I believe I read the letter from the justice minister of Saskatchewan. I find that it clearly expressed the concerns we have with regard to this bill. It is a very fine bill, and in fact I believe it would be very useful. However, it is not really necessary, since Parliament can act in any criminal matter. Nevertheless, the bill may well be useful, even in cases where no criminal act is involved. Further, I believe it is always preferable for such a type of data bank to exist, so that everyone can have access to the same data.
However, we have certain ideas on how to proceed. For years, I attended a conference which is held every summer. It is the Uniform Law Conference. Obviously, in a federal system such as ours, this type of thing is necessary. It seems to me that the issue at hand could best be dealt with at that type of conference. Indeed, representatives from the federal and provincial governments could agree on amending their respective legislation, in tandem with one another, in order to create a single data base.
It is very ambitious for a single member of Parliament to want to bring about such a fine project. But the subject raises jurisdictional issues. If the object of the bill was to create a DNA data bank to identify criminals or to help solve crimes, there would not be any problem, but that is not the case. I perfectly understand that the member wants the scope of this bill to be much wider. He wants to make it easier to find missing persons, whether they disappeared in a forest, following an accident or a drowning, for instance, through a data bank when the remains of these persons are found in the forest or elsewhere.
Even as a sovereignist, I recognize that this type of data bank would be most useful if it served as many purposes as possible. I would even go so far as to say that it should be a North American data bank. As it turns out, the Americans have had the same kind of jurisdictional problems. Today, each U.S. state has its own data bank, and they are interconnected.
Whatever the case may be, I believe this matter would be best addressed at the Uniform Law Conference. It seems to me that the easiest way to achieve this result would be to go that route, since the original sponsor of this motion is now a minister in cabinet. He could speak to the Minister of Justice, if he so wishes, and suggest that the matter be put on the agenda for next summer's conference.