Evidence of meeting #15 for Public Safety and National Security in the 40th Parliament, 2nd Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was policy.
A recording is available from Parliament.
9:30 a.m.
Liberal
Andrew Kania Liberal Brampton West, ON
Do you have any statistics, either nationally or in Ontario, in terms of how the systems have prevented any crimes?
9:30 a.m.
C/Supt Kate Lines
Perhaps I could respond to that and to your previous question as well. You have to remember that police have a number of tools in their tool box for conducting investigations. To ever say that there was solely one tool over another that would be responsible for solving a crime....
Let's say, for example.... This goes back to your point on preventing crime. In the example that I gave you in relation to the employers of offenders being advised, the difficulty with crime prevention efforts is always how to measure the prevention success. If employees no longer have access to their victims because their employment is terminated, or if for some other reason they don't have access, I think those have to be seen as valuable potential successes of the registry, but unfortunately, I can only say potential.
9:30 a.m.
Liberal
Andrew Kania Liberal Brampton West, ON
Do you have any statistics in terms of prevention of any crimes using either system?
9:30 a.m.
Supt Leo O'Brien
Perhaps I could answer for the national system. We would have none, because the act specifically says under section 16 that we're only allowed to use the act once a sex crime has been committed or if we're investigating a sexual crime. We're forbidden by the act to use it for crime prevention purposes.
9:30 a.m.
Liberal
Andrew Kania Liberal Brampton West, ON
You'll agree with me that this initial act, the federal act, came into force in 2004. There was supposed to be a two-year review, which didn't happen. There were deficiencies identified. Then, under the Conservative-led government, there were amendments made that were proclaimed in 2008. Is that correct?
9:30 a.m.
Supt Leo O'Brien
Yes.
9:30 a.m.
Liberal
Andrew Kania Liberal Brampton West, ON
Right. What you're all saying is that those amendments were not sufficient for what you need to do. Is that correct?
9:30 a.m.
Supt Leo O'Brien
Yes, that would be--
9:30 a.m.
Liberal
Andrew Kania Liberal Brampton West, ON
Okay, then, that's what I want to discuss. From my particular point of view, I want to know that it's working. If it's not working, I want to know how we should change it to make sure it does work. The way I see this, right now the focus has been more on solving crimes--even though that may or may not have occurred--as opposed to preventing crimes. Is that correct?
9:30 a.m.
Supt Leo O'Brien
That's correct.
9:30 a.m.
Liberal
Andrew Kania Liberal Brampton West, ON
So what you're truly saying today is that you would like additional amendments made to assist with preventing crimes. Is that accurate?
9:30 a.m.
Supt Leo O'Brien
Yes. That's correct, sir. We, the RCMP, have been working with a federal-provincial-territorial working group, which consists of representatives from all the provinces and territories of Canada, along with public safety and justice officials. A number of recommendations have been put forward that we believe will improve the registry and make it a more effective tool. I can't speak to where those recommendations are at the present time.
9:35 a.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Garry Breitkreuz
Your time is up.
Does anybody have a closing comment on this?
9:35 a.m.
Supt David Truax
If I may, on behalf of the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police, I'll give some highlights of the differences between the provincial legislation in Ontario and the federal legislation.
The purpose is to have an investigative tool to aid police in preventing and solving crimes of a sexual nature; it's for crime prevention and law enforcement purposes. In Ontario, it has automatic registration for any resident for a criteria sex offence. The notification of absence is for 15 days prior to ceasing being a resident, rather than in the federal case, where it is not later than 15 days if the offender is outside of Canada for 15 days.
In Ontario, it also includes vehicle information, whereby offenders are required to report vehicle information for the database, the registry. Then, of course, last but not least, one of the features Ontario has is the geo-mapping capability. The registry includes maps to identify offender residences in relation to offences and incidents, which is very helpful as an investigative tool. In the case of the national legislation, it doesn't have that capability.
9:35 a.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Garry Breitkreuz
Thank you very much.
Mr. O'Brien, you mentioned some recommendations that were made. Would we be able to have access to those? Could you possibly forward that to the committee?
9:35 a.m.
Supt Leo O'Brien
I think the public safety officials would probably be the appropriate people to speak to that.
9:35 a.m.
Director General, Corrections and Criminal Justice Directorate, Department of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness
Mr. Chair, I'm the co-chair of the working group, along with my attorney general colleague from Saskatchewan. We have been looking at a number of these recommendations. In terms of sharing them, I do have to be cognizant of some expectations of confidentiality from the provinces, but to the extent that it's possible, we can answer any questions.
9:35 a.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Garry Breitkreuz
Sure. Thank you.
We'll go to the Bloc Québécois now.
Ms. Lavallée.
9:35 a.m.
Bloc
Carole Lavallée Bloc Saint-Bruno—Saint-Hubert, QC
Thank you very much.
First, I would like to know whether the present act has achieved its objectives. The document I have here states that its purpose is to help police investigate crimes of a sexual nature by requiring the registration of certain information relating to sex offenders. As it is currently drafted, has the act achieved its objectives?
First, I would like to hear the RCMP representative, and then those of the other organizations.
9:35 a.m.
Insp Pierre Nezan
Whether or not the objectives have been met depends on what our measures of success are. Our mission is to first collect and house current and reliable data. To the extent that we can under the legislation, which is very restrictive as to what administrative data elements we can enter on the database, we have done so. We have about a 94% compliance rate nationally.
However, it imposes some very significant challenges for us administratively. We're not allowed to put in some of the fields we need to monitor compliance, basically, so our centres across the country have devised some secondary systems, including Rolodex, spreadsheets, or whatever. Compared to a database, they may be unsophisticated systems to try to make sure we have current reliable data.
So the short answer, if it's not too late to say that, is that we do have current reliable data, but it's very difficult for our centres to do that. As the registry goes, it's going to be increasingly more challenging.
The second aspect of the question is whether it has helped solve crime. I want to say that when you use the database as an investigative tool, you need to have that database populated, and it takes time before you see the results. We saw that with the violent crime linkage analysis system, ViCLAS, or SALVAC, which was created in the early nineties. It took time before there was a sufficient amount of data in there and it took time before we saw the results. You would see the same with the DNA data bank.
So from the RCMP's perspective, we think the results will come, but we need some important modifications, and it just takes more time. We have 19,000 offenders on this database. However, about 10,000 come from Ontario and the Ontario sex offender registry.
Quite frankly, most law enforcement in Ontario doesn't use the NSOR because they have a much better system with the OSOR. So now you have 9,000 offenders in nine other provinces and three territories. It's not very many, really, so it's not surprising to me that we haven't seen those results.
9:40 a.m.
Bloc
Carole Lavallée Bloc Saint-Bruno—Saint-Hubert, QC
If you had only one change to make to this act, what would it be?
9:40 a.m.
Insp Pierre Nezan
We'd like to see a number of changes. The most important is the option of using the data base to prevent crime.