Since I began dealing with DNA in 1988, when I first started with the RCMP, I think there's been a major change every few years. The technology has to evolve to the sophistication of the ability to discriminate individuals, that is, the identity. We also are becoming very good at getting a lot of information from a very small sample and some of the most challenging of those samples.
Essentially, this technology is always moving quickly. I would think the responsibility for the national data bank under the custodianship of the commissioner is to ensure that our best technologies are always being put forward to provide the highest-quality result with the most amount of information and discrimination.
From that perspective, it is a considerable challenge. As scientists, we enjoy change. But that's not so for all the individuals we deal with, such as the courts, for instance, and the legal community that has to serve the courts. They've become used to one technology, and we've switched it on them. I can remember when testifying in the Legere trial, they suggested that we should be licensed, or something along those lines, with the changes in technology.
I would think we're doing very well in the data bank. The automation that we put forward in early 1999 and 2000 is serving us well. But as scientists, we're going to change that technology. There's going to be a faster, quicker, and better means to determine identification.
From the World Trade Center, we know that the technology utilized in some of those most difficult samples is just now entering into the forensic community as a routine process. There are technologies involved, such as what we call Y-STRs. It is essentially the ability to zero in on the discrimination of the Y chromosome that is found in all males. It becomes a very significant technology if we have a sexual assault, where there are multiple donors of the sample, for instance, a semen sample. It's a way of discriminating that. We fully envisage that many of these technologies that are just being explored today will become in vogue with forensic scientists all over the world.
The data bank will have to maintain that pace. You have to realize that the national data bank is truly a national service. Although it falls under the custodianship of the RCMP, it is a library of information that is provided not only to the RCMP forensic laboratories but to those laboratories serving Ontario and Quebec. If those laboratories want to change the technology, for instance, to improve the information they can get from the crime scene index, we're obligated to have a look at that as well if it's in the national DNA data bank.