Mr. Chair, first, I want to inform the member that the police do not depend, which is the word he used when he was referring to the police, on one system. The Canadian Firearms Centre and the firearms registry is one tool of many that the police services use in their work.
We have admitted that there were problems in the past, and the member went through a long rendition of problem cases, but in the last three months we have taken substantive measures to improve the system. He should not believe everything that he has been told because there are some real horror cases out there. I have to think that there may be some exaggerations.
I encourage the member to call the 1-800 number tomorrow. I called it tonight before I walked into the House. After my call went through I waited eight seconds before a person came on the line. We have improved the system substantially in order to do that.
I would like to mention some of the improvements that we have made in Miramichi, the central processing site. The response time for answering public inquiry calls has been improved. We have reallocated 10 resources from the data processing centre to the call centre. We have reallocated 10 resources from the exceptions handling unit. We appointed a call centre monitor to re-direct resources and calls in real time. We hired 20 to 25 additional staff for the phones, and back fills by May 5, 2003. The list goes on.
We have introduced electronic ordering of registration applications. We have modified the system to allow faxing of registration applications to clients. We have analyzed call volumes and call types, and I could go through those. The average response time on the English business hotline is 52 seconds. This was for the week of May 18 to May 25.
I know the hon. member continues to go back in history to around the year 2000. However the bottom line is that 90% of the time we are now meeting the 30 day turnaround time. I would be most interested in seeing the binder that the individual has. However we have improved the system substantially and we are very proud of the improvements we have made to the system since it came to the Department of the Solicitor General.