Public Safety Committee on April 21st, 2009

[Insp Pierre Nezan]

Part of our mission is to monitor compliance and ensure that we have up-to-date data in there. I'll give you an example of the challenges.

We have some people who are convicted of designated offences and receive a custodial sentence, perhaps a federal sentence, and they're in the custody of the Correctional Service of Canada. Once they terminate their sentence, they have 15 days to report to the centres located across the country. There is a legal inability for Correctional Service of Canada to communicate to the national sex offender registry to notify us when an offender is being released.

As you know, offender release dates fluctuate. It could be day parole, warrant expiry, work release programs; there may be an intermittent sentence. There can be a number of different reasons why an offender, even though he's sentenced to five years, will come out before five years. Because CSC cannot notify the national sex offender registry of when John Doe is coming out of jail, we don't know when to start that 15-day clock ticking to monitor compliance.

Our centres have had to devise some unsophisticated secondary systems. In this electronic world that we live in, we can't incorporate this at present into the database and be notified automatically from Correctional Service that John Doe is being released in 10 days so we can prepare for the compliance. We have to devise these other systems and try to monitor compliance. It's not very efficient. It's going to become unmanageable eventually, just because of the sheer fact that more offenders are being ordered to the registry every day. At some point, the integrity of the data is going to take a serious downfall.

That's one example.

We also can't record other administrative things. For instance, we may have offenders who are deceased, and because of the specificity of the act, we can't add a little box that says “deceased”. If an investigator calls us and is looking for a potential list of suspects or persons of interest, we may inadvertently provide him with a list that has a deceased person on it, and they'll be essentially chasing a ghost or chasing their tails. That's not what we're after, and certainly that was not the intent of the legislation.

I don't want to sound overly critical. It was better than the registry we had before nationally--which was none. It was a positive step forward. Now that we've operationalized this, we're seeing a number of these restrictions on the administrative side that we need to have fixed.

Those are just some examples. I have an a range of them that I could bring up.

[Phil McColeman, Conservative, Brant, ON]

There is another concern. Obviously, I'm not saying that I'm way out there and that we don't need to respect the rights and the laws as they exist for individuals to have protection. But having said that, I note that there have been some comments that we need to have statistical proof of the negative, that this is effective. But this is so common sense, in my mind, that we would provide the enhancements to be able to get to a situation whereby we do truly protect as many individuals as we can on the street.

Further to that, then, I would ask the question—and any of you are welcome to answer it—are there any international jurisdictions that stick out in your minds as having a system or elements of the system that you would like to see?

[Insp Pierre Nezan]

If I could speak to that, I know a little bit about the U.S. registries. I've met a few colleagues down there. There are certain things that are nice, but they have other things that I think we should stay away from. For instance, from the RCMP's perspective, the public access is a mistake, but they do employ that down there.

I'll give you an example that is indicative of being “hard to measure”. No more than two months ago, I was at a conference in one of the northern states--Minnesota or Connecticut, I'm not sure which one. One of our colleagues told a story about how a man in a red vehicle was in a neighbourhood trying to lure kids into his vehicle with candy. There could have been a number of reasons why he was doing that, but we suspect they were nefarious reasons. In any event, one of the mothers had spotted this. She got a description of the vehicle, which was only the colour, got a partial plate, one or two digits, and phoned it into the registry. They identified a sex offender registered to that vehicle living in the neighbourhood and they intervened. Did they prevent a crime there? I guess we can debate it, but it comes back to your comments about common sense.

Another real-life example here in Canada is that there was a man in an elementary schoolyard taking pictures of children. The staff who worked there didn't recognize him as a parent, staff, reporter, or otherwise, so they were alarmed by his presence. When they tried to approach him and confront him, he fled. They called the police, and the police called the national sex offender registry, but we couldn't access the database because a sexual crime had not occurred.

Those are the types of proactive uses that we would like to see expanded upon. I don't have the research to back up whether that would prevent the crime, but....

[The Chair, Conservative, Garry Breitkreuz]

Thank you.

[Mary Campbell]

I would just say that we do monitor the U.S. research very, very closely. They do extremely good research on their criminal justice programs. It's something we pay very close attention to in order to learn from it.

[The Chair, Conservative, Garry Breitkreuz]

Okay.

We'll move to the Bloc Québécois, with Ms. Lavallée.

[Carole Lavallée, Bloc, Saint-Bruno—Saint-Hubert, QC]

Ms. Nezan, you say that the registry, as it stands, isn't effective and does not make it possible to do prevention. From what I've heard, in a number of cases, it doesn't clarify crimes.

If there wasn't one, would that amount to the same thing? Would you be just as well off?

[Insp Pierre Nezan]

I can't say we've helped solve a crime; we don't see that impact. As I indicated earlier, I think there's value in this registry, and it's to come as the database is populated and the use is expanded. I think we will see the positive results.

[Supt Leo O'Brien]

The other point, too, that we have to remember, as Chief Superintendent Lines referred to earlier, is that in a lot of cases you may be able to eliminate suspects. In that case, the police can divert their energy and resources to narrow their investigation. It's difficult to measure, of course, but it does happen.

[Mary Campbell]

One of the reasons that some of the American registries have not been very effective is, of course, this issue of reliability of the data. I think that's why you hear a big emphasis on ensuring that we have comprehensive and reliable data.

So many of the states report that they have lost tens of thousands of sex offenders simply because they have not been able to follow up on addresses or other personal information. They simply don't have current information in the database that would be reliable enough to use. It is important to really focus on ensuring that the registry is up to date, current, and comprehensive. This issue of driver's licences, I think it is fair to say, was simply not foreseen at the time of creation. It has become an issue and seems to make good sense as an item that should be in a database.

[Carole Lavallée, Bloc, Saint-Bruno—Saint-Hubert, QC]

Mr. Truax raised his hand.

[Supt David Truax]

Having been a major case manager involved in homicide investigations, I would say that one of the features of having a registry, obviously, especially in Ontario's case, is that in searching for a missing child by querying the registry and utilizing its geo-mapping features, you can identify the first 12 to 15 doors to where you want to dispatch police officers to make a verification, to see whether or not that individual is home, where the individual has been, etc. As alluded to earlier, that eliminates persons of interest in order to advance an investigation with the best possible speed and efficiency.

[Carole Lavallée, Bloc, Saint-Bruno—Saint-Hubert, QC]

Mr. O'Brien.

[Supt Leo O'Brien]

I was going to add that in the case of the national sex offender registry we're missing vehicle data at the present time because we're not allowed to record that. Oftentimes in the case of a sexual assault, that's basically all you may have to go on.

I recall a case out west about two years ago in which a seven-year-old and a nine-year-old were abducted and sexually abused. When they were interviewed, they gave a description of the vehicle. We couldn't help them with the sex offender registry, but we were able to help through the violent crime linkage analysis system, because that offender had offended two years previously and was in that database. We were able to identify a suspect and it turned out that he was the person.

Again, all we had to go on, mainly, was a description of the vehicle. Of course, we don't have that information in the national sex offender registry database right now.

[C/Supt Kate Lines]

Perhaps I could go back to what was mentioned earlier by Mr. MacKenzie and the invitation that we would certainly and wholeheartedly accept. By actually seeing the demonstration, obviously with hypothetical locations and hypothetical events, I think you will quickly see, from a very practical standpoint, how a database that has all of the things we're asking to have included in the national registry is so instrumental in the success of an investigation or, more importantly, in the prevention of an incident.

[Carole Lavallée, Bloc, Saint-Bruno—Saint-Hubert, QC]

Mr. Hoover, do you have an opinion? If it's considered too ineffective, do you think we could perhaps do without the registry?

[Douglas Hoover]

From a Justice perspective, in criminal justice our objective is to ensure that the criminal law is effective, efficient, and fair. The courts have upheld the registry so far as being charter compliant and constitutional, so we're pleased with that. We believe that registries have a role to play in assisting in investigations, so in that sense I think we have no policy objections to registries overall.

I think there are concerns if a registry is perhaps too broad. I would point, for example, to a recent U.K. High Court case that eliminated the ability of the United Kingdom registry to register for life because they felt it contravened the European Union's bill of rights. These are the types of issues that we may still confront.

Mr. Davies referred to the Dyck case, in Ontario, where the issue was omnipresent whether a registry that was automatic was constitutional. That matter has still not been settled fully by the Supreme Court of Canada, so if we do go automatic it will be an issue. Hopefully, we can design one, if it's the will of the government, that survives that.

So overall the only answer I can give is that if it's the will of this country and of Parliament to have a registry, then we'll have one. If it's the will to make it automatic, we'll do what we can to make it constitutional. But I think it does have a role to play.

[Carole Lavallée, Bloc, Saint-Bruno—Saint-Hubert, QC]

Every time I—

[The Chair, Conservative, Garry Breitkreuz]

Briefly, please.

[Carole Lavallée, Bloc, Saint-Bruno—Saint-Hubert, QC]

Every time I mention the registry's ineffectiveness to you—because I'm playing the devil's advocate—you answer me by talking about cases of sexual assault on young children. Shouldn't there be just a pedophile registry, rather than a sex offender registry?

[Insp Pierre Nezan]

I can speak to that. Largely, people who molest children don't just molest children; it's a mistake to think that people are one-dimensional when we're talking about sex offenders. We have offenders who will molest children, the elderly, and people who are mentally challenged--anybody who's vulnerable and available. To focus strictly on the people who have been convicted of molesting children would be to miss a whole range of offenders. Most of them have a very wide repertoire of offending.

[The Chair, Conservative, Garry Breitkreuz]

Do you have a brief comment, Ms. Lines?

[C/Supt Kate Lines]

Pedophilia, the sexual preference for children, is not a criminal offence. It is the acting out of a sex offence against a child that's a criminal offence and we should not lose our perspective on that. We could compare it to other sexual orientations, but a pedophile does not equate to a sex offender. Sometimes those terms are used interchangeably, and they should not be, because the criminal offence does not occur until they actually offend against a child.

[The Chair, Conservative, Garry Breitkreuz]

Thank you.

Mr. Richards, please.

[Blake Richards, Conservative, Wild Rose, AB]

Thank you.

I certainly appreciate all of you being here today to talk about this very important subject. Sexual offences, and particularly those committed against children, are the most despicable crimes we see. We appreciate your sharing with us some very useful and practical ideas on how we might be able to improve the registry.

Ms. Lines, you indicated the compliance rate in terms of offenders. You mentioned that there were 11,000 in your database in Ontario and that the compliance rate was about 96% as far as keeping their information updated and complying with that requirement was concerned.

Mr. Yumansky, you mentioned that this is a requirement of the federal registry as well. I wonder if you have similar statistics on the compliance rate and number of offenders in our federal registry.