Public Safety Committee on April 23rd, 2009

[An hon. member]

Hear, hear!

[The Chair, Conservative, Garry Breitkreuz]

Thank you very much.

We will now go over to the government side, to Mr. MacKenzie, for a moment.

You're sharing your time with Mr. McColeman?

[Dave MacKenzie, Conservative, Oxford, ON]

Yes, I am, Chair.

For the benefit of the public watching—because this is televised—I want to make two things very clear. Mr. Kania spoke about the amendments that were just made and why these things weren't fixed. From this side, we would say it's a shame that the federal policy didn't mirror the Ontario policy when it was implemented by a former government.

The other thing, which is perhaps even more important, is that I don't want to leave the impression that the government is looking at making this a public, accessible document or system. I know that was not your intention; you were simply asking for clarification. But just so that there is no misunderstanding, it's not the position of the government to make this accessible to the public.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Garry Breitkreuz]

Mr. McColeman.

[Phil McColeman, Conservative, Brant, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I too want to say to the Stephensons that we will never understand, any of us, what you have experienced. Your courage and your wisdom in your public witness speaks volumes.

I want to thank the other presenters as well, because you provide a very stark contrast to this issue and to the protection of the perpetrators.

Public safety, to my mind, happens every day, every second, every hour. The issue of the sex registry reminds me of the poster—it's a picture, actually—used by firefighters in promoting the need for working smoke detectors. Many of us have seen it. It's a firefighter standing outside a charred building holding the body of a charred baby. We have here a smoke detector that isn't working—it doesn't have batteries. It's nice to look at, and it rather makes you feel good; it gives you a sense of being secure without that actually being the case.

I was shocked, and I would like my question now to be to whoever chooses to answer, to hear that 50% of the people who are convicted, due perhaps to judicial discretion—and I believe this is the comment, Mr. Stephenson, that you made—do not end up being put on the registry.

Would you like to comment further on that, sir? Or would someone else like to comment on the reason for it?

[Jim Stephenson]

It's a matter of grave concern. Add to that the fact that the legislation requires that when judicial discretion is exercised and the judge determines not to proceed to issue an order to register, he's required to document the rationale behind his decision. In fact, that is not being done. To go back, as one of the witnesses suggested, to review the rationale for why the discretion is used to the extent it is.... I doubt that you'd find much success in that type of exercise, because quite simply, there is no narrative provided on the rationale not to order an issue to register.

But I'd be very interested in what the response from the other witnesses might be.

[The Chair, Conservative, Garry Breitkreuz]

Would you like to comment?

[Carman Baggaley]

I continue to think there might be value. One thing is, at least according to some reports, that there's plea bargaining. There is failure of the prosecutors to make the request. I think it's very useful to separate what a third party might view as a reasonable use of judicial discretion from other reasons. It's a striking figure that almost 50% of the offences are not on the registry, and I think it's very important to know why that is the case.

I note from the experience of the DNA Identification Act, which also has discretion built into it, that over the course of the life of that scheme, the percentage of people who are now providing DNA has steadily increased; in other words, the percentage of people who are not required to provide DNA has steadily decreased as the law has come into force. One thing that I understand has worked in that area is that there has been some attempt to work the with judiciary to make them better understand the legislation.

[Phil McColeman, Conservative, Brant, ON]

Mr. Chair, I'd like to address my second question to Ms. Bethell.

You mentioned in your opening comments the balance of budgetary constraints against the benefits, and weighing that. I wonder if you are aware of the per annum costs to actually run this registry.

[Brydie Bethell]

Yes, I am. At present I understand that the resources are not high. But if there are to be further amendments, then it's an open question as to whether that would increase the costs.

And if resources are going into the registry—and that might be a valid value-added thing to do—I just question what the balance is between putting money into the registry and whether there is money being taken away from other sides of the balance sheet, taken away from rehabilitation efforts, for example, from probation, and those other kinds of social integration efforts.

[Phil McColeman, Conservative, Brant, ON]

Mr. Chair, if I may, I'll put on the record that the actual cost is approximately $400,000 a year to run the registry.

[Brydie Bethell]

I've seen numbers ranging from $400,000 to $600,000.

[Phil McColeman, Conservative, Brant, ON]

Yes, to $600,000.

I'm a new parliamentarian, but apparently it was initially $2 million to set up. So in a comparative sense with other registries that we've been discussing in Parliament, I just want to put that on the record as a frame of reference.

[Brydie Bethell]

If I could just comment on that, this is probably a little provocative, but the gun registry of course is an example—I realize this is regulation of guns, and not people—of something that can take on a life of its own when resources are put into a registry like that.

I think you make a valid point.

[The Chair, Conservative, Garry Breitkreuz]

An excellent point, I must say. That needs to be stated very clearly—$85 million to $90 million for....

I just want to point out to the students who are watching here that one of the purposes of a committee like this is to review legislation to see how effective it is. What we are doing today is reviewing the sex offender registry. I just wanted to put that in context to help you understand that one of the purposes of parliamentarians is to ensure that the laws that we put in place that Canadians have to live by are effective. That's what we're doing here in committee, and many committees do that same thing.

I have only a request for one more brief question from Mr. Kania, and then we'll wrap up this meeting.

[Andrew Kania, Liberal, Brampton West, ON]

I have a very brief follow-up in terms of the Office of the Privacy Commissioner. The comment was:

There may be ways to make the scheme more effective, perhaps through increased resources or through procedural changes that would enhance the effectiveness and value of the legislation without increasing its intrusiveness.

Can you please provide us with something in writing with the specific ideas you may have? I think we should take them into account, but I think that sort of comment needs to be concrete in terms of how we would improve this.

Thank you.

[Carman Baggaley]

Yes, we will do that.

[The Chair, Conservative, Garry Breitkreuz]

Does anybody have one very brief closing comment?

Mr. MacKenzie.

[Dave MacKenzie, Conservative, Oxford, ON]

It's not about this, but could we have two minutes after?

[The Chair, Conservative, Garry Breitkreuz]

Then we'd better wrap this up, because I think there's another group waiting.

Mr. Stephenson, you indicated you have a little comment.

[Jim Stephenson]

If I could, I always like to have the last word, and since I've been invited....

One of the concerns is the cost of the registry, the cost of maintaining and administering it, and whether it is maybe in the better interests of society to put those dollars into preventative or treatment programs.

I've had this discussion with police officers. I've had this discussion with offenders in the institutions who are there because of convictions for sex offences, and they appreciate the fact that the sex offender registry reminds the sex offenders that somebody is watching. And if that isn't preventative enough, I don't know what else can be suggested. But certainly convicted sex offenders have confided to me—and I know they can be a manipulative population, but I believe they are sincere when they have confided this—that they appreciate very much the fact that they are required to register. They know they're going to have a policeman knocking on their door to verify address and verify that they are not taking up residence in an apartment building that is full of children under the age of eight or under the age of fourteen. That is a kind of preventative offshoot, a very beneficial offshoot of the sex offender registry, which I think was not anticipated at the time it was crafted and put into place.

That would be my final comment.

[The Chair, Conservative, Garry Breitkreuz]

Mr. MacKenzie, did you want to go in camera?

[Dave MacKenzie, Conservative, Oxford, ON]

No, not necessarily.

[The Chair, Conservative, Garry Breitkreuz]

Okay.

The witnesses may excuse themselves, and we'll just continue with our business here. Thank you all very, very much for appearing. We've appreciated your testimony very much.

Go ahead, Mr. MacKenzie.

[Dave MacKenzie, Conservative, Oxford, ON]

The only thing I would say for the committee is that I think we have two days where we maybe don't have anything blocked off, and the witnesses the other day talked about coming back in an evening. I know we've talked to some people and found out that most folks feel their evenings are pretty tied up, but I'm wondering if we could have the Ontario people come in and do a demonstration.