38th PARLIAMENT, 1st SESSION
(October 4, 2004 - )
Edited
Hansard • Number 147
Thursday, November 3, 2005
Questions on the Order Paper
Hon. Dominic LeBlanc (Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons, Lib.): Madam Speaker, the following questions will be answered today: Nos. 177, 178, 180, 182 and 199.
[Text]
[Hansard Page 9444]
Question No. 177--
Mr. Garry Breitkreuz:
Since 1995, with regard to the Restricted Weapons Registration System, the Canadian Firearms Registry and the Canadian Firearms Information System:
(a) how many successful firearms traces have been performed;
(b) how many successful firearms traces linked crime scenes to the accused; and
(c) how many of the registered owners of these firearms were charged for the crime committed with their firearm and/or for knowingly providing the firearm used in the crime?
Hon.
Roy Cullen (Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Public Safety
and Emergency Preparedness, Lib.):
Mr. Speaker, the reply is as follows:
a) The RCMP National Firearms Tracing Unit has processed the following
number of tracing requests: (Does not include traces performed by the
Provincial Weapons Enforcement Unit managed by the OPP in Ontario)
| 1995 | 136 |
| 1996 | 118 |
| 1997 | 690 |
| 1998 | 1,200 |
| 1999 | 2,773 |
| 2000 | 33,860 (largely the result of a case involving large seizures in Montreal, Toronto and the U.S.A.) |
| 2001 | 3,574 |
| 2002 | 8,007 |
| 2003 | 7,002 |
| 2004 | 8,886 (off line searches on cold cases raised the number to 28,506) |
| 2005 | 1,924 (as of August 2005) |
The RCMP does not keep statistics on the outcome of a trace—it is up to the client if they wish to do so. The Firearms Tracing Unit is responsible only for tracing a firearm for clients (both RCMP and non-RCMP) within Canada, the United States and, where possible, internationally. Once the trace results are provided to the client, it is the client’s responsibility to pursue the investigation and lay charges if applicable. Each individual client would have to search their own records management system to identify the success of investigations where a firearms trace had been provided by the Firearms Tracing Unit.
b) and c) The National Tracing Center is a support unit and is not directly involved in investigations. The Tracing Center does not track the success of ongoing investigations by the agency of jurisdiction. As indicated above, the National Firearms Tracing Unit does not have information related to these two questions.