Yes, and thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I'd like to introduce a colleague with me here. Mr. Jon Newman is the deputy director at the Centre of Forensic Sciences. He's our subject matter expert for today, and I'll ask him to help with some of the questions later.
In Canada, forensic science service is delivered through three relatively large laboratories, as you've heard, which offer similar services with respect to DNA testing. In Ontario, these are provided through the provincial governments, and in the other provinces of the country they are provided by the RCMP. In Ontario, the Centre of Forensic Sciences provides services to law enforcement, crown attorneys, coroners, pathologists, and other official investigators. We do accept cases from defence counsel, and in some circumstances we provide a service to them. We're one of the few government laboratories in North America that does this.
I'd like to emphasize that while we're interconnected, there is a clear distinction between the work we do and that of the national DNA data bank in Ottawa. The operational laboratories in Ontario and Quebec and the RCMP are users of the data bank and integral contributors to the crime scene index. We are essential parts of the partnership, for without us there would be nothing with which to compare the offender profiles. The CFS is a strong supporter of the national data bank, and I would like to offer some compelling examples from our work that demonstrate its value in solving crimes, in exonerating the innocent, and in preventing the people of Canada from becoming victims of serious crime.
Ontario police agencies collect evidence at a crime scene and submit the items to our laboratory. The types of evidence that are submitted to us range from swabs of bodily fluids to articles of furniture or even vehicles. The challenge to the forensic scientist is to find biological samples before we can actually do any DNA testing. This is a labour-intensive process, and this is in fact a rate-limiting step, and it creates the capacity issues you heard about with some frustration from Chief Constable Egan a few weeks ago. When appropriate samples are located, DNA profiles are developed, and these are loaded to the national DNA data bank.
In this brief introduction I'd like to address four questions about the DNA Identification Act and the national data bank. Does it work, could we do more, what are its limitations, and can it be improved?
The key element to the success of the data bank is the number of hits between a convicted offender profile and a crime scene profile that provide investigative leads. We must remember that when a crime scene profile is uploaded, it is automatically searched against all profiles in the data bank, and will perpetually be searched against all these profiles. The data bank can do what is not humanly possible by constantly surveying crime scene and other offender profiles from across the country and ensuring that a case is under investigation independent of what the police are investing with their traditional resources.
The data bank has allowed us to solve a wide range of crimes ranging from break and enters to homicides. Its value is immediately apparent with the recognition that it was possible to go back to evidence that had been retained from unsolved cases from prior decades and solve these cases. One of the earliest such projects undertaken by the centre was to examine unsolved sexual assault cases in Toronto, which brought closure and justice to many victims after periods of up to 20 years.
I'd like to share with you some examples of how the use of the data bank has assisted investigators. In 1991, 63-year-old Muriel Holland was sexually assaulted and killed when someone broke into her apartment. The investigation examined more than 1,000 suspects over a decade using both conventional and DNA techniques. The case was solved early after the introduction of the data bank when a hit occurred to a retroactive sample from a 43-year-old offender. The head of the Peel Regional Police homicide bureau at the time was quoted as saying:
It was quite possible it would never have been solved without the data bank. The data bank is a huge tool to help bring together science and the justice system. I can't overstate the fact that this is a great step forward for us.
The next example demonstrates how the data bank is used to eliminate suspects and focus an investigation. Ten-year-old Holly Jones disappeared from her Toronto neighbourhood. Her remains were discovered a few days later in Lake Ontario. During the ensuing investigation, the people of Toronto were anxious for the safety of other children, and the police had more than 1,600 telephone tips to investigate. A DNA profile was obtained from under the child's fingernails and compared against the convicted offender index; no hit was obtained. The often under-recognized value of the data bank is that at the push of a button, thousands of potential suspects can be eliminated. This can save countless police resources and ensure that innocent people are not unnecessarily detained.
Ultimately, a suspect was identified and charged. Clearly, his identification as a contributor to the DNA profile was the key that led to his decision to plead guilty. This is an example of the impact of the DNA on the court system and one of many cases in which the accused, when faced with DNA evidence, offers a guilty plea. This saves money by eliminating a trial and relieves others of the trauma of the criminal trial process.
In 2008, Bill C-13 and Bill C-18 made changes that allowed the use of the data bank to assist in the investigation of new offences. My next example demonstrates how these changes are impacting the operational laboratories and creating new pressures for us.
York Regional Police seized 49 kilograms of ecstasy and other drug paraphernalia valued at several million dollars. From 11 items that were sent into the lab for testing, four different DNA profiles were uploaded to the crime scene index. The investigation continued and resulted in a guilty plea, with a significant nine-and-a-half-year sentence. Furthermore, one of the DNA profiles hit on a crime scene sample from an unsolved 2005 attempted murder, so that investigation continues. The drug lab was directly linked to organized crime, with international connections.
As a result of the changes brought about by Bill C-13 and Bill C-18, the police can expect to use DNA evidence for additional offences. However, because of these capacity issues I've mentioned, we are unable to provide DNA testing routinely in drug cases, even though it is cost-effective to do so.
Our capacity to provide DNA testing services in support of investigations is limited only by available resources. The demands for DNA testing exceed the resources that are available to do the testing; therefore, we use the DNA Identification Act as a framework for case acceptance. We have estimated that Bill C-13 and Bill C-18 would add approximately 1,500 cases per year to our workload.
With the introduction of the national DNA data bank, a funding formula was developed, which my friend has already discussed with you. This provided a subsidy to Ontario and Quebec of approximately 20% of the average cost of DNA services in exchange for providing data to the data bank, which is operated as a national service. Ontario presently receives about $2.3 million, an amount that has not changed since 2005, despite the fact that demand and caseload continue to increase.
The importance of supporting DNA testing is reflected in the fact that both the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police and the International Association of Chiefs of Police have passed resolutions demanding increased resources be committed by government for DNA testing so that police can carry out their duties of protecting life and apprehending criminals.
While much has been written about the value of DNA, the impact on the operational laboratory is not properly appreciated. The workload in the forensic biology units has increased much more than that of other traditional areas of forensic science. For example, there are now cases that can be solved, such as no-suspect sexual assault cases, where DNA evidence becomes critical in identifying the culprit in previously unsolvable crimes.
Before the data bank, crime scenes such as B and Es had little hope of being solved. These are high-volume crimes that are very important to ordinary citizens and contribute significant numbers of data and increase the effectiveness of the data bank. You may be interested to know that when a police officer provides a sample from a B and E to our laboratory, one in three profiles generates a link to an offender or to another crime scene.
In considering the limitations of the data bank, it should be stressed that a DNA hit does not equal guilt. Investigators must evaluate the significance of a hit in the context of the case, recognizing that DNA may have been deposited innocently. An example of that would be a cigarette butt discarded at a crime scene prior to the crime being committed.
Forensic samples, by their nature, often present particular challenges, and the forensic scientist must understand and appropriately express the limitations of the testing. Because the sample may be degraded or putrefied, or it could be a mixture of body fluids from different people, DNA recovered from non-pristine samples may provide only a partial DNA profile. Nevertheless, that partial profile can be searched and can still provide high-quality investigative information. Partial profiles can also exclude suspects.
Operational laboratories in Canada use very strict quality systems that define their criteria for interpretation and reporting of all findings, including those partial DNA profiles.
You've heard that other jurisdictions are including arrestees in their data bank and about the issues surrounding this. You've also heard that Canada's system, which requires judicial intervention to include a convicted offender's profile, is falling short in the numbers of profiles that could be included. None of these are issues for us as scientists to advocate. However, we can state the obvious: the more samples included in the data bank, the more useful it will be. We can reinforce from our experience, though, that there is a need to include DNA from victims in the data bank, and we're also aware of instances where suspects who are regularly sampled and excluded in sexual assault investigations are willing to volunteer samples to be put in a data bank.
The current list of designated offences probably captures most cases in which there is a potential for DNA at a crime scene. At some point, expanding this will result in a point of diminishing returns.
We know there has been consideration of a missing persons index, and it would have some value to police and coroners' investigations if it were implemented on a national basis. An MPI can be wide-ranging, costly and probably of value only in a limited number of cases. However, there would be some value in considering a more limited approach, noting that, again, a technology is capable of extracting nuclear DNA from samples that can be obtained from found unidentified human remains.
In conclusion, the importance of DNA testing was recognized by the federal government and the provinces, and legislation was enacted that created the national DNA data bank. This partnership between good science and good legislation has served forensic science well and has allowed the Centre of Forensic Sciences to advance our mandate of science for justice in support of the administration of justice and public safety programs for the citizens of Ontario.
Thank you.
