A section of the new Liberal gun bill requiring gun shops to keep detailed records of all long gun sales could “engage” Charter of Rights protection against unreasonable search and seizure, the federal justice department has suggested.

The caution is contained in a legal analysis of the legislation, Bill C-71, Justice Minister Jody Wilson-Raybould tabled in the Commons two days after Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale tabled the bill.

The two-page Charter Statement Raybould tabled Thursday includes a caution suggesting a possible court challenge over compulsory sales records of personal information, based on Charter of Rights Section 8 protecting people against “unreasonable searches and seizures of their person, property, and private information.”

But the Justice statement also identifies “considerations” that could fall under an over-arching Charter provision allowing reasonable limits to rights if the limits are set down in law and can be demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society.

The section in Bill C-71 that inspired the Charter caution would compel firearm vendors to keep a record of the number of the buyer’s firearms licence, which includes the buyer’s name, along with the firearm’s make, model, and type, as well as the gun’s serial number.

It is one of the most contested sections of the legislation in the firearms community and its advocacy groups and the Conservative party — which has described storage of firearm sales records as a “back-door” registry.

“A search or seizure will be reasonable if it is authorized by a law, the law itself is reasonable in the sense of striking an appropriate balance between privacy interests and the state interest being pursued, and the search is carried out in a reasonable manner,” says the Charter Statement Wilson-Raybould tabled.

“New subsection 58.1(1) (of the gun bill) requires the collection and retention of certain personal information in order to reserve access for possible future criminal investigations, and therefore has the potential to engage section 8 of the Charter,” the statement says in the next sentence.

The statement then lists several provisions in the bill as “considerations” that support consistency of the new record storage law with the Charter protections against unreasonable search and seizure.

The mitigating considerations include an argument that the information the vendor must keep relates to activities within a “highly regulated sphere of commercial activity where any privacy interests are diminished” and would also be basic information about the licence, the firearm and a special number issued by the RCMP firearms registrar approving the sale.

The Charter review also noted “government, including law enforcement” could only access the information “in conformity with existing lawful authorities and applicable privacy protects.”

“The scheme furthers the important state objective of investigating firearm-related crime by enabling the tracing of firearms involved in crimes,” says the opinion.

The head of the Canadian Coalition for Firearm Rights, who told reporters earlier this week the bill sparked a rush of several thousand emails and membership requests, questioned why such a legal opinion had not been offered by government when the defunct long-gun registry was in force.

“Well, I think that’s interesting, considering we had a long gun registry that went further than that, on all citizens not just businesses,” said coalition president Rod Giltaca.