First, to the Stephensons I'd like to sincerely say that I am truly very sorry for your loss.
Speaking to the reason we're here today, my perspective is that we have to develop a system that is as strong as possible, taking fairness and privacy issues into account, but unfortunately, we're here seven months after amendments were passed. I think most of the members of this committee would agree that when Bill S-3 was proposed and passed under the leadership of the Conservatives, they left a number of problems unsolved. What I'd like to discuss is those problems and how we best can develop a system that focuses more on prevention.
We have discussed mandatory inclusion, automatic registration, the use of the system proactively, so that they can try to find people who have been abducted, as one example.
Concerrning identifying people, I find it quite amazing that under the amendments they didn't allow for warrants to be issued or for publicizing people who have not registered, as they are supposed to do. Failure to use licence plates on vehicles I can't understand either.
What I'm looking at is something that tries to fix these problems that were left unresolved when the Conservatives passed these amendments seven months ago.
I will address the Stephensons first. You say the Ontario system is state of the art, and I know it is much better than the federal system, so my first question is whether you think there are any ways that the Ontario system should be improved, so that we would take that into account when trying to do something else now.