Public Safety committee  The fundamental issue being raised is whether the DNA MPI is something that flows out of provincial responsibility. It's coroners in the provinces, their health systems, and things like this that identify the debt. The police are responsible for the administration of justice, so

Public Safety committee  We've done a final report, which will go to the main committee, and through it to the deputies, in which we discuss the jurisdictional issues. I think it would be fair to say that as long as the provinces can decide the extent to which they want to participate, then we are not tr

Public Safety committee  I assure you that those are the kinds of issues that we have dealt with. The question of the person who doesn't want to be identified is one that is an operational issue, if I can put it that way. We always think of this in terms of Judy Peterson's missing child, a young child,

Public Safety committee  To my knowledge, this issue has not been discussed there. I have been working on this file since February 2005. Perhaps there was some resolution previous to that date and that I am not aware of. I have never been asked to comment upon any resolution coming from that Conference.

Public Safety committee  Yes.

Public Safety committee  If a province wished to establish a provincial bank with human remains and the DNA of any of its residents having filed a report, then that would be its business entirely; that would not at all involve the federal government. The problem is due to the fact that we want to do some

Public Safety committee  Our jurisdiction is over the second part. As for the first part, in other words the human remains that might be found, the coroner who would be put in charge of the file and the reports of missing persons, that is much more the jurisdiction of the provinces.

Public Safety committee  I do not believe that there are any provinces that are resisting the idea. Some provinces are of the belief that if we want to establish this, they will have to change their legislation, set up their own procedures, etc. Our legislation should be flexible enough to allow province

Public Safety committee  I would say that that is an interesting suggestion, but the directive we received from the deputy ministers was to go ahead with our working group and to make our recommendations. If, when they receive our report, which should come in a few months — we are almost there —, they de

Public Safety committee  I won't go into the financial end of it, because I'm on the legal issues committee and we have no mandate on the finances. I rather suspect that will be an interesting issue when we get further down the road. Basically, Bill C-240 was in the House and Bill C-279 was in the House

Public Safety committee  I was just going to say that DNA is the very end of the missing person process. The police would normally not be asking for DNA the first time you walk through the door. They want all kinds of other information. The DNA MPI is basically if we run out of every lead. We don't know.

Public Safety committee  I hope we haven't overstated the jurisdictional issues. The legal issues were complex, and we've hacked away at those for about a year and a half. We have a report, as I said, and it's the view of the Department of Justice that this could be done, but it won't work unless the pro

Public Safety committee  Yes.

Public Safety committee  There's a discussion at the international exchanges, yes.

Public Safety committee  The legal paper does point out that it is the function of not only the coroner in a province to do a death certificate, and it's the coroner who would make the call as to how convincing the DNA evidence was in establishing the fact that this is the match and the person is dead, b