At the moment, we are working on an emergency footing in the laboratories in Quebec. When a case is submitted by the police, whether it is an offence, or the suspect is free, or fleeing, we have to get an answer quickly. In such cases, we put all our energy into dealing with this case quickly, in finding the DNA profiles that could produce matches in the bank.
Since we are on an emergency footing, ordinary cases, that is those that come to the lab and are not classified urgent, because they are part of the normal process, can be put on hold for a year, because we are working on an emergency footing all the time.
We could provide results to the police on urgent cases within two weeks. At the moment, we get about 5,000 cases a year in Quebec, and we have the capacity to process 3,000 of them. So we are constantly working on an emergency footing. We can deal with urgent requests, but, in the end, all the requests are urgent, because even a sexual assault case that is not processed for a year could help the police solve other crimes.