Public Accounts committee  Yes, I do. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Good afternoon, Mr. Chair and members of the committee. Accompanying me here today are senior officials of the RCMP Canada Firearms Centre. It gives me great pleasure to meet with you today to discuss issues related to the RCMP Canada Firear

Public Accounts committee  The number of inquiries through the centre is escalating on a continual basis. Today the centre is queried approximately 6,500 times a day, and it's going up. The centre provides important information to police officers in the field for investigative purposes, and it also assists

Public Accounts committee  Issues of legislation are for the government to address, not for the police agency to deal with. When you talk about the quality of the data using addresses as an example, the Auditor General did point to a concern about the quality of data. We have put together a team to get i

Public Accounts committee  The question that came from Mr. Laforest a few moments ago about verifiers is one of the recommendations that came out of the Auditor General's--

Public Accounts committee  Registering firearms does. We are not supporting the registration of hair dryers or soldering guns.

Public Accounts committee  I have no knowledge of that specific case; I'd have to look into it.

Public Accounts committee  People with criminal activity, if they apply appropriately, will be denied registration.

Public Accounts committee  People who have mental stability issues.... We're getting into a very sensitive health area, but people who are not qualified to have weapons should not have them.

Public Accounts committee  As I mentioned earlier, we have made a lot of significant progress on correcting the accuracy of the data. Mr. Chair, let me speak to the issue of registering things such as soldering guns. The volunteer verifier program has been eliminated. We have had our professional agents,

Public Accounts committee  I can't answer that. Mr. Bidal, do you have that?

Public Accounts committee  We have implemented analytical tools that will now allow us to go into the database and do certain checks. Certain makes of firearms have a sequence of numbers that will allow us to predict whether the validity of the serial number is right or wrong. This program came over to t

Public Accounts committee  I can't speak to prior to May 16, but right now I can tell you that we do have analytical tools in place. We have a team that's working every day on the data quality issue, and there are operational examples of how this system has improved public safety. You mentioned we're wor

Public Accounts committee  First off, it allows us to integrate with the infrastructure inside the RCMP. We are able to benefit from the fact that the RCMP already has a human resource component and a financial administration group, so the duplication on the administrative side is eliminated right away. Be

Public Accounts committee  Programmers.... One of the things we are engaging in is a knowledge transfer from consultants over to employees of the government. As we complete that knowledge transfer, we are terminating the consultants, and it will eventually result in the termination of the contract with one

Public Accounts committee  We will license individuals—that process involves security checking, education—and we will register firearms as well.