Public Safety Committee on April 21st, 2009

[Supt David Truax]

Yes.

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

For example, how many police officers consult it? How often?

[Supt David Truax]

Our average for Ontario law enforcement agencies accessing the Ontario registry is approximately 475 times per day.

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

Earlier you mentioned fines or the possibility of a prison sentence for people who don't comply with the act. Do you have any statistics on fines that people have paid or prison sentences that they have received because they did not comply with the requirements of the act? I'm putting the question to the RCMP and to you, Ms. Campbell.

[Mary Campbell]

I'm not familiar with any convictions for non-compliance with either the Ontario or the federal registry.

I can tell you the penalty structure for the federal registry: a first offence is a summary conviction offence, which carries a maximum of up to six months' incarceration or a $10,000 fine; and second or subsequent offences are hybrid offences, punishable by up to two years' incarceration, or again up to $10,000 as a fine.

But I'm not aware of convictions for non-compliance. Perhaps Mr. Hoover is.

[Douglas Hoover]

It's still relatively new, as these things come online, but there have been successful prosecutions in Alberta and Saskatchewan. I believe there was a fine and two months of imprisonment in the Alberta case—the name escapes me—and I believe it was one month in Saskatchewan for a first offence.

[Supt Leo O'Brien]

I'd like to go back to the funding aspect again. As Inspector Nezan said, when we were mandated by the Sex Offender Information Registration Act to maintain the database, no funding came with it. As of today, we have to maintain the policy centre, which costs us approximately $400,000 a year, but in addition to that, we have our informatics people, who are the people responsible for building and maintaining the database. Their cost is approximately $200,000 a year.

But it fluctuates from time to time as well. Right now, we are working on a link with the Ontario sex offender registry and trying to build an interface, so we have architects and consultants employed. Those are additional costs. We continuously have to go looking for money somewhere else. For this fiscal year, 2009-10, I have been advised that we will have to find the money from within to fund the policy centre. It's always a pressure.

[The Chair, Conservative, Garry Breitkreuz]

We'll have to move to Mr. Davies now, please.

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I'm curious about whether the list of offences for which automatic registration occurs in Ontario is the same as the list of offences under the federal legislation.

[Supt David Truax]

There is one difference that I'm aware of. The offence of voyeurism has been added in Ontario.

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

So to the best of your knowledge, there may be one extra offence in the Ontario registry compared to the federal registry.

[Supt David Truax]

To the best of my knowledge, that is so. I would defer to Ms. Campbell.

[Mary Campbell]

There's another substantial difference, which is that the federal registry has, as Mr. Yumansky has referred to, 13 offences that are not sex offences on the face of it, such as, for example, break and enter with intent.

My understanding is that those 13 offences are not on the Ontario registry, but it is very clear, as previous witnesses have indicated, that there are offenders who are committing sex offences with these other offences. It's been a plea bargain or it's break and enter with intent to commit a sexual offence, for example. There's a very notorious Canadian offender who started his sex-offending career as a break-and-enter offender. So that's one difference in the list of offences: the federal one is longer.

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

I want to move on a bit now to the question of access. Madam Lavallée asked a question about how often the database is accessed. If I heard correctly, the number given for Ontario was that it was accessed 475 times a day. Do we know how many times a day the national database is accessed?

[Insp Pierre Nezan]

In a year, the national sex offender registry is accessed about 165 times. It's strictly in support of sexual crime investigations. It's where we build the tactical query, which is the process by which we input parameters into the database and try to generate a pool of persons of interest. Those 165 times would not include the queries from Ontario, because law enforcement in Ontario will turn to the Ontario sex offender registry for support.

That is a 32% increase over the previous year. The education efforts of the provincial centres have been paying off. Law enforcement are using it a little more than they were initially, but we still have a long way to go because there is a general lack of confidence in the system.

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

I want to come back to funding as well. I want to make sure I understand this. Ontario has provided funding of $4 million per year to maintain the Ontario system.

[Supt David Truax]

That's correct.

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

If I heard you correctly, there's no federal money that comes outside of your general allocation to maintain this national registry?

[Supt Leo O'Brien]

That's correct. No new money came with the burden when we were mandated to maintain it.

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

Can I ask if money has ever been requested of the government for the purpose of helping to fund this?

[Supt Leo O'Brien]

I wasn't around, unfortunately, when the legislation was brought in, so I'm not sure about that.

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

For any of the witnesses present, have you made specific funding requests of the current government to increase funding so that you could maintain this database?

[C/Supt Kate Lines]

The request for funding is included in the CACP resolution that I mentioned earlier today. It's not for a particular dollar figure but for financial support for the development and implementation of the enhancement we're discussing this morning.

[The Chair, Conservative, Garry Breitkreuz]

Do you have a brief supplementary or are you done, Mr. Davies?

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

I think I'm done.

Thank you very much for appearing before us. It's a great help.