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In 2015, Tom Stamatakis, national president of the Canadian Police Association, told Global News that public safety could be at risk. He used the example of a parolee who has a run-in with the law.

“If that person has contact with the police and the police check the database to find out the person’s status but the information isn’t there, you could potentially release someone who should be arrested for breaching parole conditions.”

That same year, an RCMP spokesman told the CBC that the backlog of files would be cleared by 2018.

We can have an up-to-date picture of each individual coming through the court system

But internal agency records obtained earlier this year by Alberta blogger Dennis Young through an access-to-information request revealed that as of August 2016, there were still 570,639 criminal files that hadn’t been uploaded to the database, which contains more than 4.4 million individual files.

The records showed that from 2013 through 2015, there were 388,122 new criminal convictions, but only 58 per cent of files related to those convictions were entered into the CPIC database — this despite a boost in funding during that period, from $1.7 million to $2.8 million, to address the backlog.

This week, the National Post asked the RCMP for an update and was told by spokesman Sgt. Harold Pfleiderer that the backlog peaked in the fall of 2016 and that the number of criminal files waiting to be entered into the CPIC database now stands at 442,325.

Historically, the system relied on paper-based files, Pfleiderer said. But the force has been working with other police agencies to develop a fully automated and digitized system that will allow criminal record information to be uploaded in “near real-time.” This system should be completed by the end of the year, he said.