FIREARMS FACTS UPDATE

AUDITOR GENERAL: 5,000 HITS A DAY
AN INDICATOR OF ACTIVITY - NOT EFFECTIVENESS

Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security
Wednesday, May 31, 2006 - EVIDENCE

Ms. Sheila Fraser: I believe that the indicator of the 5,000 hits a day is more of what we call an activity indicator than an indicator of effectiveness. So those law enforcement people who use the registry would have to give an assessment as to whether or not it was useful to them. There could be 5,000 hits, and they could say yes, it was very helpful and helped me in this way; or they could say no, it wasn't helpful because the information wasn't correct. It takes an additional degree of interpretation or information to assess effectiveness. (Page 14)
http://cmte.parl.gc.ca/cmte/CommitteePublication.aspx?SourceId=146767

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Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security
Wednesday, June 7, 2006 - EVIDENCE

MP Dave MacKenzie: All I'm trying to indicate to Canadians, though, is that there are not 5,000 checks a day just for firearms registry. Those are automatic checks done by police officers on the street for names and for a variety of things.

RCMP Commissioner Giuliano Zaccardelli: They're automatic CPIC checks that they automatically go over. I don't have the number of how many are direct checks. [Page 11]
http://cmte.parl.gc.ca/cmte/CommitteePublication.aspx?SourceId=148216

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POLICE USE OF THE GUN REGISTRY DATABASE
WILDLY EXAGGERATED BY LIBERALS!

NOVEMBER 24, 2004 - AT A STANDING COMMITTEE ON JUSTICE MEETING GARRY BREITKREUZ, MP ASKED PUBLIC SAFETY MINISTER ANNE McLELLAN THE FOLLOWING QUESTION:
I want to follow up what my colleague was asking here. I didn't intend to do this, but when I talk to front line police officers, there's a real disconnect between what they tell me and what you are telling the committee today. For example, this figure of 2,000 hits per day or 14,000 per week is very misleading. In actual fact—I don't know if you've been told Madam Minister—when a police officer accesses the CPIC system, I understand, very often it also searches the firearms registry automatically and he has no interest in what that has to say as far as the information he wants, but you count that as a hit to the firearms registry and it's included in those 2,000 times per day. I have been unable, after several years of questioning, to find out exactly who and what information is being searched. That is a very misleading statistic.

NOVEMBER 29, 2005 – WE FINALLY GET AN ANSWER IN RESPONSE TO OUR ACCESS TO INFORMATION ACT REQUEST – CANADA FIREARMS CENTRE FILE: A-2005-0016

ATI PAGE 000271- E-MAIL #3 DATED DECEMBER 3, 2004 – TO JAMES DEACON, DIRECTOR OF POLICY FROM KEN McCARTHY, REGISTRAR OF FIREARMS: “In sum, CFRO is indeed automatically queried in many cases when police officers query CPIC.”

ATI PAGE 000271- E-MAIL #4 DATED DECEMBER 2, 2004 – TO KEN McCARTHY, REGISTRAR OF FIREARMS ‘ET AL’ FROM PIERRE RIOPEL, FIP COORDINATOR: “MP Garry Breitkreuz is partially correct in his assertions that CFRO queries are generated automatically. This statement is however not true in all cases. While, it is confirmed that all queries done through the CIIDS in British Columbia does generate automatic CFRO query, it is unknown if all other provincial CIIDS users do the same. It is also unknown how many other police agencies querying CFRO through there local interface system automatically query the CFRO.

ATI PAGE 000272- E-MAIL #5 DATED DECEMBER 1, 2004 – TO KEN McCARTHY, REGISTRAR OF FIREARMS ‘ET AL’ FROM GINA NJOLSTAD-LALONDE, PERFORMANCE MANAGEMENT, STATISTICS AND ANALYSIS: “For many provinces, approx. 50% of the queries against the CFRO (by RCMP only) do come through the Computerized Integrated Dispatch System (CIIDS) as this query is set as a default in CIDS. According to Jean-Paul St. Pierre, any police department using an interface to CPIC can have their system automatically queried against CFRO. According to both Jean-Paul and Mike Lavigne of the RCMP, there is no way to tell which agencies or how many queries.”

COMMUNICATIONS AND PUBLIC AFFAIRS FROM AND KEN McCARTHY, REGISTRAR OF FIREARMS FROM PIERRE RIOPEL, FIP COORDINATOR: The address query responses from CFRO are not being passed on to anyone. There is a privacy issue about this type of query. Note that the CFRO auto query of addresses is based on any valid address query response returned through their Intergraph System query. This means that if a parking ticket had a valid address and was returned the Intergraph system, it would generate a CFRO address query.