Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
I'll speak very briefly to give a bit of context to the legislation. Mr. Yumansky will speak briefly about the process of registration and reporting. Then, I understand, Inspector Nezan will speak on behalf of the RCMP, after which Chief Superintendent Lines, representing CACP, will speak.
Just to remind members, the sex offender registry came into force in December 2004, so we're now in the fifth year of operation. It was very much a product of federal-provincial-territorial consensus and, occasionally, compromise. It was intended to be a national registry and therefore was designed to, as best as possible, meet the needs of all parts of the country and achieve the overall objective.
The purpose of the registry was to assist police in investigating crimes suspected to be of a sexual nature and, hopefully, to assist police in moving to a rapid resolution of the investigation, either by identifying possible sex offender suspects in the locale or, indeed, by excluding people very quickly from further investigation.
It is one tool of many. The objective of Parliament was to add to the tools that would be available in these cases.
It is not a risk-based registry. Offenders who are convicted of offences are put on the registry. It's not an assessment of whether they are more or less serious in their offending.
The registry was amended by Parliament once, primarily to add National Defence to the registry, because, of course, people there are charged under a separate justice system. The registry now applies fully to those offenders as well.
The registry, from its date of implementation, has been very closely scrutinized by federal, provincial, and territorial officials. There have been amendments made as part of the process of adding National Defence.
Of course, other issues continue to come up, which we meet on regularly, about three or four times a year, I would say. We're also in communication by paper and teleconferencing so we can identify areas in which the registry can still be improved. Sometimes, only operations will reveal what might need to be changed.
Having said that, I'll turn it over to Mr. Yumansky for a brief description of the process.