FIREARMS FACTS UPDATE

INFORMATION COMMISSIONER CONFIRMS

THE LIBERAL GUN REGISTRY HAS NO IDEA HOW TO KEEP TRACK OF TENS OF THOUSANDS OF MISSING GUN OWNERS OR HOW TO FIX THE PROBLEM

APRIL 16, 2003: BREITKREUZ'S ACCESS TO INFORMATION ACT REQUEST

In response to five Access to Information Act requests (see attached) the department reported in January 2002 that they sent out early registration incentive notices to 1,625,915 licenced firearm owners and that 38,629 notices were returned by the Post Office.  On January 6, 2003, in response to ATIP request File: A-2002-0204, the department reported sending out final notice firearm registration forms to 616,209 licenced firearm owners and that 24,600 notices were returned by the Post Office.  Please provide copies of all reports showing: (1) The total number of licenced firearm owners that no longer live at the address indicated in the Canadian Firearms Registration System; (2) How the firearms program lost track of all these licenced firearm owners; and (3) What the department has done to correct the problem to ensure it doesn’t happen again.

RESULTS OF EARLY REGISTRATION INCENTIVE MAILINGS

http://www.cssa-cila.org/garryb/publications/EnvelopesReturned-2002-03-11.xls

MAY 21, 2003: “NO RECORDS” JUSTICE DEPT. RESPONSE – FILE: A-2003-0035

MAY 27, 2003: BREITKREUZ COMPLAINT TO INFORMATION COMMISSIONER

The department’s response that they have no records related to our request is simply not possible.  The effectiveness of the entire Canadian Firearms Program as promised by successive Ministers is based on knowing where every firearm owner lives at any given time.  Hence, the maximum two-year penalty for licenced firearm owners who fail to report their change of address within thirty days to the Canadian Firearms Centre.  In 1999, the Justice Minister even promised the Canadian Police Association that the addresses from the CFRS would be made available to police officers in their cars while on patrol.  If the department has no way of verifying the validity of the addresses of licenced gun owners then the entire system will inevitably become filled with outdated address information (just like the old handgun registry did) and it will become less and less useful for police and consequently it will be used less and less by police.  Even from an enforcement perspective the information about current and out-of-date addresses is absolutely critical for the program to function effectively. 

Please find attached records we received from the department with respect to the number of licenced gun owners the government has already lost track of.  Is the department now telling Parliament that they did not follow-up on this information to correct the address errors in the CFRS?

We respectfully request that you ask the department or whoever controls this information now to provide the information we originally requested.  This information is vital for any Parliamentarian who is trying to determine what value taxpayers got for their billion dollars spent on the gun registry so far.

JULY 21, 2004: INFORMATION COMMISSIONER’S FINDINGS

,

The investigation determined that your request was received in the Access to Information and Privacy Office on April 22, 2003.  The request was forwarded to the Canadian Firearms Centre (CFC) on April 24.  On May 5, CFC provided an initial response to the ATIP Office.  The ATIP Office subsequently requested clarifications and it was confirmed that a manual search would be required in each individual firearm file to retrieve the requested information in response to your first question.  Additionally, it was established that no reports exist to respond to questions 2 and 3.

As you know, subsection 4(3) of the Act stipulates that any record requested under this Act that does not exist but can, subject to limitations prescribed by regulation, be produced from a machine-readable record under the control of a government institution using computer hardware and software and technical expertise normally used by the government institution shall be deemed to be a record under the control of the government institution.

In this case, I am satisfied that no existing reports exist to respond to your request.  In addition, no report could be produced from a machine-readable record under the control of the department to provide answers to your questions.