Public Safety committee  Thank you. Good afternoon. My name is William Blair, and I'm the chief of the Toronto Police Service. Like my fellow chiefs across Canada, I have served for decades in front-line policing. I've been a member of the Toronto Police Service since November 1, 1976, and over the p

Public Safety committee  It is a national organization. It represents municipal, provincial, and national police services, the RCMP, coast to coast.

Public Safety committee  It is my very strongly held belief that it is a great fiction that any police officer has been or could be suppressed from expressing their opinion. I think it's certainly beyond belief that the police unions would be complicit in such things. It's nonsense, if I may say. In spe

Public Safety committee  The registration of the weapons has value to policing. It has value to my investigators. Having information that someone is licensed to own a firearm is useful information. We support the licensing regime in this country. But it's also of extremely important value to know how ma

Public Safety committee  We have well in excess of 1,100 members. It is the chiefs of all the police services right across the country. But it's not just limited to police chiefs; it also includes all the senior officers and deputy chiefs from those organizations.

Public Safety committee  Registering a firearm, particularly if it's done at point of sale, is in fact far easier than registering a motor vehicle. I've seen it done. I've seen people who are pretty good at it and they've registered in as short a period of time as 37 seconds. It normally takes a few minu

Public Safety committee  I've had the privilege of seeing it. There are actually two documents. One is an internal audit and one is an internal evaluation on the firearms program. As I understand it, both of the documents are quite supportive of the efficiency and the value of the firearms program, but

Public Safety committee  My police services use the registry for sworn statements, to put affidavits before the courts and to obtain search warrants, on a daily basis. Police officers right across this country use the information from the registry and from the Canada Firearms Centre for judicial processe

Public Safety committee  Yes.

Public Safety committee  Active lobbyists? We have not hired any lobbyists that I am aware of.

Public Safety committee  We have a government liaison company with which we've entered into a short-term contract. It had to do with a different matter.

Public Safety committee  Yes.

Public Safety committee  Yes, sir.

Public Safety committee  We contracted them not to lobby on our behalf, but to engage in government liaison. We've dealt with them, and because of their relationship with your government, they declined to be involved in any aspect of the CACP's advocacy--

Public Safety committee  Very well, sir.