FIREARMS FACTS - UPDATE

LIBERALS UNABLE TO DEFEND THEIR CLAIMS

ABOUT POLICE USE OF THE GUN REGISTRY

Updated: March 3, 2004  

GARRY BREITKREUZ, MP - ACCESS REQUEST DATED APRIL 1, 2003

On April 1, 2003, the Canadian Firearms Centre website stated: “2,328,360 CFRO [Canadian Firearms Registration On-Line] queries have been made by police and other law enforcement officials since December 1, 1998.”  Please provide records and reports showing: (1) the number of requests by police, (2) the number of requests by law enforcement officials, (3) the number of requests by Canadian Firearms Centre staff, (4) the number of requests by Chief Firearms Offices and Firearms Officers, (5) the number of requests by NWEST personnel, (6) the number of requests from each province and territory, (7) the number of requests by type of information requested, and (8) the number of requests that resulted in the requestor actually receiving the information requested.

JUSTICE DEPARTMENT RESPONSE DATED MAY 6, 2003 - FILE: A-2003-0001

“I am pleased to enclose all the relevant documents (one page) to your request and it is released in its entirety.  This record reflects information/statistical reports that are responsive to your queries 6 and 7 noted-above.  In regard to your queries 1 to 5 and 8, no relevant documentation was identified and no reports were ever prepared to reflect the information/statistics you are seeking.”

6.  The number of requests from each province and territory

February 11, 1999 to April 6, 2003 (Statistical breakdown not available prior to February 11, 1999)

Alberta                        = 128,081

Saskatchewan          =   45,853

British Columbia        = 894,176

Manitoba                    = 105,444

Newfoundland          =   70,699

New Brunswick      =   73,549

Nova Scotia                =   65,144

NWT                           =     3,281

Yukon                         =     2,512

Ontario                       = 542,673

PEI                             =     5,286

Quebec                        = 447,417

TOTAL                     = 2,384,155

7.  The number of requests by type of information requested

February 11, 1999 to April 6, 2003 (Statistical breakdown not available prior to February 11, 1999)

Individual name         = 1,701,266

Serial number           =    286,083

Licence                       =      35,854

Certificate                  =    205,962

Authorization             =           311

Owner Number           =    140,593

FIN                             =        1,000

Telephone                   =        3,904

Address                       =      11,657

Corporation                =        1,043

TOTAL                       = 2,387,673

BREITKREUZ'S COMPLAINT TO THE INFORMATION COMMISSIONER

JUSTICE FILE: A-2003-0001 – MAY 15, 2003

Please find attached a copy of our original request dated April 1, 2003 and the department’s response to two of our eight questions dated May 6, 2003.  I wish to complain about the department’s failure to provide any information at all with respect to our questions 1 to 5 and 8.

As you can see from just the few quotes below that the department is proud of claiming that “police” accessing the system is proof of the program’s effectiveness and further that if the police are using it so many times that it must be worth spending a billion dollars.  If their response to our ATI request is true then the following claims by the Minister and other government officials in the House of Commons are simply not factual and Parliament is still being kept in the dark:

Hansard for December 9, 2002 - Hon. Martin Cauchon (Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada, Lib.): Mr. Speaker, we have said many times that the gun registry is indeed a very effective tool. Police forces access the registry online 1,500 times a day.

Hansard for February 13, 2003 - Hon. Martin Cauchon (Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada, Lib.): Police use the registry 2,000 times per day.

Hansard for February 20, 2003 - Mr. Paul Harold Macklin (Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada, Lib.): Police are accessing information from the registry on average about 2,000 times every day.

Hansard for May 6, 2003 - Mrs. Marlene Jennings (Parliamentary Secretary to the Solicitor General of Canada, Lib.): Police officers have access to certain information contained in the firearms registry. This information is gathered in the firearms registry online, also known as CFRO. Law enforcement officers have queried the system for information regarding individuals who may own firearms or may have firearms in their possession more than two million times since it was launched on December 1, 1998. They did this for the safety of Canadians.

If the Minister and his officials are going to make such wild claims in Parliament then they must be able to produce reports with the solid evidence and facts necessary to support their claims.  Unless the department can produce the reports we requested then clearly the Minister and his officials have misled Parliament.  They have led Parliament to believe that it was actually “police” accessing the system so many times each day when in fact the queries of the CFRO system may have been government bureaucrats and not police officers.  Our request was an attempt to uncover the truth but instead the department chose to keep Parliament in the dark once again.

It also appears from the information they did provide that they counted the number of times a “field” in the system was accessed rather than the number of times the CFRO system was accessed by police or whomever.  If so, then their claim of “2,328,360 CFRO queries’ is greatly exaggerated.

The other problem is the government’s complete non-response to part 8 of our question.  What does it matter how many times police “et al” are accessing the system if they aren’t successful at retrieving the information they requested?  The Minister would be foolhardy to make such claims in Parliament without having some reports on the success rate experienced by the requestors.  For example, one Saskatoon City Police officer told us he checked one name in the system and it took more than 6 hours and it came back negative.  On January 22, 2003, CBC Radio in Saskatchewan reported: "Police in Regina say they haven't yet had a lot of use for the new gun registry.  The Canadian Police Association claims the controversial database provides useful information in less than one second.  However, Regina officials cannot confirm that figure.  Sgt. Rick Bourassa says officers in his city do not use the data-base very often.”  On December 4, 2002, CFRA talk show host Michael Harris reported that officials from the Police Association of Ontario told him that they fail to get the information requested from the registration system 95% of the time.

Please have your investigator conduct a proper search of the documents to answer all eight of our questions honestly and completely.  Once again, thanks for your help to shed some light on this issue for Parliamentarians, the public and the media.

GARRY BREITKREUZ, MP – FOLLOW-UP ACCESS REQUEST DATED MAY 17, 2003

Reference is being made to the department response to Access to Information Act request DoJ File: A-2003-0001/ms.  Please provide copies of reports showing: (1) The total number of separate and distinct enquiries of the system [as opposed to one enquiry by one officer accessing multiple fields]; (2) The total number of separate and distinct enquiries that were made by “peace officers” only; and (3) The total number of separate and distinct enquiries that resulted in the officer actually obtaining the information he or she was looking for.

JUSTICE DEPARTMENT RESPONSE DATED JUNE 9, 2003 – FILE: A-2003-0056

I must advise you that a search for records under the control of the Department of Justice did not find any that would be responsive to your request.

BREITKREUZ'S COMPLAINT TO THE INFORMATION COMMISSIONER

JUSTICE FILE: A-2003-0056 – June 13, 2003

Reference is being made to our previous letter of complaint dated May 15, 2003 with respect to Department of Justice ATI File: A-2003-0001/ms. 

With respect to this new complaint, please find attached a copy of our original request dated May 14, 2003 and the department’s non-response dated June 9, 2003.  The arguments raised in our previous complaint letter also apply to this one.

We fail to understand how Ministers and their subordinates can make claims in Parliament and in public that cannot be supported by documented facts.  Why would the government put themselves in such a vulnerable position when they have been ridiculed for months over keeping Parliament in the dark?  We can only assume that the information requested must exist but must be more embarrassing than simply admitting they don’t have any information to support their claims.  Please ask the department to take another look for the information requested.

RESULTS OF INFORMATION COMMISSIONER’S INVESTIGATION

JUSTICE FILE: A-2003-0056 – February 25, 2004

On May 6, 2003, Jus produced a report that responded to items 6 and 7 of request A-2003-0001/ms, but advised you that no relevant documentation existed and no reports had been prepared to respond to questions 1 to 5 and 8 of your request.  Then on May 14, you submitted a second request A-2003-0056/ms, and received a no records response from Just.  On May 15 and June 13, you complained about the responses. 

During our investigation, we attended a demonstration of the CFRO performed by officials of the newly named Canada Firearms Centre (CFC).  This presentation confirmed that a report could not be produced to respond to the unanswered items of your requests.  As to actual paper records, it was determined that CFRO queries are not kept in paper format.

As you may know, CFRO is a subset of the Canadian Police Information Centre (CPIC).  CPIC is the national automated law enforcement system used for the exchange of information among Canadian law enforcement agencies as well as federal and provincial government departments.  Records are entered on CPIC directly by police agencies but not all of them are firearms-related files.  Since CPIC is configured by locality and each user may have several CPIC terminals, a breakdown of CFRO queries by users or a report confirmed that the users obtained the information searched for cannot be produced by one particular office or system.  Consequently, I will record your complaints as not substantiated.