By Janice Tibbetts, Canwest News ServiceSeptember 25, 2009
Public Safety Minister Peter Van Loan has asked the federal privacy commissioner to investigate whether the RCMP abused the personal information of gun owners by handing their names over to a pollster to use for a survey.
"This use of long-gun owners' personal information was offensive and inappropriate," Van Loan said in a statement Thursday.
The Conservatives have pledged for years to abolish the contentious long-gun registry for rifles and shotguns, created by the former Liberal government as part of a 1995 gun-control package passed in the wake of the Montreal massacre, in which 14 women were shot dead.
Van Loan seized on the RCMP's move as evidence that the fears of gun owners -- that their personal information would be abused -- has come to fruition.
"Conservatives and law-abiding Canadians have consistently warned the Liberals that the long-gun registry would be misused in this manner," he said.
Van Loan added that the government still intends to kill the registry. A bill was reintroduced earlier this year after it died in the last Parliament. Police and victims' groups support the registry.
Van Loan's spokesperson, Chris McCluskey, confirmed the minister asked the federal privacy commissioner to investigate, after learning the RCMP had given information on gun owners to the polling firm EKOS, so it could conduct a survey. The poll was commissioned by the RCMP to measure public satisfaction with gun control.
Van Loan said the ministry was not consulted about conducting the poll -- and it would never have approved it.
A spokesperson for the office of Privacy Commissioner Jennifer Stoddart said it does not appear "on the surface" that the Mounties violated the Privacy Act.
"This would not necessarily be considered a disclosure of personal information under the act, because the research firm is considered an 'agent' of the RCMP," Anne-Marie Hayden wrote in an e-mail.
The contractor, in this case EKOS, would have the same obligations for protecting personal information as the department that commissioned the work, she said.
"All that said, however, we have not had an opportunity to examine this issue in depth."
Hayden said the office found out about the issue through an inquiry from an unspecified MP's office.
She said the privacy commissioner's office has contacted the RCMP for more information.
