Public Safety Committee on April 17th, 2007

[The Chair, Conservative, Garry Breitkreuz]

Who wants to speak first?

Monsieur Ménard.

[Serge Ménard, Bloc, Marc-Aurèle-Fortin, QC]

I believe I read the letter from the justice minister of Saskatchewan. I find that it clearly expressed the concerns we have with regard to this bill. It is a very fine bill, and in fact I believe it would be very useful. However, it is not really necessary, since Parliament can act in any criminal matter. Nevertheless, the bill may well be useful, even in cases where no criminal act is involved. Further, I believe it is always preferable for such a type of data bank to exist, so that everyone can have access to the same data.

However, we have certain ideas on how to proceed. For years, I attended a conference which is held every summer. It is the Uniform Law Conference. Obviously, in a federal system such as ours, this type of thing is necessary. It seems to me that the issue at hand could best be dealt with at that type of conference. Indeed, representatives from the federal and provincial governments could agree on amending their respective legislation, in tandem with one another, in order to create a single data base.

It is very ambitious for a single member of Parliament to want to bring about such a fine project. But the subject raises jurisdictional issues. If the object of the bill was to create a DNA data bank to identify criminals or to help solve crimes, there would not be any problem, but that is not the case. I perfectly understand that the member wants the scope of this bill to be much wider. He wants to make it easier to find missing persons, whether they disappeared in a forest, following an accident or a drowning, for instance, through a data bank when the remains of these persons are found in the forest or elsewhere.

Even as a sovereignist, I recognize that this type of data bank would be most useful if it served as many purposes as possible. I would even go so far as to say that it should be a North American data bank. As it turns out, the Americans have had the same kind of jurisdictional problems. Today, each U.S. state has its own data bank, and they are interconnected.

Whatever the case may be, I believe this matter would be best addressed at the Uniform Law Conference. It seems to me that the easiest way to achieve this result would be to go that route, since the original sponsor of this motion is now a minister in cabinet. He could speak to the Minister of Justice, if he so wishes, and suggest that the matter be put on the agenda for next summer's conference.

[The Chair, Conservative, Garry Breitkreuz]

Thank you.

Mr. Comartin, do you have any comments?

[Joe Comartin, NDP, Windsor—Tecumseh, ON]

What are our timelines on this? By what time do we have to deal with this?

[The Chair, Conservative, Garry Breitkreuz]

We have approximately two weeks, until May 1.

Just to clarify this, the decision we now have to make is either not to proceed, which means deemed reported back to the House by May 1; or we can amend the bill, gut the bill, or do whatever we want in that respect, and report it back; or pass it on as is; or delay the first three options and hear from the officials.

[Joe Comartin, NDP, Windsor—Tecumseh, ON]

What I want is a message from this committee back to the government, really, that we just have to stop doing this. I remember meeting with Mr. Lunn in the last Parliament, and Mr. Easter at that point. Both had been very extensively involved in the issue. It's quite clear, and I got the message from both of them, in their dealings with the attorneys general across the country, that everybody wants to do this. It's a question of working out the mechanics between the two levels of government.

This has gone on now, Mr. Chairman, and I think we all know this, for over five years. It's in excess of that now that we know we need this kind of a system. Mr. Ménard's point is well taken. We saw the same problem in the United States. I don't think they've resolved it adequately across the whole of the country, and we certainly haven't even started on it.

So what I'd like coming out of this is I would like us to do something. I don't want to just let it go back without that message coming from this committee. I don't know if we have to do a report as part of sending the bill back, but we badly need to do this. I know there are problems with the provinces. We saw that in the letter from Saskatchewan. Certainly we've heard it from the Province of Quebec in terms of the concern over provincial jurisdiction here. Having said that, it seems to me that there's been enough discussion between the provincial and federal levels that in fact they know how to do it.

Let me throw it back at the parliamentary secretary. Why don't you go and fix it?

In all seriousness, Mr. MacKenzie, I'm not hearing that the government is at a stage yet of having a government bill come forward that would put in place what the federal government needs to do and then have that agreed upon by all the provinces. Maybe you could help us in that regard.

To answer your basic question, I simply want a message going back from this committee that we recognize the significance of this.

Mr. Wallace, on the point you made about some of the limits you put in in terms of how long the person has to be disappeared before we do it, it would be interesting to see what those are, because the scope of what we're doing may be substantially less than if we take every single missing person in the country from the day they go missing. So the scope of what we may have to do may be substantially less, and that may get both levels of government to move more quickly, since they won't be faced with as much financial burden.

[The Chair, Conservative, Garry Breitkreuz]

Let me interrupt you for a minute.

Mr. Wallace, for those 7,000 missing persons, that number you used, how long have they been missing? You suggested one year.

[Mike Wallace, Conservative, Burlington, ON]

It would depend. That's not a year.

I'll give you some examples that are a little more concrete. Just in Ontario alone, there are a couple of hundred remains in morgues as Jane and John Does. The oldest one is from 1973. Some of them are relatively recent, but they're waiting at least a year before they post them.

[The Chair, Conservative, Garry Breitkreuz]

Okay.

Ms. Barnes.

[Sue Barnes, Liberal, London West, ON]

I'm just going to propose that the first part of next Tuesday's meeting, say the first hour, be devoted to having the officials in here and then to dealing with the bill clause by clause. To my understanding, I'd like to hear the official line that they're not ready. We've already heard from Mr. MacKenzie that the government is not putting money into this right now, so it can't proceed in the House, in any event, without that royal recommendation, and we don't have it here at committee.

At that point, we could deal with the clause-by-clause afterwards. If in fact what happens after that is we empty the bill—I don't know, but that's one of the things that could happen—then I believe there's some rule, and I'd like the clerk to verify this for Tuesday where we could give reasons why we have emptied the bill, and then that would go back to the House.

So that does give the message, Mr. Comartin, that we could do this.

We could do this today, but I'm very uncomfortable, on behalf of my colleagues who supported this bill, in dealing with it on just the basis of the private member's bill, because you've made this larger than yourself. So I think we have to hear from the officials. I think we do have the time. At first I was concerned that we wouldn't have the time, but we do have that meeting open and I think we can deal with it on Tuesday.

[The Chair, Conservative, Garry Breitkreuz]

The meeting is not really open; we were going to deal with the issue of counterfeit goods and the draft report, but we can still do that.

[Sue Barnes, Liberal, London West, ON]

We could start that in the second half of the meeting, I would think.

[The Chair, Conservative, Garry Breitkreuz]

Well, what I heard you saying was to hear from the officials for one hour and then deal with the bill in the second hour.

[Sue Barnes, Liberal, London West, ON]

Clause-by-clause consideration wouldn't take that long. You saw how quickly we did it before.

[The Chair, Conservative, Garry Breitkreuz]

Okay. Did you have a comment on that, Mr. Wallace?

[Sue Barnes, Liberal, London West, ON]

Perhaps Mr. MacKenzie does.

[The Chair, Conservative, Garry Breitkreuz]

Okay; go ahead, Mr. MacKenzie.

[Dave MacKenzie, Conservative, Oxford, ON]

I do apologize to the committee that we're at this late date and have our backs to the wall with respect to time.

First, I think we came here today with a motion to extend the time. I understand that the opposition is opposed, and we understand that. That was our first issue.

Second, I think there's good merit in having the officials come before us to let us know exactly where they are in these discussions with their provincial counterparts and to know where that probably is. I think it's obvious there is support around the table for the concept of the bill, recognizing there are issues that need to be resolved—perhaps the first one is the federal-provincial jurisdictional issue—so I think it's appropriate.

We've heard from Mr. Wallace on that—on the bill itself—but I think Ms. Barnes is absolutely right; we should have the officials come before us and let us know where they are in that process, and I think we should do that sooner rather than later. If it means we have to put something else over a little bit, then we do it.

[The Chair, Conservative, Garry Breitkreuz]

The bells are ringing. They're half-hour bells, but we've got to bring this to a head, so let me make the proposal that on Tuesday, April 24—at least I think this is what I'm hearing from most of the people here—we have the officials for the first hour. We're going to have to determine who those officials are in a minute, but we'll have the officials here for the first hour, and then deal with the issue in the second hour—either in camera or in public, as you wish.

[Sue Barnes, Liberal, London West, ON]

I don't think it will take a second hour to deal with it. I thought my hour would be pretty inclusive for dealing with it, so you could still go with the regular business that was scheduled and start that on the Tuesday, unless you don't want to.

[The Chair, Conservative, Garry Breitkreuz]

Well, people sitting around this table could use a little extra time on preparing the report for the counterfeit goods. We're really pushing to have that all ready, so if we're not even sure whether we can deal—

[Sue Barnes, Liberal, London West, ON]

I consent to it being the full—

[The Chair, Conservative, Garry Breitkreuz]

You know, this committee always takes longer than we think to deal with an issue, so to—

[Sue Barnes, Liberal, London West, ON]

I'm glad the cards are on the table, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Conservative, Garry Breitkreuz]

Okay. I'm being very honest with you.