Take his word for it

Peter Van Loan isn't releasing the annual report of the firearms commissioner until tomorrow -- a deadline he must adhere to under the rules of Parliament.
 
But, the public safety minister was more than happy today to tell Canadians one statistic that apparently isn't in the report he received some time ago. (UPDATE: You can watch the video of his scrum with reporters this afternoon here.)

That one statistic -- not in the report -- is this.

Of the 3.5 million times police accessed the Canadian Firearms Registry last year, Van Loan says only 2.4 per cent of those requests dealt with long guns.

A percentage he says has declined every year since the registry was created.

Now, I'm not doubting Van Loan. Or disputing that it's an important number.

But it's interesting that he was prepared to share only that information -- but not the full report -- in a scrum with reporters today.

It's interesting for two reasons:

• First: MPs voted yesterday in favour of a Conservative MPs bill that would abolish the long-gun registry. That bill, C-391, now goes to committee for further study.
• Second: the minister spoke a few hours after the government released a different update, this one from the Treasury Board, that included some other statistics that showed the number of times police used the firearms registry increased by 24 per cent last year.

That update also showed the government spent just $8.4 million on the firearms registry last year --  a third of what had originally been budgeted -- and employed 66 fewer people than expected.

It also blamed confusion over the future of the program for the fact that 100,000 gun owners failed to renew their gun licences -- a requirement that will remain for owners of rifles and shotguns even if Bill C-391 becomes law and they no longer have to register those firearms
    
Van Loan, of course, would know all that as the minister responsible for the registry.

But the only stat he wanted to talk about was the one he had to ask the Canadian Firearms Centre to produce -- the one in the report he has yet to release.

"Whoever put it together didn't put in there the information that only 2.4 per cent of those 3.5 million queries were actually related to information about a long gun registration number or about a serial number of a gun.''

"Why was the information I gave you not revealed by the firearms centre.''

He suggested reporters ask the centre why it was left out.

But then, Van Loan offered his own theory. He said the report was prepared by the firearms centre ''to justify its existence.''

Now, the firearms centre is required by law to produce an annual report.

The report is delivered through the RCMP, which is responsible for overseeing the firearms centre.

In fact, the Commissioner of Firearms, whose report Van Loan continues to hang on to, is actually the commissioner of the RCMP, William Elliott.

Van Loan, of course, knows all this, too. But he wasn't answering any other questions.

He kept repeating the one statistic, a statistic that just happens to bolster his claim yesterday that the long-gun registry is ''efficient at harassing law-abiding outdoor enthusiasts and farmers, and wasting money while being terribly inefficient at combatting crime.''