Firstly, there's no doubt that DNA has gone tremendous ways in getting exonerations. In the U.S., they're now past 200 wrongful convictions exonerated by DNA, apart from other cases they've had that didn't deal with DNA. Just with DNA, they've had over 200 exonerated.
In Canada, obviously, in Guy Paul Morin being exonerated, the main issue was DNA. But even in that case and other cases where it has been DNA, it's not because of the use of the data bank that they've been exonerated. It's the use of DNA and how it has played into the file, how they end up finding it and how they do their testing, and so forth. It's not with the help of the data bank.
As to how it's legislated presently, obviously there are very strict controls. Again, dealing with the proportionality, the privacy interests, and all of that, when it was passed we were going to keep very strict controls on the data bank. All that can be done is that crime scene samples can be run against convicted offenders' samples. So there are, technically, two silos in the data bank that they run against each other and match.
In terms of access, there is no legislation in play where it can be accessed by the crown or by the defence. Basically, if you're convicted of this offence, it is then sent to Ottawa. They upload it into the criminal offenders index, and then on whatever basis they do it, whether it's daily or every second day, they run it to see if it matches against the crime scene index. There's no access available to anyone, other than the sample being uploaded to the database.