I was in the process of introducing it until we got clarifications and points of order.
Whatever can be said about it, it's pretty clear that we're trying to ensure that we give effect to what's clearly the intention here, which was confirmed by Colonel Gibson when he first appeared before this committee to talk about this. He certainly confirmed that the intention was to be retroactive. Whatever might happen now and in the future in terms of what gets on CPIC, Colonel Gibson referred earlier to some provisions regarding what does or doesn't go on as a criminal record.
My understanding is that these changes weren't made until 2002, so we have a whole area going back long before 2002 that could end up with people on there. We have a situation where hybrid offences, for example, are always there, whether or not fingerprints could be taken.
I think also there are two aspects to what Colonel Gibson said. There may well be three or four databases that are kept by the RCMP, and we agree with that, but the reference here is to the automated retrieval system, the one that's available to the police services across the country on an automated retrieval basis through their computers.
That's what section 6.1 of the Criminal Records Act deals with. It talks about purging CPIC and refers to the automated criminal conviction records retrieval system. That's the one that we were talking about, because they still keep records, obviously, of absolute discharges. They keep records of conditional discharges. They keep records of investigations, as you pointed out. But we're talking here about references to the conviction under the automated system, the one that's available to people across the country.
I want to quote from the report of the retired justice, the Honourable Patrick LeSage. He says:
It strikes me as unreasonable that a CF member charged, for example, with “absence without leave” (“AWOL”) for being late for work and who has a summary trial,—
—this is before we made these changes—
—could have this charge and perhaps even a subsequent conviction entered on the CPIC database. Such information is often shared with the Canadian Border Services Agency, which I have been informed has resulted in some members being denied entry into the United States because of the charge and/or conviction.
He talks about the related concern of having a criminal record:
A related concern is information regarding charges and convictions entered into CPIC.
He describes CPIC from their website as:
a computerized system that provides tactical information about crimes and criminals…it is the only national information-sharing system that links criminal justice and law enforcement partners across Canada and internationally.
CPIC is responsible for the storage, retrieval and communication of shared operational police information to all accredited criminal justice and other agencies involved with the detection, investigation and prevention of crime.
So the removal of these records from that automated access is important if we're going to give effect to what we're saying we're doing here: You don't have a criminal conviction, and if you are convicted of one of these offences in the future. you're not going to get one, and if you were convicted in the past, you're not going to have one.
We have done our due diligence in terms of finding out how we deal with this. We've consulted with the analyst. We received an opinion as to how it might be done. We prepared an amendment to conform to that and we've presented it for the consideration of this committee. If the committee has a better way of ensuring that people are not going to be stopped at the border and prevented from going to the United States because of something lingering on a police computer, then I would submit that it be produced, or if there is an amendment to the amendment, then it might be dealt with. If we need time to come up with one, then we can stand this down, and that will give us some time to amend it so that it effectively deals with what we're trying to effect here.
All law tries to remedy some particular mischief, and the mischief we see here is that the records that people have obtained in the past are available to any peace officer in this country, available to any border guard, available to any municipal police officer or RCMP officer who stops someone in a car. If we're going to get the full effect of this, then we have to do more than just leave it as it is.
That's the intention here; that's the attempt here. We submit it's necessary to pass this to give effect to this, otherwise we're not going to achieve what we're setting out to achieve.