Thank you very much.
My name is Dave Brown. I'm a professional firearms instructor and also a tactical firearms editor with Blue Line magazine. I'm probably one of the very few civilians who has ever been in a similar position with a law enforcement magazine. I work with government agencies, military units, and police officers on firearms training. I'm not aligned with any particular agency or any firearms manufacturer in any way whatsoever, so you could probably consider me a sort of educated observer of this process.
What I'd like to contribute to the committee today is my experience with CBSA officers. I don't know if the committee is aware of this or not, but CBSA has done some basic firearm safety training for their officers for the past several years. Starting in 1999, I did the Canadian firearms safety course, which is a basic introductory level safety course, for CBSA officers in Manitoba. I have some statistics from that course. Hopefully I can answer for the committee whether these officers will be trained to the same high level as police officers.
Before I get into that I want to say that my philosophy is probably the same as everyone else's here: nobody really wants to live in a country where we have to arm our borders. But I also believe that if we are arming the borders, we need to provide the appropriate tools for the people who are protecting our borders and Canadians.
In 1999 we began training in Manitoba, and I trained a total of 127 officers on the Canadian firearms safety course, which is a 16-hour basic firearms course. At the end of the course there are two levels of testing: a written test on the theory in the course, and a practical hands-on component. Of all the officers who took the course, the average score on the written test was 95%. On the hands-on practical part, the average score of all the officers was 93%. Out of 127 officers, 20 of them achieved a perfect score on the written test, and seven of them achieved a perfect score on the practical test. I can also say that 94% of all the officers that took the course achieved 90% or more on the written test, and 83% of those officers achieved 90% or more on the practical test.
As Mr. Moran has said, 88% of his members surveyed were willing to be trained with firearms. Hopefully I have some evidence that out of those 88% who are willing to be trained, they would all perform to an extremely high level. I believe their professionalism would allow them to be trained to the same standards, if not higher, of any other police agency in North America.
Another thing I want to talk about is firearms selection. If firearms are to be given to the officers, they should be firearms that have been extensively tested, have been proven reliable, and have been chosen by other law enforcement agencies in North America. They do not want firearms that are new to the market and have never been tested. They don't want firearms that are not being used by another law enforcement agency. They don't want firearms that are now out of production. They want the best firearms on the market, with consideration for the cost of the firearms and the cost of the training.
At Blue Line magazine, every four or five years we do a survey of all the firearms used by law enforcement agencies. Since 1998, every police agency in Canada has transitioned to a semi-automatic pistol of the design where the trigger function is described as a double action only, which is essentially the simple, basic firearms design. This is the only firearm that should be considered for any law enforcement officer in North America.
While most of the agencies since 1998 are fairly satisfied with their purchases, from 2003 until 2007 five police agencies in Canada have changed to an entirely different make and model of firearm. Out of those five agencies, 100% of them have transitioned from a Beretta semi-automatic pistol to another make; four of them have gone to the Glock semi-automatic pistol, and one of them has gone to the SiGARMS semi-automatic pistol.
Basically, based on that experience of the agencies in Canada, what I would suggest is that if the firearm doesn't say Glock or it doesn't say SiGARMS, then there would have to be some justification involved.
I think I'll just stop there and make myself available for questions.