March 7

March 7, 2001

Mr. Denis Desautels

Auditor General of Canada

240 Sparks Street

Ottawa, Ontario

K1A 0G6

Dear Mr. Desautels:

RE: INSIDE INFORMATION INDICATES GUN REGISTRY NEEDS A FULL AUDIT

I am writing for two reasons, the first is to thank you for your ten years of dedicated public service. Under your leadership, your office has gained both credibility and respect with the public, the media and parliamentarians. My second reason for writing is to provide your office with some inside information I have received regarding the operational effectiveness of the Canadian Firearms Registry. I hope this information is useful to your auditors and to your successor.

According to the government’s published reports on the Governor General’s Special Warrants and Supplementary Estimates (A), in just the last three months, the government has spent $145.9 million on the Firearms Control Program. Unfortunately, they have not released either their proposed budget allocation or their actual budget for this fiscal year. There are only two “Oversight Committees” in all of Treasury Board and both of them are concerning the firearms program. After I asked the President of the Treasury Board to explain the purpose of these two “Oversight Committees” in the House of Commons, Treasury Board officials removed the word “Oversight” from their correspondence with my office.

Information provided in the attachment to this letter warrants further investigation and a report to Parliament under the authority granted to you in the Auditor General Act. (i.e. Money has been expended without due regard to economy or efficiency – section 7(2)(c) and, Satisfactory procedures have not been established to measure and report the effectiveness of programs, where such procedures could appropriately and reasonably be implemented – section 7(2)(e).

From time to time RCMP officers working inside the Canadian Firearms Registry provide me with information. On every occasion these anonymous reports have been proven correct through documents obtained through the Access to Information Act or by investigative journalists. I have attached a document containing the most recent information I have received from three separate RCMP sources.

QUESTIONS & COMMENTS ABOUT THIS INSIDE INFORMATION

1. Why are the RCMP laying off staff in the gun registry when they have between 7 and 20 million guns to register before January 1, 2003?

2. RCMP Supt. Mike Buisson of the Canadian Firearms Registry says there is a 90% error rate in the registration applications and yet he has ordered staff to triple production and do nothing to verify the accuracy of the information on firearms registration applications. This has become the biggest garbage collection system in the country today. If errors are allowed in the gun registry, it undermines five of the stated reasons the government gave for implementing the registry in the first place. How will police and public safety be improved by having guns registered that cannot properly identified.

3. It is reported that the RCMP’s Firearms Interest Police (FIP) database has a 50% error rate. Does this mean that firearms officers and police are wasting their investigative resources 50% of the time? On December 11, 1999 the RCMP had 3.5 million records in the FIP system. How is such a horrendous error rate possible? What is being done to correct it?

4. Is the RCMP actually breaking the law in an attempt to comply with the political edicts from the Department of Justice on the air gun issue?

5. Is the Department of Justice really planning to spend another $200 million to try and fix the mistakes they’ve made over the last six years? When Justice Minister Allan Rock presented his Financial Framework on C-68 to Parliament on April 24, 1995, he promised a deficit of only $2.2. million over five years. The actual deficit was more than $300 million. The current price tag for the gun registry has already exceeded half a billion dollars. When will you report on this fiscal and operational disaster?

6. This all appears related to the privatization and outsourcing plans proposed by the Department of Justice (see Letter of Interest and Q&A documents enclosed). The Justice Minister claims that she will be responsible and accountable for the “outsourced” gun registry. But who will be liable for the mistakes caused by errors in the system? Who will be liable for the SWAT team that breaks into the wrong door? Who will pay for the damages and injuries? Who will be liable for those that are wrongfully arrested based on the mistakes made by the private company? How much will a system that is riddled with errors cost Canadian taxpayers?

Good luck on your future endeavours.

Sincerely,

Garry Breitkreuz, MP

Yorkton-Melville

Background: The Registrar is appointed by the Commissioner of the RCMP under authority granted in the Firearms Act. The RCMP Registrar is responsible for the registration of all firearms under the Firearms Act. There are approximately 400 RCMP personnel working (3 shifts a day) for the registry in their Ottawa operation (about 17 are RCMP officers the rest are civilians on the RCMP payroll). The Chief Firearms Officers are responsible for issuing firearms licences even though the Central Processing Site in Miramichi receives the applications, collects the money and actually prints the plastic cards. Attached is a summary of the mandate of the RCMP’s Canadian Firearms Registry from their website. An Investigator from the Office of the Information Commissioner advises that the RCMP are no longer responsible for the CFO operations in the opting-out provinces.

LAYOFFS IN THE RCMP GUN REGISTRY OPERATIONS IN OTTAWA

(1) Their budget has been cut by 40%. They are out of money and need more just to continue. operations until April 1 (the new fiscal year).

(4) If a 40% cut in the budget means a 40% cut in staff then 150 staff will be laid off.

(5) Layoff notices were supposed to be sent but were stopped by the Solicitor General’s office after SolGen discovered the magnitude of the layoffs being proposed.

(6) Acting Registrar Al Goodall even discussed scenarios where 100% of staff would be laid off.

(7) The public service union reps are furious about the layoffs and how they are being mishandled. Our source is supposed to call back with the names of the union representatives involved.

REGISTRY PRODUCTION PROBLEMS AND BACKLOGS

(1) Staff have been told to increase daily registration production from 30 firearms/day to 110 firearms/day.

(2) Staff have been told accuracy doesn’t matter. They were told to accept whatever information that is on the Registration Application.

(3) They have been told NOT to verify firearms with the FRT (Firearms Reference Table) because the FRT has a 40% error rate.

(4) A month ago there was a backlog of 180,000 firearms applications (Note: each application can include multiple firearms).

(5) The RCMP are under pressure from the Dept. of Justice to not worry about “verification” – which is a legislative requirement of the Firearms Act and the responsibility of the RCMP Registrar.

(6) The RCMP insists on completing all 7 fields to accurately identify the firearms. Apparently, the Justice Dept. isn’t happy with the RCMP’s requirement to “uniquely” identify each firearm. Our source said that he thought they were looking for someone that would produce 7 million pieces of plastic and not worry too much what was on them.

NOTE: Layoffs of 130 RCMP civilian personnel were confirmed by union officials in an Edmonton Sun article (copy attached).

RCMP OPERATION OF THE VERIFICATION NETWORK

(1) Twenty RCMP administrators of the Verifiers Network have been laid off in Ontario and one or two more in BC and Manitoba. The rest have been left with the impression that they will all be gone by September.

(2) The Verifiers travel budget has been severely restricted for the next six weeks (i.e. April 1).

(3) It takes 18.7 minutes just to review each of the computer screens for each of the seven fields to properly identify and verify one firearm. This is just to verify one firearm registration and does not include the time it takes to enter the information in the first place.

NOTE: Edmonton Sun report Doug Beazley told us during a telephone communication that the union official representing RCMP civilian personnel advised that more than 50 administrators in the Verifiers Network had been told they were being laid off.

RCMP OPERATION OF THE FIP SYSTEM

(1) On February 7, 2001 two RCMP officers from Ottawa held an all-day training session with staff the Regina “F” Division Headquarters. They were from the Operations System Policy Section and Sgt. Phil Campbell was in charge.

(2) The meeting was about coding for the FIP database. Two hours of the day was spent telling everyone about the relevance and importance of the system.

(3) During they meeting, they were told that the RCMP spends $32 million/year on the system.

AIRGUN ISSUE STILL A HOT TOPIC IN THE REGISTRY

(1) A legal opinion on air guns was written by the Senior Legal Council for the RCMP and the Legal Council that works in for the Registrar.

(2) Apparently, the legal opinion raised a number of concerns about the way the air gun issue is being handled. It warned that the RCMP might be committing an offence under Criminal Code Section 22 – Counseling a person to commit a criminal offence.

(3) Maryantonett Flumian, CEO of the CFC has formed a National Firearms Technical Committee that met for the first time on February 8th. They have already proposed an amendment to the definition of a firearm in the Criminal Code. They propose to change how air guns are defined by implementing a definition of muzzle energy as opposed to the current one based on muzzle velocity.

NOTE: The RCMP’s decisions and actions on the air gun file have resulted in the disruption of business, the registration of air guns and the seizure of air guns by the Canada Customs and Revenue Agency. The Justice Department’s surveys show that “One in seven Canadian households own an air gun.” The CFC and the RCMP are playing politics with this issue instead of being open and honest with Canadians about the legal status of their air guns.

AGREEMENT ALREADY SIGNED TO REMOVE RCMP FROM REGISTRATION FUNCTION?

(1) According to a source from the Minister’s User Group on Firearms, an agreement has been signed that will see the Registry, which currently operates under the Commissioner of the RCMP, delegated to a private agency or a new government department.

(2) This new agency will remain under the Commissioner of the RCMP until the legislation can be changed allowing for its existence separate and apart from the RCMP.

(3) This new agency will, for the time being, have no enforcement capability but will have support people for police investigations. This status is expected to change after the legislation has been changed also. There has been no time line set as of yet for this new agency, the matter was sent to cabinet about a month ago.

(4) According to this source there has been an ongoing dispute between Maryantonett Flumian, CEO (Canadian Firearms Centre) and RCMP Supt. Mike Buisson (Canadian Firearms Registry) over time lines for registration.

(5) Supt. Buisson told Ms. Flumian that the error rates were as high as 90% on registrations and that if firearms owners were to participate at this time it would take till 2010 to complete the registration of all firearms.

(6) Ms. Flumian got angry upon hearing the truth of the matter and told Buisson that 2010 was not her reality and that her reality was that the task would be completed by January 1, 2003.

(7) Ms. Flumian told police at the last meeting in Ottawa in January that she was going to spend 200 million dollars to reconstruct / reconfigure the Firearms Registry to eliminate problems.