Canada's auditor general has blasted the federal government after finding that the cost of Ottawa's gun registry program has ballooned to about $1 billion.

• INDEPTH: Gun Control

Sheila Fraser says not only is the program hundreds of millions of dollars over budget, but the government kept increased costs from Parliament.

Fraser outlined her concerns in her latest report tabled in Ottawa Tuesday.

Sheila Fraser

The report says that when the gun control law was passed in 1995, the government estimated that the program would cost $119 million. Registration fees would bring in $117 million, with taxpayers picking up $2 million.

The latest estimates say that 2005, gun registration will actually cost $1 billion and that registration fees will raise only $140 million.

That means the program will cost taxpayers $860 million.

Fraser says those figures, provided by the Justice Department, do not even fairly represent all costs of the program.

But an even bigger concern, says Fraser, is that the costs were kept quiet.

"The issue here is not gun control and it's not even astronomical cost overruns," she said. "What's really inexcusable is that Parliament was in the dark," Fraser said Tuesday.

The government says the original estimates may have been unrealistic and costs were pushed up by a number of factors, including some provinces opting out of helping to run the program.

The opposition blasted the government in question period Tuesday, just shortly after the release of the auditor general's report.

Official Opposition leader Stephen Harper asked how he can trust the government when the cost of gun registry is hundreds of millions of dollars over budget.

Minister of Justice Martin Cauchon said the government accepts responsibility but is now more interested in making the program work.

"We totally accept [the auditor general's] recommendations," he said.

Cauchon said there was no wrong-doing and the cost overrun had been reported internally. But he promised to provide those kinds of numbers to Parliament in the future.

But Saskatchewan Alliance MP Garry Breitkreuz says the government has learned nothing and should scrap the registry program.

"How long are you going to pour money down this black hole," he said. "We could have bought 238 MRIs for the cost of what we spent on this."

Despite the costs, doubts have been raised about how effective the program has been.

The report says the RCMP admits it is not confident about the reliability of the information it provides to the registry.

That means guns may be getting into the hands of people who don't qualify to own them.