Guns turned over to police in Waterloo, Ont., during their November 2017 gun-amnesty program. (Waterloo Regional Police Service / Twitter photo)

A prominent lobby group for firearm businesses says the government intends to use regulations to do what it promised would not happen under new gun legislation — enter personal information of long-gun buyers into a federal registry.

Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale dismissed the notion when he learned of it Wednesday.

“They are just turning themselves into a pretzel of paranoia,” Goodale said as a Liberal caucus meeting wrapped up. “It is absolutely false that the government has any intention of creating any way, shape or form of a long gun registry.”

Two top officials with the Canadian Sporting Arms and Ammunition Association (CSAAA) told a Senate committee studying the legislation, Bill C-71, that the group is “certain” Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale’s office intends to store information from a new system for validating firearm licences in an existing registry containing data on all restricted firearms in Canada.

The names and addresses of every person who acquires a firearm must be included in order to enter data into that registry maintained by the RCMP, the association witnesses said.

Senator André Pratte, a member of the Independent Senators Group who was questioning the two witnesses when they made the statements, was visibly surprised by the testimony.

Pratte had just explained that Bill C-71, a controversial attempt to reinstate mandatory records and controls over the sale of non-restricted long guns that were eliminated by the former Conservative government, does not require the storage of personal information or details about the gun being acquired.

“It’s our understanding that the intention of the minister’s office is to use the existing restricted (handgun and semi-automatic rifle registry) platform, online platform, to facilitate the verification numbers,” Alison de Groot, general director of the sporting arms and ammunition group, told the committee Monday.

“That platform is fixed, and it requires a name and address,” said de Groot.

The president of the association, the owner of a long-established hunting and sport shooting business in Ontario, explained in further detail after Pratte questioned the two witnesses about their concerns.

“When we go into the Government of Canada (restricted gun registry) web site and put this information in, we must record the information of the buyers in order to plug it into the Government of Canada web sites,” said CSAAA president Wes Winkel.

“We are quite certain that once this (Bill C-71) system gets put into the regulatory framework that, again, it will require businesses to record that information in order to plug it into the web site,” said Winkel.

“There has to be some way for us to get that authorization number and there has got to be some kind of information put in there,” he said. “Obviously, we need to record licence number and personal information to get to that authorization number.”

Goodale told iPolitics for cabinet regulations that would require the entry of data into the restricted registry the measure would first have to be included in legislation.

“There is absolutely nothing in the legislation that permits or authorizes what they were alleging,” he told iPolitics. “You cannot create the authority to collect or store information by means of a regulation. It’s got to be in legislation first.”

“There is no reference to any particular firearm (in the proposed licence validation process), so there’s no registry if you’re not connecting the individual to a particular firearm,” said Goodale.

Pratte, who appeared sympathetic to the group’s concern, said he was supportive of a desire by the group that Goodale seek their advice on drafting regulations should the bill become law.

“That’s interesting, so we’ll have to study this part,” Pratte said. “The act requires no name and no address, but there may be regulations and I hope you are consulted and involved in drafting the legislation, but the act does not require personal information.”

A spokesman for Goodale said his office could not immediately react to CSAAA’s testimony.

Two Conservative MPs who have served as the official opposition party’s critics and speakers on the legislation were also unavailable to comment.

Provisions of the bill require firearm retailers to maintain records of sales of non-restricted rifles and shotguns, including the buyer’s gun licence number, a licence validation number issued through the RCMP-managed Canadian Firearms Centre, the make, model and type of firearm and a serial number if the gun has one.

Long gun owners and lobby groups have argued since the bill was introduced on March 20, 2018, that the mandatory maintenance of retail sales records effectively creates a long gun registry, maintained by the vendors. The government has denied the system for licence validation, obtained by retailers without disclosure of any details about the rifle or shotgun to the Firearms Centre, is a form of registry.

The House of Commons amended the bill, through a motion moved by the Conservatives, to add a clause stating that nothing in Bill C-71 could be interpreted as a registry.

*This story has been updated to reflect comment from Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale

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