Public Safety Committee on May 26th, 2010

[Brent Rathgeber, Conservative, Edmonton—St. Albert, AB]

I'll ask you the same question. Your officers respond to a domestic incident. They do a search of the residence by address and by owner, if they know the owner of the residence. It shows there are no registered firearms at that residence. He told me, and I'm sure you'll agree with me, that his officers cannot possibly rely on that search, that they have to go into that residence fully expecting there to be firearms.

[Chief William Blair]

I believe in my earlier testimony that I also said that if the information is available on the registry, it's extremely useful, but a police officer will continue the search regardless, because our ultimate responsibility is public safety, the safety of the people in that home.

[Brent Rathgeber, Conservative, Edmonton—St. Albert, AB]

But you're agreeing with me: that search is unreliable. A search that shows no firearms at a domestic situation is unreliable.

[Chief William Blair]

No. What I'm telling you is, if the search does reveal that there are registered weapons, that information is incredibly reliable and very important to us, and it will help us in our investigation.

[Brent Rathgeber, Conservative, Edmonton—St. Albert, AB]

How so? The search shows that there's one registered weapon at that residence. Your officers go in and they neutralize that weapon. That's it, the crisis is averted, or do they assume there might be more?

[Chief William Blair]

Of course they're going to assume. But if they go into that house—

[Brent Rathgeber, Conservative, Edmonton—St. Albert, AB]

So in both scenarios—

[Chief William Blair]

If I may finish—

[Brent Rathgeber, Conservative, Edmonton—St. Albert, AB]

—the search is unreliable, sir.

[Chief William Blair]

If they go into that house and they find 20 weapons but they've not yet found the one that's registered, they're going to keep searching for it.

[Brent Rathgeber, Conservative, Edmonton—St. Albert, AB]

Thank you. You've agreed with me that both of those searches are not reliable.

[Chief William Blair]

Actually, I wouldn't characterize my response as agreeing with you, sir.

[Brent Rathgeber, Conservative, Edmonton—St. Albert, AB]

In your magazine, the CACP Bulletin, spring 2010, you're quoted at the bottom of page 5 as saying, “We lose the gun registry at our peril.” That's a quote attributed to you. Do you acknowledge making that?

[Chief William Blair]

Yes, I made that comment.

[Brent Rathgeber, Conservative, Edmonton—St. Albert, AB]

I agree with that. But are you talking about the gun registry or are you talking about the long-gun registry? Those are very different things.

[Chief William Blair]

I'm talking about both, sir, the registration of all firearms, including the long-gun registry.

[Brent Rathgeber, Conservative, Edmonton—St. Albert, AB]

Do you agree with Mr. Grismer that in some incidents reliance on the long-gun registry has actually imperiled the safety of officers?

[Chief William Blair]

No.

[Brent Rathgeber, Conservative, Edmonton—St. Albert, AB]

What about Mayerthorpe?

[Chief William Blair]

Actually, in the incident they did not rely on that information, but the information was valuable in solving that crime and determining some of the individuals who were responsible for the death of those officers.

[Brent Rathgeber, Conservative, Edmonton—St. Albert, AB]

We'll talk about that later.

[The Acting Chair, Conservative, Phil McColeman]

Thank you.

Now we move to the second round of questions.

Mr. Kania, five minutes.

[Andrew Kania, Liberal, Brampton West, ON]

May I ask you to give me a 30-second notice as well? Ms. Jennings is going to start, and we'll share some of my time.

[The Acting Chair, Conservative, Phil McColeman]

Very well.

[Marlene Jennings, Liberal, Notre-Dame-de-Grâce—Lachine, QC]

Thank you, Chair.

My question is for Dr. Maurice and Mr. Blais. It concerns a topic you discussed with Ms. Mourani, the decline in the number of suicides, the non-displacement of firearm-related suicides and the non-displacement of suicides by other means.

You said there was a study on the subject. Today we heard statements to the effect that there is no evidence that the firearms registry has saved even one life. If we had evidence that it had saved even one life, the person who made that statement would not be opposing the firearms registry and would be in favour of keeping it.

Consequently, I would like you to explain the study that was done and how you were able to show that lives have been saved as a result of the act and the registry.