Evidence of meeting #39 for Public Safety and National Security in the 39th Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was samples.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Director, National Services and Research, Royal Canadian Mounted Police
Technically, in this context, I can only think of the American model at this point. Other groups may provide certain assistance in the event of a mass disaster—for instance, the Bali bombing that occurred, and Australia developed a missing persons index for that case.
No, I think this is fairly new.
Conservative
Dave MacKenzie Conservative Oxford, ON
Okay. There are a couple of questions I would have relating to questions asked, and I want to comment.
Mr. Cullen mentioned young people who voluntarily go missing and don't want to be found, but that's also true of a number of adults who leave for a variety of reasons and don't want to be found. By and large, this would not be utilized in those cases anyway. We are talking about human remains being identified.
It would be difficult for the police agencies to find missing persons, get a DNA sample from them, and tell them that you want to compare it with somebody who's looking for them.
Director, Strategic Coordinator, Research and Evaluation Division, Department of Public Safety
I guess there are many scenarios, but in terms of which index you set up, you can, of course, take from found human remains with the coroner.
When you have a missing persons report with police and whatever protocols you attach to that, you may take samples, with consent, from the missing person's hairbrush or something like that, which could bring them into the scope of the system, and again, with consent, their relatives.
If you go back to that second circumstance, that reported missing person and what their consent is and what their perceptions are, their privacy assumptions, again that's one of the issues, as Mr. Yost has said, that becomes complicated.
But in another context, I guess that sort of speaks to not just the informed consent that would take place, but again, as Dr. Fourney knows, how do you report back matches to police and jurisdictions, and how could those be controlled, the results in a report?
Conservative
Dave MacKenzie Conservative Oxford, ON
I don't see a police agency wanting to obtain DNA from someone who has gone missing and doesn't want to be identified. They will do it for minors, and so on, but I don't see that being the issue for adults.
Director, Strategic Coordinator, Research and Evaluation Division, Department of Public Safety
Sometimes you may not know about that. Someone else may report them missing, but it's hard to determine that circumstance or that intent, if I understood your question properly.
Counsel, Criminal Law Policy Section, Department of Justice Canada
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.
We can explain what we can do with it. Maybe not just now but six months from now, or six years from now, something may get entered there and we may get a match, but it's just done as a last resort.
Conservative
Dave MacKenzie Conservative Oxford, ON
Okay.
I sense from my colleagues opposite that there is certainly a willingness to see this kind of registry go forward in some manner. I think we all recognize the importance of it with respect to families that have questions about family members who are missing and certainly those who are deceased.
My other question would be, how far away would you anticipate we could be from getting the jurisdictional issues resolved among the provinces?
Director, Strategic Coordinator, Research and Evaluation Division, Department of Public Safety
I think as Greg and I have indicated, from our particular perspectives, we are optimistic of it. It is the decision of deputy ministers and ministers above us. We can't guarantee how that would go, but we feel that our work is complete. The working group is in a position to make a final report and put those decisions forward.
Subsequent to that, we've talked about a possible timeframe for legislative and other implementation, and then there is the issue of costs. We do know that, generally speaking, the labs have said there is no additional DNA capacity to absorb something like this, even if we.... There could be an upper and lower range of how many samples would come in. Again, that's considering the workload that is with the systems now and the future workload anticipated from new legislation coming online and the capacity to deal with all of it.
They've said there is no flexible capacity to bring on an MPI at this point.
Conservative
Dave MacKenzie Conservative Oxford, ON
If we overcome that issue with respect to costs and the availability, would it also be, or could it be, an option at some point that federally we set up the system and allow the provinces to opt in if they so desire?
Director, Strategic Coordinator, Research and Evaluation Division, Department of Public Safety
I would say that is probably the model that is on the table now. That's what we meant when we talked about everybody wanting a flexible model whereby they could choose to control that. That's envisioned as the best way of making more provinces able to participate, of making it accessible, and as well, from their perspective, making them able to participate.
Conservative
Dave MacKenzie Conservative Oxford, ON
The timelines for that could be less than attempting to get the provinces to all agree to one model that from the beginning everybody is part of.
Director, Strategic Coordinator, Research and Evaluation Division, Department of Public Safety
I think they would all see themselves as part of it. It's a matter of who establishes the system and how it interacts between things that originate in the provinces and territories and what's done in a national data bank.
Counsel, Criminal Law Policy Section, Department of Justice Canada
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 provinces are willing to come onside, or if we don't have something that can do the processing. There's a lot of goodwill in the world, but there are also provinces that are screaming for more DNA crime scene work to be done and that kind of thing. Getting legislation through might actually be the least difficult part of it.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Garry Breitkreuz
That's very interesting.
We now come back to the opposition side.
Ms. Barnes.
Liberal
Sue Barnes Liberal London West, ON
Thank you very much.
I think you're probably correct. I would think in many parties, if not all parties of the House, there are MPs who wish we had some workable solution to this situation.
I want to go into the international community. When we have Canadians abroad who are killed in a natural disaster, how do we get the DNA matching done now? What's used?
Director, National Services and Research, Royal Canadian Mounted Police
Typically in a case of mass disaster or a series of environmental incidences, there's an international program established amongst countries. There's a process, and also the way forward is pretty well set out.
For instance, if people went missing within Canada, a report is put on our Canadian Police Information Centre that we think this person may be in Canada and can you help us. We store approximately over 1,000 of those individuals, I believe, on our database now.
Liberal
Sue Barnes Liberal London West, ON
I only have five minutes and I want to follow up on this.
On your working group in the report, did you cover off international agreements?
Director, Strategic Coordinator, Research and Evaluation Division, Department of Public Safety
Yes.
Counsel, Criminal Law Policy Section, Department of Justice Canada
There's a discussion at the international exchanges, yes.
Liberal
Sue Barnes Liberal London West, ON
It's still in the discussion and it wasn't excluded. That's what I wanted to know.
Again, Ms. Sallows, I don't want you to say which province or territories are onside, but is it fair to say there's a mix of people who are wanting this system and also those resisting it?
Director, Strategic Coordinator, Research and Evaluation Division, Department of Public Safety
I think it would be fair to say that everyone wants it, but it's a matter of how it happens.
Liberal
Sue Barnes Liberal London West, ON
Good. That's helpful.
A lot of the concern is not only surrounding the desire for families, but it has legal implications with the definition of what death is, for instance, in an insurance situation. Has that been addressed, Mr. Yost?
Counsel, Criminal Law Policy Section, Department of Justice Canada
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, but there are applications made on the basis now of warm hits, or whatever, where we have DNA found in bones that matches these people and on that basis we believe it's their son that's dead. It would be the same process in front of the provincial courts, except there would be a start because there had been a match done in this bank instead of fortuitously, if I can put it that way, by the police.