Evidence of meeting #5 for Public Safety and National Security in the 39th Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was costs.
5:10 p.m.
Liberal
Tom Wappel Liberal Scarborough Southwest, ON
But these are not long guns; these are prohibited and restricted firearms. Supposedly, this system is to help the public safety of this country by knowing where these prohibited and restricted firearms are.
By the way, these have been required to be registered since the early thirties, if I remember correctly.
5:10 p.m.
Chief Operating Officer, Operations Directorate, Canada Firearms Centre
That's correct.
5:10 p.m.
Liberal
Tom Wappel Liberal Scarborough Southwest, ON
So how can we say this system is good, that it's worth the $1 billion and is working, if we can't even find 5.6 million prohibited and restricted firearms—never mind the long guns that people are shooting gophers with? How can one say that the system is effective?
5:10 p.m.
Chief Operating Officer, Operations Directorate, Canada Firearms Centre
Mr. Chair, it's 600,000 firearms, not—
5:15 p.m.
Chief Operating Officer, Operations Directorate, Canada Firearms Centre
That's fine.
We do keep the original system. We do have an address of where these people last were, and that's the first step the police access, so we do try to follow back with their last address. That's the information we have at this time.
Again, it's 600,000 out of 7.1 million.
5:15 p.m.
Liberal
Tom Wappel Liberal Scarborough Southwest, ON
No, no, it's 600,000 out of 1.2 million restricted and prohibited weapons. Let's not mix apples and oranges. These are the serious guns, the hand guns that can be concealed, the automatic weapons.... I don't know what else is under the prohibited category—grenade launchers, whatever it is.
5:15 p.m.
Chief Operating Officer, Operations Directorate, Canada Firearms Centre
No, no.
5:15 p.m.
Liberal
Tom Wappel Liberal Scarborough Southwest, ON
I'm talking about prohibited and restricted firearms, where there was some information as to where they were, and three years after the deadline required by the act, 600,000 of them are still not in the system. That's troubling to me.
5:15 p.m.
Chief Operating Officer, Operations Directorate, Canada Firearms Centre
Yes. Certainly we have made attempts over the last number of years to locate these people. We do have activities under way to continue to try to follow up and find these people.
5:15 p.m.
Liberal
Tom Wappel Liberal Scarborough Southwest, ON
I'm afraid that's not reassuring.
As my last question, what about the 23% of wrong addresses?
5:15 p.m.
Chief Operating Officer, Operations Directorate, Canada Firearms Centre
A regular rate of return mail is about 6%. This would be when we go out to contact our clients for renewal of licences. On average, after five years, the 6% runs with a normal average in the government of returned mail. This 23% was higher because this relates to the revocation of certificates. It's a special project we had under way, and we had not contacted these people for a long period of time. This is not our normal ongoing amount; this was a special project.
What we've done is try to locate these people. As the Auditor General has suggested, and as we are going to have in our action plan, we are looking for other ways to have better updating or contacting of other databases to try to have better addresses.
5:15 p.m.
Liberal
5:15 p.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Garry Breitkreuz
Thank you.
With the committee's permission, and while you are at the table, I have another question for you. I have done extensive research as to how many firearms there likely are in Canada by using import-export numbers, and I think you may be aware of some of the research I've done, that somewhere between 16.5 million and 20 million firearms are in the country, of which we have 7 million registered.
Do you see any difficulties with the way I have done my analysis?
5:15 p.m.
Chief Operating Officer, Operations Directorate, Canada Firearms Centre
I'm sorry Mr. Chair, but I'm not prepared for that today.
5:15 p.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Garry Breitkreuz
You're not, okay. Well, in all fairness to you, I was just using the import-export numbers, and it seems that there are a lot of unregistered long guns. As a follow-up to Mr. Wappel's question, we're not just talking of handguns here. Less than half the firearms have been registered.
5:15 p.m.
Liberal
Raymond Chan Liberal Richmond, BC
I have a point of order. I think the line of questioning between Mr. Wappel and you is more the task of the police force than the Firearms Centre in tracking down unidentified weapons that exist in the country. I think it's fair for the Firearms Centre, which is a voluntary registration program--
5:15 p.m.
Liberal
Raymond Chan Liberal Richmond, BC
No, but there's enforcement by the RCMP, right? They don't go out and enforce.
5:15 p.m.
Conservative
5:15 p.m.
Former Commissioner, Canada Firearms Centre, As an Individual
The Firearms Act is a regulatory act, so our duty is to encourage people, through whatever means we have available, to obtain licences and register their firearms. And there are sanctions, of course, but we are not an enforcement agency. So we do not have the means--
5:15 p.m.
Liberal
Raymond Chan Liberal Richmond, BC
Right, they're not an enforcement agency, so it is unfair for them to take all the blame about people not registering.
5:15 p.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Garry Breitkreuz
Monsieur Ménard, or do the Bloc have any more questions?
Was there a point of order?
5:15 p.m.
NDP
Joe Comartin NDP Windsor—Tecumseh, ON
No, I said Mr. Chan's point was not a point of order, but an argument.
5:15 p.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Garry Breitkreuz
Yes, I think everybody sitting around here knows that.
Okay, Monsieur Ménard.