Sorry, Mr. Chair, I was just responding to an e-mail. One of the three hunger strikers has been released from custody and I just wanted to respond to that.
Mr. Minister, thank you for being here, as well as your assistants. I just want to get on the record my frustration at having to deal with DNA in the system this way. I think it was a gross error on the part of the former government to bring Bill C-13 forward, rather than bringing forward the review, because we ended up doing almost half the review, and practically every witness who came in front of us on Bill C-13 said we had to look at it more closely. Whether they were the chiefs of police, the police associations, the bar associations, the Privacy Commissioner--who has substantive concerns rather than process concerns--the witnesses at that time, without exception, were generally supportive of the system while expressing concerns about it, in terms of it not being broad enough, and in some cases in regard to some aspects of it being overreaching.
I wasn't quite clear, frankly, about your concluding comments and whether you were suggesting we send the review to the public safety committee. That doesn't help me a lot, because I'm on that committee too.
Have you considered the other possibility of having the justice committee set up a separate subcommittee just to do this? I'm not sure about the corporate history on this and whether it makes sense to send it to another committee. Perhaps they could look back on the evidence that was taken and the witnesses who testified.
But what I want to say to you clearly, and maybe to the committee as a whole, is that we have to get that review under way. And I have to say that if you stopped sending us so many crime bills, we might be able to do it. That was partisan on my part, Mr. Minister, so I don't expect you to respond to that.
Do you have a concrete proposal as to how we can get the full review done as quickly as possible—and thoroughly?