It is Canada's only national law enforcement networking computer system ensuring officers all across the country can access the same information.
[3] CPIC is broken down into four data banks: Investigative, Identification, Intelligence and Ancillary[6] which contain information on: Local, municipal and provincial police services in Canada, as well as federal law enforcement agencies such as the Canada Border Services Agency and Military Police maintain their own local records in addition to CPIC records.
Local records are maintained of all contact with police for a variety of reasons, and may or may not contain information that would be entered into the CPIC system.
In Quebec the system used is called CRPQ (Centre de Reseignement des Policiers du Québec).
In 2011, the Toronto-based Psychiatric Patient Advocate Office announced it had received numerous complaints from people who were denied entry into the United States, because their names were on the American Department of Homeland Security watchlist and the names were provided by the Canadian Police Information Centre, which is available to American law enforcement authorities, according to WikiLeaks.