The Privacy Commissioner of Canada
112 Kent Street
Ottawa, Ontario
K1A 1H3
(613) 995-8210, 1-800-282-1376
Fax (613) 947-6850
TDD (613) 992-9190
Note: The
Privacy Commissioner’s Report was tabled in Parliament at 2:00 PM on
Wednesday, January 29, 2003
http://www.privcom.gc.ca/information/ar/02_04_10_e.asp#overview
Several days before Christmas, a man called my Office to report that he
had found three bags containing personal information belonging to the Canadian
Firearms Program in a dumpster in a locked compound owned by the private company
where he worked.
My investigators went to the scene immediately. The location was not
anywhere near the Canadian Firearms Program processing site, and the dumpster
was strictly used for wood products. My investigators retrieved a number of
envelopes addressed to the Canadian Firearms Program, most of which contained
names and return addresses of individuals.
My investigators then confirmed that, during the fall, the Canadian
Firearms Program had sent packages containing personalized applications to all
firearms owners, along with return envelopes pre-addressed to the Canadian
Firearms Program. The information they found in the dumpster contained the
pre-addressed envelopes that had been returned to the Canadian Firearms Program.
Having established that the information originated from the Canadian
Firearms Program, my investigators tried to determine how it had ended up in the
compound of a private company. They confirmed that the dumpster was rented by a
waste management company and had been in the compound since early December.
My investigators observed that the bags found in the dumpster were
covered in snow and were stuck to the bottom of the dumpster. It is likely that
when the waste company retrieved the dumpster from a previous location and
emptied it, the bags stayed within.
My officials contacted the Department of Justice, the Government
institution responsible for the gun registration program. Officials stated that
the department had contracted out the processing of the registration forms to a
private company. The company is fully cognizant of the provisions of the Privacy
Act and thought it had taken every precaution to safeguard individuals' privacy
rights. However, company officials confirmed that the normal practice was to
throw out the pre-addressed return envelopes using a regular garbage can,
without realizing that firearms owners had written their names and return
addresses on the envelopes, which would make them easily identifiable as
firearms owners. The company agreed to immediately stop throwing the envelopes
into the regular garbage and undertook to dispose of them in a secure manner,
through shredding.
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Since the mid-1990s my Office has taken a keen interest in the Canadian
Firearms Program. The Firearms Act is a highly controversial piece of
legislation that continues to produce strong emotions among both its supporters
and its critics. My continued interest in the implementation of this legislation
is simple: the Firearms Program involves the collection and use of a large
amount of highly sensitive personal information. This legislation also has a
direct impact on more than 2.3 million firearm owners, involving more than 7
million firearms in Canada. I also continue to receive complaints and inquiries
about various aspects of the program, including some from Members of Parliament.
On August 29, 2001, I issued my report entitled Review of the Personal
Information Handling Practices of the Canadian Firearms Program to the
Department of Justice and the RCMP. Part 1 of the report summarized my Office's
review of the program's compliance with sections 4 to 8 of the Privacy Act
dealing with the handling of personal information. Part 2 contained our
assessment of the pertinence of questions about personal history used on the
firearms licence applications and their compliance with the Privacy Act. The
report contained some 34 detailed recommendations for corrective measures aimed
at reducing the intrusiveness of the program.
None of my recommendations to the Department of Justice has yet been
accepted. The RCMP, however, has agreed to implement some of the recommendations
from my report. I am pleased to note, for instance, that firearms officers
across Canada no longer have full query access privileges to the RCMP's Police
Information Retrieval System (PIRS) and that all of my recommendations with
respect to limiting the use of PIRS have been implemented. In addition, I expect
that the RCMP will complete the necessary revisions to the Memoranda of
Understanding regarding four informatics and security areas related to the
Firearms Program in the near future. These important steps will help to tighten
up the control of access to sensitive personal information used in the program.
While I do not have the power under the Privacy Act to force the
department to implement my recommendations, I will continue my efforts to urge
the department to take appropriate measures to bring the Canadian Firearms
Program into full compliance with the Act.
Subsequent to the research and fieldwork that formed the basis of my
original report, other issues came to light. My Office has been monitoring the
following outstanding issues:
Outsourcing -- Implementation of the existing contractual arrangement
with BDP Business Data Services Ltd., all aspects of the Alternative Service
Delivery initiative, as well as the current practice of outsourcing secondary
and tertiary screening functions; and
Any international information-sharing arrangements relating to the
Canadian Firearms Program, whether directly or indirectly through other
enforcement agencies.