The
Privacy Commissioner of Canada
Annual
Report to Parliament 2003-2004
[Tabled in the House of Commons
November 4, 2004] http://www.privcom.gc.ca/information/ar/200304/200304_e.asp
The
Canadian Firearms Program
During
the course of the year, we continued close monitoring of the Canadian Firearms
Program, which was subject to a review by this Office in 2001. Some of the
recommendations we made in 2001 have been implemented. The RCMP, for example,
adopted our 2001 recommendations to limit Firearms Officer access to the Police
Information Retrieval System (PIRS) system and to operational files. We have
also followed up on a number of outstanding issues referred to in our 2001
comprehensive Firearms Report, such as outsourcing, international information
sharing agreements and the use of supplementary questionnaires.
One
of the difficulties in reviewing the Firearms Program is that it has been very
much a moving target due to persistent legislative, policy, administrative and
information technology (IT) changes to the Program. In the past year, for
example, the Auditor General issued her report on the value for money of the
program which recommended changes to it; the program was transferred from the
Minister of Justice to the Minister of the Solicitor General (now the Department
of Public Security and Emergency Preparedness Canada (PSEPC); a new position of
Firearms Commissioner has been created; Bill C-10 was passed by Parliament; and
Minister Guarnieri was given the mandate in January 2004 to conduct a full
program review.
Some
of our observations and findings from the 2001 report, and from our more recent
review have been affected by these on-going changes. That said, we have made
some significant progress with the Canada Firearms Centre to address the
outstanding issues in light of the current state of affairs. We will report on
further progress in next year's Annual Report.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Review
of the Personal Information Handling Practices of the Canadian Firearms Program
- Department of Justice Canada and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police Final
Report - August 29, 2001
http://www.privcom.gc.ca/information/fr_010813_e.asp
NEWS
RELEASE - October 3, 2001
PRIVACY
COMMISSIONER’S REPORT ON THE GUN REGISTRY REVEALS MUCH MORE
“24
rather startling revelations about how the Justice Minister is mishandling the
firearms file.”
http://www.cssa-cila.org/garryb/breitkreuzgpress/GunControl46.htm
MAY
1, 2004 – RCMP HAVE 4,156,497 ACTIVE FILES IN THEIR FIREARMS INTEREST POLICE (FIP)
DATABASE
http://www.cssa-cila.org/garryb/publications/Article464.htm
April
2003 - Canadian Firearms Centre Audit, Page 35:
“The Firearms Interest Police (FIP) Database - The main concern expressed over
this issue is that relevant risk data could be overlooked among large amounts of
irrelevant/duplicate data.”
http://www.cssa-cila.org/garryb/breitkreuzgpress/guns94.htm
February 16, 2001 - Privacy Commissioner’s Letter to Garry Breitkreuz, MP
http://www.cssa-cila.org/garryb/breitkreuzgpress/privacy1.htm