NEWS RELEASE

November 3, 1999 For Immediate Release

RCMP F.I.P. DATA BANK BIG STEP TOWARDS A POLICE STATE

"Even witnesses and victims of crime may find they have been added to the new police data bank."

Yorkton – Today, Garry Breitkreuz, MP for Yorkton-Melville, released a Library of Parliament research paper that shows the newest RCMP data bank allows police to label someone as a risk to public safety without presenting any proof whatsoever and without notifying the individual. The RCMP data bank Breitkreuz has red-flagged is called Firearms Interest Police or F.I.P. "The RCMP have turned the justice system upside down," stated Breitkreuz. "The Charter is supposed to guarantee every individual’s right to be assumed innocent until proven guilty but this data bank is loaded with people who have done absolutely nothing wrong. Even when someone finds out the police have a F.I.P file on them, they can’t get the RCMP to remove the damaging information."

"The RCMP are allowing police forces all across Canada to put unsubstantiated personal information into individual F.I.P files. Then the RCMP uses this bogus information to revoke firearms licences and to block gun sales even though the people are completely innocent of any wrongdoing," declared Breitkreuz. "The Research Branch of the Library of Parliament discovered that some police forces may even put witnesses or victims of crimes into the RCMP’s F.I.P files." Breitkreuz wrote the Privacy Commissioner of Canada calling the F.I.P data bank "a travesty and an inexcusable invasion of privacy."

The Library of Parliament identified the following problems with the RCMP’s F.I.P data bank:

(1) - "The reliability of this system depends on the information that is being kept in the files of the different police agencies across the country." (Page 2)

(2) – "It should be noted that all police agencies have their own procedures for their files and how events get coded. This means that a similar event that occurs in two different locations may be coded differently. In such a case, one of the events might end up being linked to the F.I.P. file while the other is not." (Page 2)

(3) - "Another consequence of the different procedures used by police agencies across Canada is that, in some cases, individuals who are not a safety concern will be linked to the F.I.P. data base. For example, in some agencies all of the names in a file are linked to the ORI code. Therefore, a person who is a witness to an offence or even the victim of an offence may have their name in the F.I.P data base because their name was linked to one of the codes which fell under the selection criteria pursuant to section 5 of the Firearms Act." (Page 2)

(4) - "If the individual wished to obtain the information contained in the police agency’s file, a second privacy request would have to be made to this agency. Depending on the agency, this might require a privacy request under provincial privacy legislation." (Page 3)

"The government brags about all the firearms licences they have revoked and the firearms sales they have blocked using the phony facts in their F.I.P files," said Breitkreuz. The results are misleading because they often act on unproven police information and hearsay rather than factual evidence. Honest citizens are writing me describing their battles with the bureaucracy to try and get their F.I.P files corrected. To start fixing this mess, it is essential that the RCMP send every person a copy of their F.I.P. file," concluded Breitkreuz.

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For copies of the research paper, please call:

Yorkton Office: (306) 782-3309

Ottawa Office: (613) 992-4394

e-mail: breitg0@parl.gc.ca