Your experience is the same as mine.
I've never met a police officer who has seen registry data come up in his patrol car indicating that no firearm is associated with an individual in a stopped car, such that he would then approach the car as if there were no firearm in that car. It's simply foolish. No one would put their own life at risk by relying on the registry—or in fact put the life of their partner or a civilian at risk by doing that. It's simply foolish. In the same way, you don't go into a domestic disturbance and say, “Well, we're pretty safe here because there's no firearm licence or registry here”. Whether there's a licence or a registry is quite irrelevant. You go into a home expecting a firearm. That's the prudent and the proper thing for any officer to do.
I have met with officers on a daily basis who have talked to me about the issue. One thing they point out to me is that long-gun registry has created a division between law officers on the one side and ordinary law-abiding Canadian citizens who may own firearms on the other side. There's a mistrust of police officers because somehow people feel that the police are out to get their guns. It's really unfortunate because most of these people are exactly the kind of people who should be assisting the police in investigations of crime and yet now this long-gun registry has created a barrier between police and law-abiding citizens. That should never be the intent or result of the law.