Public Accounts Committee on May 28th, 2007

[David Sweet, Conservative, Ancaster—Dundas—Flamborough—Westdale, ON]

You're saying to me that the committee was actually successful but then was disbanded for some reason?

[A/Commr Joe Buckle]

My understanding was that the special projects group was put together to get the project started, with a hand-off to the management team. Again, I wasn't privy to the decision-making process, but that is in fact what occurred.

[David Sweet, Conservative, Ancaster—Dundas—Flamborough—Westdale, ON]

Okay. Time is one thing, but I think quality is also a big issue. The most direct question I could ask you that Canadians would be concerned about is whether there is any chance that innocent people have been convicted due to the quality issues we've been dealing with here in this present audit as well as previous ones.

[Commr Beverley A. Busson]

Can I pass that on to our scientist to answer that question, please?

[Dr. John Bowen, Director, Biology Services, Royal Canadian Mounted Police]

I would say no. The major issue we had was the isolation of DNA from some samples in cases. As Mr. Buckle has indicated, in the 216 cases where there was some concern, 87% had other probative results. We do not always obtain DNA from every case; routinely, within 4% to 6% of our cases we do not isolate DNA. So whether we missed information that might have been there is very difficult to assess with the technologies we have in place.

[David Sweet, Conservative, Ancaster—Dundas—Flamborough—Westdale, ON]

So if you think that would not be the case--and it didn't sound extraordinarily conclusive to me--what would the quality issues affect, then?

[Dr. John Bowen]

The quality issues affected, in the first case, the ability of the quality management system to isolate and identify quality problems within the system. Obviously, within the biology program we also have our quality assurance program, which is headed up by the national technical leader. All issues were eventually identified, but they were not working together as one group to resolve the issues between the quality assurance program as well as the quality management system.

The issue with respect to the results was that we were not able to isolate DNA in some cases where we felt we should have, and that is something we resolved. There were two instances, one in which a manufacturer's kit caused some problems, and the second was a test that was used for the presence of blood, which had additional consequences we had not noted before. It caused a problem with the isolation of DNA from some of those samples.

[David Sweet, Conservative, Ancaster—Dundas—Flamborough—Westdale, ON]

I'm hoping to get back to that issue, but I also had another question regarding the communication with stakeholders. It's obvious the RCMP had one line of thinking that everybody was happy, they were filling out surveys saying good show and everything, and then the Auditor General went directly to the clients and found out that was not the case.

Is this new regional client consultation group going to impact that aspect? What are you doing right now to make sure you're hearing real quality feedback from clients so you can build your services to help them in law enforcement?

[D/Commr Peter Martin]

We're taking a very different approach. Just to add to what the commissioner said earlier on about if we have enough resources, the answer may be no, if we have extra service demands during that consultation process. But this program is the number one priority in national police services, and the resources will be made available if that happens.

The difference today is that the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police has a new committee called the national police services committee, and it's chaired by Chief Constable Derek Egan from the Saanich Police Department. It is not an RCMP member who is chairing that. It's somebody who is extremely outspoken. He will not be shy about taking us on and challenging us. So I think part of the answer is putting the right person in the right job and making sure we really do have a consultative process going on.

I think if I or Mr. Buckle were to go to some of the other areas, because we work in a paramilitary environment, there's sometimes a tendency for people not to want to come forward and speak up. I don't know if that was part of the problem or what, but some of the things took me by surprise. I was quite surprised to find that the Auditor General was getting a different reception from what we were getting. That's something we have to be concerned about, because it tells me that our communication is not effective.

[David Sweet, Conservative, Ancaster—Dundas—Flamborough—Westdale, ON]

Yes, that's just it. And these are outside clients, so I don't know how they would be impacted by the internal paramilitary culture. You're probably going to need a third party in between.

I need to ask you point-blank: how does a problem go on? Have you isolated the management issue? You have experts, you have professional people who are saying there's a problem for one year, and it's not dealt with until a full year transpires, particularly in something as critical as DNA extraction and identification. Have you isolated what the problem was to make sure you're not going to have another issue that carries on to that degree?

[D/Commr Peter Martin]

Are you talking about the quality control issue now?

[David Sweet, Conservative, Ancaster—Dundas—Flamborough—Westdale, ON]

Yes, I'm talking about the mechanized process you brought in, and then nothing was really completed for a year.

[D/Commr Peter Martin]

We'll let the scientists speak to that one.

[A/Commr Joe Buckle]

Thank you.

Again, that particular question has been of concern. We addressed it with the heads of prosecution a couple of weeks ago at their annual meeting and again last week with the FPT ADMs in Calgary.

The response is that quality assurance at the scientific level was in place from the very beginning. The issue was that the quality issue our scientists were challenged with and were resolving was not recorded as a quality issue and reported to management so we could resolve it on a system-wide basis, or in fact learn from it on a system-wide basis. That, I believe, was a result of our accreditation activities.

[David Sweet, Conservative, Ancaster—Dundas—Flamborough—Westdale, ON]

Well, I thought people were raising this all along. Was that not what I heard today and what I've seen in the reports?

[A/Commr Joe Buckle]

That's correct, and that's part of our quality assurance process: everybody has the ability to raise an issue on our quality level. It was raised with the technical leaders--the subject matter experts in our DNA area--and actions were taken to resolve it.

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Brian Fitzpatrick]

Thank you very much, Mr. Sweet.

I have maybe a few points of clarification here. Maybe this would be for Mr. Buckle. Am I correct in understanding that there isn't a university or academic institution in Canada that actually has a program that leads to some sort of designation to be a DNA forensic scientist person?

[A/Commr Joe Buckle]

There are programs within Canada. I don't know the exact universities or colleges, but you can come out with a master's degree in forensic science or a diploma in forensic science.

The issue is that the vast majority of our applicants come from other academic institutions with an honours B.Sc. or a master's degree in science. Once we get these folks, we then have to undertake a very specific training process in order for these people to understand the application of forensic science and the use of our particular methodologies and technologies.

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Brian Fitzpatrick]

Another thing that crossed my mind is that if you have gaps or problems in your quality management systems that you haven't ironed out, and you aren't really managing quality management the way it should be, when you get into court with some of the defence lawyers out there, that may lead to some very technical issues about the reliability of your evidence, and so on. Is this a concern?

[A/Commr Joe Buckle]

Absolutely, sir, and we've been very proactive with this issue. We've tried to get out ahead of the curve. We've met with the heads of prosecution and explained it in detail to those folks so they can prepare their prosecutors.

We've spoken to our client groups--the law enforcement community--and also, last week, to the FPT ADMs.

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Brian Fitzpatrick]

Thank you.

I have one short question, maybe for the Auditor General. Did you find any commonalities or similarities between the audit we're talking about today and the audit you conducted on the pension and insurance issues?

[Sheila Fraser]

Not really, Mr. Chair. They were really quite separate audits.

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Brian Fitzpatrick]

Okay. Thank you very much.

We'll turn the next round over to Mr. Bagnell.

[Larry Bagnell, Liberal, Yukon, YT]

Thank you.

And thank you all for coming. It's great to see you again.

Peter or Beverley, roughly how many employees are involved in the lab and in the offices related to this whole process?

[Dr. John Bowen]

Right now there are 129 individuals within the program.