70 % of licences and renewals are approved at the Central Processing Center in Miramichi. If you have ANY criminal history (regardless of convictions) the process stops. If you have a FIP (firearms interest police these last 5 years) the process stops. If you answer "yes" to any personal history question the process stops. Its a federal program but delivered at the provincial level. At this point, your application gets sent back to the provincial CFO office for investigation. It gets assigned to a Firearms Officer for investigation. Depending on the province and workload you never know how long the process will take. I know that Ontario is unique in that the Canadian Firearms Program in the it is delivered by a police agency, the OPP. In Ontario you have "Firearms Officers" , civilians and "Area Firearms Officers", who are sworn police officers functioning in a regulatory role. People always seem to think that Dudley Doright is the CFO but that is not the case. I am unaware of any sworn RCMP member functioning as a "Firearms Officer". My personal experience is that Ontario seems to be functioning more effectively that the other provinces. As each province has its own Chief Firearms Office the rules seem to change a bit from province to province which probably add to the time it takes for approval.