Public Safety Committee on Oct. 22nd, 2009

[Maria Mourani, Bloc, Ahuntsic, QC]

I believe you did not understand my question. I am saying that following the lodging of a complaint by a parent, the young man is found guilty of sexual contact. In your view, given that consent is not a ground for defence, should the name of this young 18-year-old man found guilty of having sexual contact with a 15-year-old girl be filed with the Sexual Offender Registry for two, five or ten years, according to the sentence handed down?

[Peter Van Loan, Conservative, York—Simcoe, ON]

To be convicted it would not have to be consensual sex in your scenario, because under the statute, even with the age of consent being raised to 16, the close-in-age exemption protects consensual sex if there is only a three-year age gap between them. For him to be convicted of a sexual offence it would have to be genuinely non-consensual sex. It would have to be forcible. It would have to be using date rape drugs or something like that. In those circumstances, yes, they would be included.

[Maria Mourani, Bloc, Ahuntsic, QC]

I understand your point of view, but your bill does not allow the judge to deal with exceptional cases. Everything is automatic, neither the judge nor counsel can say that, despite there having been sexual contact, there is no reason to list the person's name in the Sex Offender Registry. We are not talking about the same thing. You are talking about consensual sexual relations between an adolescent girl and an 18-year-old boy, whereas I am talking about conviction of sexual contact without any possibility for the judge to give his opinion as to the listing of the person's name in the Sex Offender Registry.

[Peter Van Loan, Conservative, York—Simcoe, ON]

You are correct; if it was non-consenting sex--a rape, in your scenario--or if it was sexual intercourse using a date rape drug, for example, yes, there is no judge discretion. If they are convicted of that offence, they are included in the registry.

[Maria Mourani, Bloc, Ahuntsic, QC]

I believe we are talking about different things, but it does not matter.

I will move on to another question. DNA registration is automatically carried out as soon as a person is convicted of a sexual crime. I believe this is a very good idea, that will facilitate investigations.

However, I am wondering if this will be possible. Witnesses have told us that, at present, it is impossible for them to supply all of the results for the Registry as it now exists, because they do not have the necessary resources. Several lab representatives appeared before us. What are you going to do, concretely? What human and financial resources are you going to invest in order for these people to be able to do their work? If they are not even able to carry out the analyses on time, as is now the case, do you think it is realistic to believe that they will be able to do it if there is a much greater number of DNA samples? What is your opinion? Do you have monies to provide?

Money talks.

[Peter Van Loan, Conservative, York—Simcoe, ON]

There are a couple of different questions there.

I don't believe there is a capacity issue for taking the DNA samples and including them in the data bank. I don't think that is a challenge. I don't think anybody would suggest that it is. There is, of course, a different question about the demands or the requests by police for DNA sampling of evidence they have in the field, and we do spend a fair bit of time on that.

As you know, in our budgets we have significantly increased the funding available for DNA sampling and analysis. The difficulty is, of course, that it is a judgment call in terms of a cutoff point, where you draw the line, and what is the appropriate level of support to provide. If you actually get into a police investigation, there could be an almost limitless amount of DNA sampling that you could look for. You could sample the clothing, swabs off a plastic bag you found the clothing in, in a particular crime, or a car door. You could just keep sending pieces of DNA to be analyzed in a kind of fishing expedition to hope you find a match with somebody somewhere to solve an unsolved crime. On a particular case, you could end up sampling literally hundreds of pieces of evidence—

[Maria Mourani, Bloc, Ahuntsic, QC]

I understand all of that. How much money are you going to provide? I do not have much time.

[Peter Van Loan, Conservative, York—Simcoe, ON]

If I could continue--

[The Chair, Conservative, Garry Breitkreuz]

Briefly wrap up, Minister.

[Peter Van Loan, Conservative, York—Simcoe, ON]

So you could end up sampling hundred of pieces without getting a conclusive find.

I have found in my discussions with the police that they're pretty happy with the cooperation they're getting from the national lab. When they have important pieces of evidence, they're getting results and they're getting them quickly, but there is a resource issue there. We've provided significant funding to try to assist with that.

[The Chair, Conservative, Garry Breitkreuz]

Thank you very much.

Mr. Davies--

[Maria Mourani, Bloc, Ahuntsic, QC]

In the end, you have not answered my question. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, but I am still waiting for the amounts. I would like to know how much money you are going to devote to this area.

[The Chair, Conservative, Garry Breitkreuz]

We'll have another round. You'll have to ask that on the next round.

Mr. Davies, go ahead.

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Minister, for being here.

The New Democrats also support this registry. We think it's important to protect our communities. We think helping police investigate crimes of a sexual nature is a profoundly important thing, and having a registry of known sex offenders is helpful in this regard. But I want to pick up some questions about proper policy-making.

Minister, this act came into force on December 15, 2004. Section 21.1 of the act says,The administration of this Act shall, two years after the coming into force of this Act, be reviewed by the parliamentary committee that may be designated or established by Parliament for that purpose.

It goes on to say that the committee “shall” issue a report within six months.

By my math, that means that by December 15, 2006, the two years were up. Your party was in government from 2006. Can you tell us why you didn't begin undertaking this review until April 2009?

[Peter Van Loan, Conservative, York—Simcoe, ON]

Well, it was a parliamentary review, not a ministerial review. That's the first point I'd like to make.

Second, as I indicated, my predecessor actually wrote to this committee asking that the review take place. That letter was dated November 13, 2007. I have right here what he said:

We are writing to request that the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security undertake a review of two important pieces of legislation: the Sex Offender Information Registration Act (SOIRA), and the DNA Identification Act.

So at this point it's already overdue. The minister is writing to remind the committee of its obligations, asking that the study take place.

As I said, on November 20, as a follow-up, Dave MacKenzie said at this committee,

Mr. Chair, I would just say to the member that we would like to have that as one of the couple of things we'd like to put forward to the committee. One is the DNA databank and the other is the sex offender information registry.

So you've got that right there as efforts by the government, through the parliamentary secretary, through the minister, to get this committee to do its work.

As for the management of affairs by the committee, as you know, the priorities are set by all members of the committee. The government is only a minority of those members. I know the government members were pushing for that study to happen sooner.

So I suggest you ask your predecessor on the committee and the other opposition members why other matters were studied.

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

Minister, did you take any steps personally to get this study undertaken before April 2009?

[Peter Van Loan, Conservative, York—Simcoe, ON]

Did I personally think it was under way when I...? I believe, when I became minister, that process was under way, but not--

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

My question is did you take any steps to get this study under way?

[Peter Van Loan, Conservative, York—Simcoe, ON]

I believe you guys were already doing it by the time I became minister.

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

You believe that. I take that answer as no.

Now—

[Peter Van Loan, Conservative, York—Simcoe, ON]

Certainly we made it a priority. I discussed it when....

Perhaps I can paraphrase that. When we became government and we set out the priorities, I sat down with the parliamentary secretary and said, “Here are the things we want advanced for study.” This was at the top of the list. I believe it was proposed. I wasn't at your meetings. They're in camera, I understand, when you set your agenda initially, so you guys would know better than I how well that was advanced. But I did see that the study was taking place finally.

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

I think I have your answer.

The act says that the committee has to “submit a report to Parliament thereon including a statement of any changes to this Act or its administration that the committee would recommend”. I want to pick up on this. One of the things the committee did recommend was this idea of vehicle information. I want to come back to this. Every witness who appeared before this committee including police officers, every member of this committee including members of your own party, agreed that the registry needs to have not just vehicle registration but also the make, the model, the year, the colour, and the licence plate.

This is obvious. If a call comes in, Minister, that there is a car prowling around a school, the police told us it's helpful for them to be able to check the registry and find out if that is a vehicle that has in any way been associated with a sex offender.

Everybody was unanimous on this, and yet you came back with a bill that specifically looked at that and rejected that. I'm not clear on exactly why that is the case when everybody who has anything to do with this issue in this country thinks that's a logical idea. But your bill doesn't have that.

[Peter Van Loan, Conservative, York—Simcoe, ON]

Well, let's make it clear: the government has not rejected that notion. I think I've indicated to this committee that we're quite open to an amendment that has that.

We took the decision not to include it in the bill, but we also don't consider that the parliamentary process is meaningless. We think it's meaningful. We think you have something to offer. As I've indicated, the government would accept amendments such as that coming from this committee.

That's how Parliament is supposed to work. I thought you'd be happy with that.

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

Well, I am happy with that, Mr. Minister, and happy to hear you say that. But Mrs. Mary Donaghy appeared before this committee and I asked her that very question. She said the following:

Let me say, in terms of the discussions that went into the work preparing the bill, that of course the question of vehicle registration was one that was considered. There were a number of options, obviously, that the government looked at in coming to the final form of the bill. The decision was taken that at this time it would not be appropriate to proceed with amendments to the legislation that would include or allow for vehicle registration.

And she later on said this:

There was a decision taken by the government at this time not to include vehicle registration information in the registry.

Would you not agree with me, sir, that it was a bad decision on the government's part?

[Peter Van Loan, Conservative, York—Simcoe, ON]

As I say, I think there are two very legitimate perspectives here. There are very good arguments on both of those sides, and in putting forward our bill, we chose not to take that step. We believe that perspective in taking that step is also very legitimate. If having the benefit of the knowledge you have and the expertise you have as a committee—and I know, as I said, that Conservative members of the committee have said very much that they wish to bring forward an amendment to that effect—that's acceptable to the government.