A plan to widen access to an RCMP data base containing classification decisions for 180,000 models of firearms was revealed quietly during recent Senate committee hearings into government legislation that would tighten safeguards over gun licencing and the sale of rifles and shotguns in Canada. iPolitics/Matthew Usherwood

Canadians, and anyone else with access to the Internet, may soon be able to view RCMP records on thousands of models of restricted and prohibited guns that up until now were not publicly available.

A plan to widen access to an RCMP data base containing classification decisions for 180,000 models of firearms was revealed quietly during recent Senate committee hearings into government legislation that would tighten safeguards over gun licencing and the sale of rifles and shotguns in Canada.

A senior RCMP firearms director told the Senate National Security and Defence committee the RCMP’s Canadian Firearms Program is “taking steps” to make the Firearms Reference Table – currently accessible only to authorized gun dealers, police and other public agents – available to the public.

The reference table reports RCMP decisions on gun classifications – whether a rifle is restricted or prohibited and other information – and serves as a guide for several thousand gun dealers and importers in Canada. It is also used by police in 190 countries through Interpol, the RCMP says.

The data base is one of the existing gun-control measures at the centre of Conservative Party opposition to Bill C-71, Liberal legislation expected to soon pass its final stage in Parliament before a summer recess and the October federal election.

Conservative senators who had passed a committee amendment to the bill requiring annual reports on RCMP firearm classifications to Parliament, tried again in the Senate last week after committee changes to the bill were rejected in the Senate chamber.

The same Conservative amendment motion that passed in committee failed in the full Senate by a 50-37 vote.

Independent Senator André Pratte reminded the Conservatives that the head of an RCMP branch called the Firearms Business Improvement Directorate had informed the committee of plans to make the disputed Firearms Reference Table public.

The RCMP confirmed to iPolitics Wednesday that publication of the gun data will go ahead,.

But a response to emailed questions suggested the data available to the public might not have the same level of information now available to police and others, including authorized gun dealers who serve as “verifiers” for the program.

“The Canadian Firearms Program is planning on releasing a public-facing version of the Firearms Reference Table later this year,” Cpl. Caroline Duval, a spokesperson at RCMP headquarters media branch, said by email.

The data base has been at the centre of clashes between hard-line gun owners and the RCMP Firearms Centre for years.

An RCMP decision to re-classify certain models of semi-automatic rifles from Czechoslovakia and Switzerland led to a decision by the former Conservative government that inspired one of the central clauses in the government’s Bill C-71.

In June, 2015, as the October federal election neared, then prime minister Stephen Harper’s government amended the Criminal Code to give cabinet authority to downgrade RCMP classifications that gun owners had strongly opposed. Previous wording in that section of the code allowed cabinet only to increase restriction levels the RCMP might have assigned to a firearm.

As one of his last acts in government days before Harper called the 2015 election, then-Public Safety Minister Steven Blaney used the new wording to reverse an earlier RCMP prohibited classification for semi-automatic Ceska Zbrojovka 858 rifles originally manufactured as Soviet era assault rifles. Blaney directed the RCMP to re-classify the rifles to be non-restricted.

Those classifications and re-classifications were entered into the RCMP Firearms Reference Table, setting out the new restrictions each time.

Liberal Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale rescinded Blaney’s directive in 2016.

By 2017, the firearms community was angry with the RCMP again over another classification, which designated a new shipment of CZ 58 tactical rifles to be prohibited.

A Jan. 9, 2017, notice on the RCMP Firearms Reference Table said the weapon was classified as prohibited because it could be “converted to a fully automatic firearm with relative ease.”

Coincidentally, an anti-Muslim gunman who 20 days later shot and killed six people during prayers at a Quebec City mosque was carrying a variant of the CZ858 when he began shooting. The rifle jammed after only one shot and gunman Alexandre Bissonette, who later pleaded guilty to six counts of murder, took out a semi-automatic handgun to continue his rampage. Last March, Bissonnette launched an appeal of his sentence – life in prison with no chance of parole for 40 years.

A prominent leader of the battle gun owners waged against a Liberal government gun registry introduced in 1995, dismantled by the Harper government in 2012, cautiously welcomed the RCMP decision to open the Firearm Reference Table to the public.

“Of course the FRT should be public,” said Dennis Young, a former member of the RCMP who did the heavy-lifting anti-registry research for former Saskatchewan Reform and Conservative MP Garry Breitkreuz.

“My concern is about the lack of transparency in the classification, re-classification procedures,” said Young, who last year tried but failed to get an RCMP explanation of the kind of equipment, parts, time and gunsmith ability required to convert the CZ858 into fully automatic rifles.