Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
Thanks to all the witnesses for appearing today.
I want to begin by saying thank you to you, Chief Harel, for finally acknowledging after almost three years of your organization's saying that police are checking the registry 11,000 times a day, and now it's apparently up to 17,000....you are finally acknowledging today that those are automatic hits. The majority of those are generated by automatic hits across the country. As well, any time the firearms database is queried, even if an individual calls the firearms centre, a hit is documented. So I want to thank you for acknowledging that today.
One of the problems, Chief Torigian, is that during this argument, your organization, which deserves tremendous respect.... You do a great service to our country and to the cities you represent. You're in a uniform, and Canadians, when they see you on television, believe what you say. So when you stand in front of a television camera and say that police are checking the registry 17,000 times a day, when in fact that is not the telling the truth of how police are using and not using the registry, you do this whole discussion a great disservice. When you talk about the fact that you believe the chiefs of police unanimously supported the gun registry in Edmonton, again, the question posed to your chiefs of police was, do you support the national firearms program? This question was never posed to your chiefs of police: do you support the long-gun registry?
So again, to both of you gentlemen, we do have very different views on this issue. There is a gap and a wedge between your position and our government's position, and sadly that gap has not been closed.
I just want to direct my question to Mr. Bernardo. There has been some misinformation today as well in regard to individuals selling or transferring firearms to people who are not qualified to purchase those firearms. I know that you're very familiar with the bill. Can you please talk about the legal requirements? Just inform everyone listening--inform the people on the rest of the panel--of the legal requirements in regard to transferring firearms. Can a store owner sell a gun to somebody who doesn't have a licence?