RCMP response to Access to Information Act Request dated January 11, 2019 – Received January 18, 2019 – Important statistics about firearms license holders who are ‘involved in an event involving violence or other offences’ are not tracked.
- No Statistics on the average time it took to initiate an investigation of a FIP event;
- No Statistics on the average time it took to complete the investigation of a FIP event;
- No Statistics on the number of FIP events that resulted in firearms being removed from possession of the licensed gun owner; and
- No Statistics on the average time it took from reporting of the FIP event to the firearms being removed from the possession of the licensed gun owner.
EXCERPT – CONTINUOUS ELIGIBILITY SCREENING OF FIREARMS LICENCE HOLDERS: “The Canadian Firearms Information System (CFIS) contains current and historical firearms licence holder data. If a licence holder is involved in an event involving violence (or other offences specified in Section 5 of the Firearms Act), it is reported in CPIC via a Firearms Interest Police (FIP) event and sent to the relevant CFO for review. Licence holders are regularly screened to assess their continuous eligibility to remain licensed. There were 29,487 FIP events in 2016 that were matched to a person with a firearms licence. (Table 8).” http://www.rcmp-grc.gc.ca/en/2016-commissioner-firearms-report
NOTE: The number of FIP Events in 2017 were not reported in the RCMP Commissioner’s 2017 Report to Parliament http://www.rcmp-grc.gc.ca/en/2017-commissioner-firearms-report