $10 million annually from the centre's budget and direct it to crime-fighting.

There are about six million long guns in the registry and about one million handguns and restricted weapons.

"Only a tiny portion of them ever wound up being used in crimes," Day said.

The minister noted that in the auditor-general's report released Tuesday, the registry was found to have many data errors and there was little in the way of verification or follow-up.

The announcement severely weakens the registry by reducing restrictions currently placed on owners of long guns, but it leaves the gun registry legislation in place.

Politically speaking, "they can't just completely get rid of it," said CTV's Ottawa bureau chief Robert Fife.

"That would require legislation that they might not be able to get past the House of Commons, but basically they've done what they said they would do, which is get rid of the long-gun registry, which they've been arguing against for years."

CTV's Rosemary Thompson said earlier Wednesday that the Conservative measures would have a direct effect on police.

"It means that the police, when they get into the registry, will be able to get all of the data on handguns and on semi-automatic weapons, but that they won't have registrational material for rifles and shotguns."

Thompson said giving the RCMP responsibility for the gun registry is a return to past practices.

"Originally the RCMP ran the gun registry in the old days, and it was originally a smaller registry that only had handguns and semi-automatic weapons, and that seems to be where the government is going."

Registry opponents, supporters

For years, hunters and firearms enthusiasts have complained about the registry, claiming it punishes law-abiding Canadians for crimes committed with illegal handguns -- a position the Conservatives have supported.

But although it has many critics, the long gun registry also has staunch defenders.

Armand La Barge, the head of the Ontario Association of Chiefs of Police, insists the registry is a powerful crime-fighting tool.

"We believe it's a safety tool and we believe it keeps communities safe and keeps police officers safe," La Barge told CTV's Canada AM on Wednesday.

La Barge said police across the country access the system about 6,500 times per day and more than five million queries have been logged since the system was put into place.

The registry gives police officers a better idea of what to expect when they are responding to a call, La Barge said, noting that gun crime committed with rifles and shotguns is on the rise in Canada, particularly in relation to domestic disputes and suicides.

"This particular program, I think, promotes responsible gun ownership and gun storage," La Barge said.

Earlier in the week, Tony Cannavino of the Canadian Professional Police Association warned that limiting the registry to handguns may not solve the gun crime problem.

"Our last six or seven police officers were killed with long guns,'' he said. "That's very sad.''

But many Canadians who use long guns every day don't see the value of the program.

Michael Burgess, one of the directors of the Saskatchewan Stockgrowers Association, told The Canadian Press that the producers and hunters in his association are against the registry.

"The guns that we carry every day (are) for dispatching of rodents and protecting our livestock and general licensed hunting -- they're not the weapon of choice for criminals by any means,'' Burgess said on Tuesday.

"Registering's not going to keep a gun out of the hands of somebody with a bad temper.''