Government Operations committee  If I may, the Auditor General pointed out in an earlier response her assessment of some of the reasons why costs—particularly with IT systems, which have been a key cost driver.... First of all, the assumptions have clearly changed. For instance, we have eliminated the fees, by a

Government Operations committee  That's today, but I believe that in the early days there was an assumption that at a certain level of revenues there would be a considerable offset. If I might just add to the list of reasons given by the Auditor General, I think--and I can relate from previous committee meeting

Government Operations committee  I don't know if I have a precise answer to that question. I can tell you that in response to a question a couple of years ago, we did want to make sure that accesses to the Canadian Firearms Registry Online by police were in fact being done by police, and they are. A very small n

Government Operations committee  My understanding is that one of the primary uses--and I can't talk about percentages--occurs when a police officer goes to a particular dwelling house and looks to see if there are firearms registered to the owner or occupant of the dwelling house. It is related to firearms, to t

Government Operations committee  This is rough.

Government Operations committee  There are two things. First of all, on the whole issue of the costs, I think, and Auditor General Sheila Fraser has confirmed, that the costs we are reporting to Parliament are accurate. We at the Canada Firearms Centre, and now the RCMP, have systems in place now that accurately

Government Operations committee  No.

Government Operations committee  That's correct.

Government Operations committee  Clearly there are unregistered firearms in the country, as there are unlicensed drivers and people who are not paying tax, I'm sorry to say. We don't know the extent of that. There have been speculations as to what the quantum is. Honestly, I don't think anybody truly knows. Wh

Government Operations committee  Madam Chairman, in terms of the registry that we know today, with its assets and liabilities—and we've talked about some of the weaknesses and the measures that are currently in place—without doing fundamental change to that.... The Minister of Public Safety recently announced th

Government Operations committee  On the addresses, if I may speak to them, first of all, we do have our share of return mail comparable to what other organizations have. There is a requirement in the Firearms Act for people to advise us of an address change, but frankly, like every other federal statute, people

Government Operations committee  Madam Chair, first I want to say that all my comments concerned the control and management systems, not the program's effectiveness, since, as I previously said, that assessment is a matter of the judgment of parliamentarians and the government. The program definitely has some d

Government Operations committee  The announcement that took place a week and a half ago regarding the transfer of responsibility to the RCMP, first of all, was done under the provisions of the Public Service Rearrangement and Transfer of Duties Act. All it does in the short term is move the statutory responsibil

Government Operations committee  Madam Chair, if I just might be clear on that, the total amount spent in the fiscal year 2005-06, the year just completed, on registration of all firearms, the budgeted amount, was roughly $15 million. Of course the final expenditures have not yet been reported to Parliament, and

Government Operations committee  On the latter point, I think in terms of the evidence of the value of registration, this is something that ultimately has to be determined by government, and it's a question of what you get for the taxpayers' money. And I appreciate there are trade-offs and an opportunity cost as