Newly released court documents allege the Conservative government pressured RCMP bureaucrats to purge long-gun registry data, even while assuring the Information Commissioner they would follow a law requiring the preservation of records.
An affidavit filed by Information Commissioner Suzanne Legault includes emails she wrote to then-Public Safety Minister Vic Toews on April 13, 2012, after the Ending the Long-gun Registry Act passed in the Senate.
Legault wrote that, although the new law gave the Commissioner of Firearms the responsibility of ensuring all of the Canadian Firearms Registry records be destroyed as soon as possible, the Access to Information Act required such records be saved once requested.
“I thought it prudent to write to you at this time,” Legault said in the April 13 letter, “to alert you to the fact that any records responsive to requests made under the Act prior to the coming to force of this provision are subject to the right of access to any record under the control of a government institution recognized by subsection 4(1) of the Act.”
“This is to say that any records under the control of the RCMP … cannot be destroyed until a response has been provided under the Act and any related investigation and court proceedings are complete,” she added, while pointing out that a request had been made the previous December.
Toews wrote back on May 2: “With respect to your question on destruction of records in the CFIS, please be assured that the RCMP will abide by the right of access described in section 4 of the Act and its obligations in that regard.”
Around that time, the destruction process appears to have sped up.
A summary of an RCMP plan to implement the destruction of long-run registry data, dated March 19, 2012, suggested it would take five months to delete.
On May 3, RCMP Manager of the Canadian Firearms Program Jacques Laporte wrote to the Director of Firearms Business Improvement at the CFP Robert Mackinnon and inquired “when did the plan become firm as to the work getting completed over 3 weekends … I really have an issue with a decision being made on a solution when we have not even had a chance to assess how it can be done.”
Laporte added in that May 3 email, "between you and me, someone will owe us lots of drinks at PMO if they want this to happen.”
On May 29, Assistant Commissioner to the Director General of the Canadian Firearms Program Pierre Perron also wrote to MacKinnon and said, “Just for the record, Minister’s Office is putting a lot of pressure on me to destroy the records sooner.”
After a lengthy investigation, Legault ended up recommending earlier this year that charges be laid against members of the RCMP for the data destruction.
The Ontario Provincial Police is now investigating.
However, the Conservatives have rewritten the Access to Information law, backdating the changes to the day legislation proposing to end the gun registry was first tabled in Parliament in 2011, and burying the unannounced changes in a 167-page budget bill that Parliament passed Monday night.
The bill also nullifies any "request, complaint, investigation, application, judicial review, appeal or other proceeding under the Access to Information Act or the Privacy Act" -- effectively sending the entire dispute into what Legault calls a history-erasing "black hole."
The latest court filing led to a confrontation Monday in the House of Commons.
Liberal deputy leader Ralph Goodale said the affidavit shows that the government allegedly pressured the RCMP to “break the law and cover it up."
"Who in the minister's office counselled that illegal behaviour?" Goodale said.
Public Safety Minister Steven Blaney said he “rejects any claim that the RCMP did anything on by following the express will of Parliament to destroy the data from the long-gun registry.”
With a report from CTV’s Deputy Ottawa Bureau Chief Laurie Graham and files from The Canadian Press
