Mr. Speaker, on Wednesday, March 17 I asked the Minister of Justice an important question which she failed to answer, so I will ask her again. How would the justice minister like it if her face showed up on someone else's firearms licence?
That is exactly what happened to Mr. Robert Soltis of Abbotsford, B.C. He received his firearms licence from the Canadian firearms registry and it had someone else's picture on it. He has no idea whose licence his picture ended up on.
When I asked the minister about the serious breach of Mr. Soltis' privacy, the minister responded “Our firearms registry system is working quite well, thank you very much”. She went on to brag about all of the paperwork the CFC has processed. She was not bragging about the lives saved or how much public safety has been improved, but about the paper shuffled by her bureaucrats. She said that they have processed 40,000 applications for licences and registrations, issued over 17,000 registration certificate numbers and over 12,000 photo ID licences.
If I had the chance to ask another question that day I would have asked how many of the 12,000 licences issued had the right pictures on them.
Mr. Soltis wrote:
The person with my photograph on his card commits a heinous crime. The (firearms licence) as a primary piece of identification is found on the scene or the (firearms licence) data bank is accessed. Either way my photograph will be on law enforcement circulars, in newspapers and on television as the person wanted for committing the crime.
Imagine an officer attending a domestic dispute. He or she accesses the firearms registry through the computer board in the patrol car and it shows John Doe as associated to that address and he has certain firearms registered to him. But, instead of a photograph of John Doe coming up on a computer screen, it is my photograph. The officer approaches the house and encounters John Doe on the street. Not associating him to the photograph, the officer would not recognize him as a possible threat. I need not explain the possible disastrous consequences of this scenario.
Since Mr. Soltis has informed me of this blunder by the Department of Justice other law-abiding individuals have complained to me.
Mr. William Dennis Moss of Hawkestone, Ontario never applied for a firearms licence but received a firearms possession and acquisition licence that belongs to Mr. William Arthur Moss. In his letter he asks:
I feel my privacy and security have been invaded. The person pictured would, I am sure, feel the same. Who is this other William Moss who is waiting for his certificate? If he gets into trouble, the government has MY address. Would you like to be in this position?
Mr. Moss returned his bogus licence to the Ontario Provincial Police and was told about a number of similar mistakes that have been reported to them.
This is not a frivolous complaint. A firearms licence is a primary piece of identification. Have members every heard of a passport, or a social insurance card, or a health card, or a driver's licence being issued with someone else's picture on it, or being sent to the wrong person at the wrong address? Just think of the possible abuses that could occur. Yet the minister seems unconcerned or unaware of the consequences that these colossal errors made by her department could have.
Individuals who receive faulty licences will be stopped by the police. If they are in the possession of a firearm, the accuracy of their government issued licence is the only thing that will keep them out of jail. If even one law-abiding firearm owner is harassed by the police because of bureaucratic incompetence it will be inexcusable.
The key question remains. How many other mistakes like these have been made by the Department of Justice? Do we have to wait until each and every individual holder of the licence complains about the breach of privacy? How does the minister propose to find all the mistakes that have been made by her department? Will she stop—