Government Operations committee  Thank you, Madam Chair. First of all, I would like to introduce three of my colleagues who are not at the table: Mr. Denis Bilodeau, Senior Advisor; Beverley Holloway, chief operating officer; John Brunet, chief financial officer. The Auditor General, in her recent report, has

Government Operations committee  Thank you, Madam Chair. There is one system that is central to the operation of the entire Canadian firearms program, and it's the database. It is not just for the registration of all of the firearms that are in the system and is not just the means by which police access the dat

Government Operations committee  Very briefly, there are two systems. First of all, members should understand that there's one that's been in place since the outset of the program. We refer to that as CFIS I, the Canadian Firearms Information System I. It remains the operating system for the Canada Firearms Cent

Government Operations committee  Thank you, Madam Chair. The previous regime is commonly referred to as the FAC, the firearms acquisition certificate system. That system had been in place for many years. It operated off a different system, the restricted weapons registration system, the RWRS. The passage of th

Government Operations committee  As people's firearms acquisition certificates expired, they had to acquire a firearms licence under the new act. As they acquired a licence, the data was migrated. The old data is available for investigative purposes, but it was not integrated with the new data.

Government Operations committee  Certainly, Madam Chair. The system is by no means perfect to verify firearms, but I wouldn't qualify it as completely inadequate either. To understand how this works, if I may take a moment, first of all there's a central registry where all of the firearms registration informati

Government Operations committee  Some of it is done over the phone, but for the last while we've been attempting to do as many physical verifications as possible. We rely on a volunteer system. It isn't perfect, but it is affordable.

Government Operations committee  No. Bear in mind too that the vast majority of verifications are done by gun dealers and gunsmiths in this country. There isn't one who isn't a verifier, because it's their business. When that person calls the Firearms Centre to say they wish to register this particular handgun t

Government Operations committee  I can't be precise on that, except that I can frame it for you. If you look at the budget for the year just completed, which was for a little over $82 million for the entire Canada Firearms Centre, including all of the licensing, safety training, registration, and so on, somethin

Government Operations committee  I think, in fairness, the firearms program and the registry have been used somewhat interchangeably to describe the program. We, the officials who work in the Firearms Centre, have a narrow definition of the registry as the component dealing with the registration of firearms. It

Government Operations committee  In terms of the announcements that have recently been made by Minister Day on the Firearms Centre, those are matters completely of government discretion around policy and expenditure, which is the entitlement of governments to make. What I can say is that however the program evol

Government Operations committee  With pleasure. You raised several things here. First of all, in terms of your own particular situation, I'm sure the officials in the centre would be pleased to ascertain or make a determination as to whether something needs to be corrected.

Government Operations committee  The second point you raised relates to the degree to which police can rely on the information in the registry. As I pointed out earlier and has been identified in the Auditor General's report, we acknowledge that the data in the registry is not perfect. I can say, though, that th

Government Operations committee  I'm still employed. I have recently been appointed the deputy commissioner and chief operating officer of the Canada Revenue Agency, which is the organization for which I worked up until three years ago, when I was asked to go to firearms.

Government Operations committee  The year in question is year two. The one year, I think everyone acknowledges, was an error in accounting in a large department, which is understandable--