Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights

Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights

Comité permanent de la justice et des droits de la personne

COMMITTEE EVIDENCE number 71,
Témoignages du comité numéro 71

Mr. Garry Breitkreuz: Thank you, Mr. Chair. The first one that I'm going to deal with is the one that asks the committee to review the proposed Firearms Act regulations currently before both Houses of Parliament.

For those of you who are not completely familiar with what's happening here, there have been 44 pages of proposed regulations that should be reviewed by this committee. They will become law on October 27 and they're going to become law complete with all the errors and the lack of logic, the problems in drafting unless this committee is willing to review them and look at them.

I really feel that we have the responsibility to get the law right. We know by just looking at the experience of the last couple of years that the bureaucrats that have been running the system have not been doing a stellar job of that. We trusted them back in 1995 and we really have a huge mess and these regulations don't really improve on that.

We should especially hear from the commissioner, Mr. Bill Baker. He had some consultations with all of the stakeholders and we need to hear what they said about these proposed regulations, and the results of those consultations that he also had publicly on the Internet and I happen to know that there are some very serious problems with these regulations and I think the committee should dig into this and find out what they are.

I'll give you a couple of examples. The firearms marking regulations require the stamping of “CA” and the year of importation on an estimated 85,000 firearms that get imported into Canada every year. This is going to drive a lot of firearms importers out of business and in fact, those import laws are so complex that the experts say it can only lead to attempts to circumvent the system. In other words, read my lips: the illegal trade in firearms is going to increase as a direct result of this and we have been warned by the police and others already about this. So the opposite of what the regulations intends to cure is going to happen.

There are witnesses that are willing to come before the committee to talk about this. It's going to drive up the cost of a new gun in Canada by $100 or $200. This cost alone will drive hunters, recreational shooters out of the sport. That's going to have repercussions for wildlife, the environment and will dangerously damage the economy.

Another example is the regulations call for maintaining of two classes of firearms licenses, a possession- acquisition license and a possession-only license. There are about 1.3 million holders of the possession-only license that have already proven that they're competent to own and acquire firearms because they've done so safely for years now. So what possible public purpose is there served in maintaining these two classes?

Another example, the transfer fees, license fees, registration fees should be eliminated. They adversely affect public co-operation with the firearms control system. These will provide a constitutional challenge based on the Supreme Court of Canada decision. We're going to run into trouble there.

Another example is the proposed fee increase for American hunters and sport shooters that will force more of these tourists to stay at home. This is going to kill aboriginal guiding and outfitting jobs and businesses in Canada.

The system for admitting foreign hunters and shooting sport competitors is also offensive. It's unfair to Canadians. Canadians have to jump through a lot of hoops and hurdles. Foreigners can come in, they're trusted to a large extent. By just simply paying money, they can bring their firearms in. The playing field needs to be levelled here in some way.

In conclusion, the proposed regulations don't address many of the recommendations made by the minister's own user group or the Hession report on which the minister's actions plan and before the auditor general reports that the gun registry cost $2 billion, I think we need to review the regulations in this matter.

I've put this forward and I think the committee should do it's job and take a look at this.

The Chair: The committee should be aware that we would have to do this between now and Monday.

Mrs. Marlene Jennings: Just to say that as Mr. Breitkreuz mentioned, the Firearms Centre is in fact holding consultations on these regulations and my understanding is the consultations are continuing through and into next week but that the officials welcome the committee's input and are more than ready to come this week or next before the committee if it's the committee's desire to do so.

Given our agenda, committee time is pretty much set for this week, perhaps Thursday afternoon of this week? I would certainly be available and I'm sure that we could arrange--

Mr. Garry Breitkreuz: Well, there are many other witnesses as well, I'm sure.

The Chair: Well, we won't probably be able to entertain too many before Monday. October 27 is the deadline.

Mr. Derek Lee: Mr. Chairman, this is one of those instances where it would be great to have the capability of having workings, subcommittee mechanisms available. This is more like a briefing session. I do not see the need to bring out the whole 16, 25 member committee on this, but there are undoubtedly a number of members who have an interest in this and there may be public interest issues, which we should take up.

I would like to suggest something more like a briefing session/subcommittee that could meet once and not get off quickly.

The Chair: I think that probably, Mr. Lee, on Thursday afternoon, the subcommittee would be self-identified.

The Chair: So consequently, I'm perfectly prepared to ask the clerk to arrange a meeting for Thursday afternoon. Ms. Jennings, I'm sure, will be helpful in arranging for the appropriate people. Does that dispose of the first motion, Mr. Breitkreuz?

The Chair: Yes, I say if we proceed in that fashion, does that dispose of the motion?

The Chair: No, we're having a meeting of this committee on Thursday afternoon in response to Mr. Breitkreuz's motion.

The Chair: It's a briefing, to hear witnesses, we're hearing witnesses. There's no--

Mr. Garry Breitkreuz: As a result of that, is there a recommendation then made to the committee? Like, where does that go?

The Chair: The meeting itself would decide that, but I doubt, Mr. Breitkreuz, to be fair, if you don't get a quorum, you're simply going to make an observation or pass along a report to the main committee. That will be after October 27 in any event.

Mr. Garry Breitkreuz: So then what happens to the regulations that maybe aren't what they should be?

Mr. Garry Breitkreuz: I think there are some serious problems with that whole procedure.

Mr. Garry Breitkreuz: Well, I've had this on the, since those have been tabled, I've had it before this committee.

It's before you there. I don't want to hold you up. I'm sure you'll approve this as well.

The motion before you is printed there and it states that the committee examine the reasons why the government has refused to implement the Privacy Commissioner's recommendations with respect to the “Firearms Interest Police”, that's called the FIP database.

The Privacy Commissioner made these recommendations public on August 29, 2001. The government is still refusing to implement them, despite the fact that the FIP database contains information that is not authorized by section 5 of the Firearms Act, including information on witnesses and the victims of crime.

The interim Privacy Commissioner, Mr. Bob Marleau, wrote me on September 3 of this year, 2003, and stated, and I'm quoting here:

The Privacy Commissioner and the public deserve to know why the government is refusing to act on this. There are 4 million Canadians, 4 million citizens in this database, this FIP database that the police maintain, especially the totally innocent, which concerns me, and they deserve to know why the police put them in this database in the first place, why they were never told about it and why they can't correct the false information that the police have entered into that database on them.

Since the Privacy Commissioner has first reported all these problems with Firearm Interest Police database, the Auditor General also reported on the problems in this FIP database. The justice minister, the Solicitor General told Parliament. They accepted all of the Auditor General's recommendations. In April of this year, the Canadian Firearm Centre's own evaluation report said, and I would like to quote, this is the Firearm Centre's own report, said “several issues that threaten the effectiveness of the FIP system are there”. verify quote

So I think it's up to the committee again to hear from the Privacy Commissioner, justice department officials and the RCMP to find out what the holdup is in regard to this whole issue.

Mr. Garry Breitkreuz: I have all the backup reports here, by the way, if anybody really wants the documentation. It's unbelievable.

Mrs. Marlene Jennings: I think that I need to simply try to clarify what the FIP, Firearms Interest Police, data file is. It is important to note that the information that's contained in that is the person's name, date of birth and the alleged firearms interest.

The Chair: You might want to put that on the record. We didn't get Mr. Lee's comments.

Mrs. Marlene Jennings: That's right, the firearm interest. Thank you, Mr. Lee.

Second, yes, the government and, obviously, the Canada Firearms Centre are very aware of the recommendations that were contained in the Privacy Commissioner's report. It's important to know that the Canada Firearms Centre FIP project team, is continuing to work toward establishing and implementing a common police agency, extracts, standards and procedures and will be forwarding the information to the Privacy Commissioner, but what's really important is that FIP is part of the Canadian Police Information Centre, CPIC. That's managed by the RCMP. In fact, it's the chiefs of police across the country who are responsible, as heads of their own individual police services, to ensure that only appropriate entries are made in FIP. These entries would include entries referring to police reports on incidents that are consistent with section 5 of the Firearms Act. Let me give you an example: a police report dealing with a case of domestic violence or threatened violence or other public safety concerns.

As I said, the FIP entry only includes a person's name, date of birth, a police case number and a police agency identifier. Each police agency across Canada has received common police agency standards and procedures to use in identifying cases for a FIP entry. The coordinator of CFC, the Canada Firearms Centre, monitors the FIP activity and the inputs by police services to determine if there are any variations, increases or decreases, that suggest a review of input practices is required. Where such variations occur, the police agency is contacted and there is a joint review of what's happening, how and what is being input and how that police agency is handling the data that it is inputting into FIP.

In addition, the chief firearms officers use FIP to perform licensing application screenings, as Mr. Breitkreuz mentioned, and to provide continuous eligibility reviews when possible public safety concerns arise.

This information is in fact generic except for the person's name and birth and it only permits the persons who are looking at the information to know which agency inputs the information and the police file associated with that information so that if they need further information they can then contact the particular police agency. The information itself that is input is controlled by the individual police forces.

The Canada Firearms Centre is very aware of the Privacy Commissioner's concerns, but I'd like to put out that in the executive summary of the Privacy Commissioner's report, the Privacy Commissioner indicated that, on the whole, his review had not found any egregious violations of the Privacy Act. He had concerns about the review and auditing of this information to ensure that it does respect the Privacy Act, and the Canada Firearms Centre is putting into place policies and procedures standardized to ensure that each agency that is using FIP, that is inputting into FIP, is in fact using the same procedures, the same norms, the same standards and that there is an audit that is ongoing to ensure that if there are variations there is a joint review that happens.

In my view, I don't think that, at this point in time, we need, as a committee, to adopt the motion of Mr. Breitkreuz. I think, at this point in time, we should not support that motion. Perhaps we can revisit it at a later date to determine how the Canada Firearm Centre's implementation has gone.

The Chair: I'd like to proceed by going to Mr. Lee first, if you don't mind, Garry. Then you can close, because we'll have to get to a decision.

Mr. Derek Lee: Mr. Chairman, I think this is actually a fairly important issue. The FIP data is being added to CPIC, which is a database that records matters related to criminal activity. If I'm not mistaken, they may be using it for other things. The issue is as much the management of CPIC as it is of FIP itself. FIP is just a small piece.

It's quite a legitimate question especially in light of the fact that the Privacy Commissioner has indicated a concern. It's something that I would never want to let go until it was properly concluded as an issue at play. I'm sure Mr. Breitkreuz will consider raising the issue when the committee meets with whoever is attending on the new regulations. There may be elements of the new regulations that pertain to privacy.

In any event, as much as I want to support the matter in principle, we don't have a window of time yet said to be available for this. As one member, I'm certainly ready to work on this issue, if time is available to do it. Maybe this coming meeting is a useful opportunity to at least open it with the Firearms Centre and the RCMP.

Mr. Garry Breitkreuz: I appreciate that support. To me, if we approve the motion, then we can find time at some future time. We've been sitting on this for a couple of years already, and I think we need to act on it.

In all fairness to what Marlene is saying, there are four million people on this FIP database, so even if they put into place some of these things that you're saying, it will not address the big problems already involved in this system. These people are being treated as criminals. That's a violation of their privacy rights. Nobody is going back to correct this. There's nothing being done in regard to all this. This is a huge violation of people's....

You correctly identified the fact that they have their name, their address and a few basic statistics there, and there's no indication as to what crime they have committed, yet they're treated as a criminal then, because the police contact as base. You'd have to go back then. Some of these were witnesses to a crime. Some of these were good Samaritans. They had been slapped into this system. They don't even know they're there.

This, to me, is extremely serious. There is nothing in the new regulations, by the way, that addresses any of this. We could go around the Horn here in a long time. If we just approve this, and then let's look at it at a committee in the near future when we get an opportunity.

The Chair: I'm going to put the question. Mr. Sorenson, it'll prompt another question. It will go on....

The Chair: On that note, I will adjourn the meeting. I'll see everybody on Wednesday afternoon, on 45 and 46.