Mr. Chair, I thought that you were asking whether we had any comments to make and whether it was worth while to get going on the clause-by-clause study. Personally, I do not think so. This bill is not easy to read. I will always remind federal legislative drafters that law that is badly written is law that is badly understood, not to mention badly enforced. So much of the legislation that we see here is in that category. Just when you start to understand, you notice that there are unexplained gaps. The minister could certainly have filled those gaps, had he received our report before having the bill drafted.
The most striking example is the one that Mr. Holland gave about vehicles. Anyone who is familiar with the way in which dangerous sex offenders operate recognizes that, to be of any use, the registry must contain information like that. We really should not normally be debating political questions. We would all agree that there should be information about the modus operandi, or, to guard against oversights, for example, the fact that those keeping the registry are not informed when a sex offender dies. We are told that that kind of information overloads a registry, and that it becomes less useful when it is too full.
We would certainly have recommended that there would be computerized geographic mapping of dangerous sexual offenders, as is the case in Ontario. I would also like to have discussed whether it would be pertinent to include new offenders in the DNA registry. At the moment, we cannot even include information related to the last two bills we passed. Eliminating that backlog would take at least two years. That, in fact, is the time it would take to train the staff hired to do it.
There are a number of suggestions. We had at least five that all parties would normally have agreed on. They are not in this bill and the only explanation I can think of is that it was not a departmental decision, it was an oversight. A lot of consultation took place, and the consultation we did ourselves leads us to the conclusion that some deficiencies have not been dealt with.
I have no objection to starting the clause-by-clause study. But, time and time again, when I have introduced amendments, I am told that...
they're out of the scope of legislation.
The best example is the addition of geographic mapping, I am sure. That certainly would help to enhance police investigations. I do not think that we are ready to move to clause-by-clause study. I thought that was what you were asking, to start with. Perhaps we should discuss it right away.
So I am going to introduce a motion to put off clause-by-clause study until the fall. Among other things, that would allow us to talk to the minister, who, in turn, would be better informed about what was in our report.
