Public Safety Committee on Feb. 15th, 2011

[Dave MacKenzie, Conservative, Oxford, ON]

I have just a few short questions.

There's a difference between the vulnerable sector and the employment. I'm not sure if everybody understands that outside of here, and I think that's where we're getting into some of the issues. I think there's a directive that they're supposed to be done in the jurisdiction in which they reside, and I'm not sure if that message is very clear outside of this room.

When my colleague asked about other departments, I think you made it clear that they would have to consent to do them on an individual basis for employment purposes.

[A/Commr Peter Henschel]

That's possible, yes.

[Dave MacKenzie, Conservative, Oxford, ON]

I'm not saying they could do it, but....

[A/Commr Peter Henschel]

For employment purposes, there's much more leeway. There are private companies you could go to for employment purposes, and you could do the process through these private companies.

[Dave MacKenzie, Conservative, Oxford, ON]

Where are they located?

[A/Commr Peter Henschel]

They'll be—

[Dave MacKenzie, Conservative, Oxford, ON]

They're primarily in large communities.

[A/Commr Peter Henschel]

But they're also available on the Internet, so I don't know exactly how they've....

[Dave MacKenzie, Conservative, Oxford, ON]

They'd have to have mobile equipment, though.

[A/Commr Peter Henschel]

Well, no, you don't necessarily have to do fingerprints.

[Dave MacKenzie, Conservative, Oxford, ON]

I see what you're saying.

[A/Commr Peter Henschel]

There's also a name-based check process that can be done. But it becomes a much narrower group that has to be fingerprinted.

Through the new ministerial directive, whether it's for a vulnerable sector or for employment, if they have a criminal record they can disclose it to the police. In the past we couldn't use that mechanism. It's a mechanism to allow people who have a criminal record to come and disclose their criminal record so that the police can verify it. That's just one piece of the process. It enables us to determine that we have the right person and that what they've given us is accurate. This way, we don't need to go through the process of fingerprinting them.

[Dave MacKenzie, Conservative, Oxford, ON]

So that would be what old people like me would remember as the CNI check, criminal name index?

[A/Commr Peter Henschel]

It's related to that, yes.

[Dave MacKenzie, Conservative, Oxford, ON]

My friend asked about whether or not the Americans can access our records. Is it equally true that our border people can access the American information, and that it's only about keeping our borders secure on both sides?

[A/Commr Peter Henschel]

Yes.

[Dave MacKenzie, Conservative, Oxford, ON]

If every police agency in Canada, every RCMP detachment and OPP detachment, tomorrow came up with the necessary funds to buy the equipment to put in their building, does this end in Ottawa have the capability of handling that influx electronically?

[A/Commr Peter Henschel]

The short answer is yes, but I will qualify it a little bit. We're still developing RTID, and we're not at the end stage yet. But theoretically there isn't anything to prevent that. We are currently making changes to RTID to strengthen it, to give it more capacity that way.

[Dave MacKenzie, Conservative, Oxford, ON]

And the paper fingerprints that are in your custody have now been scanned?

[A/Commr Peter Henschel]

They have to go through the same process. They eventually have to get into the automated system either way. You can imagine that if you put them in at the front end, we save all that long manual work that has to go into the system. The system is handling that right now.

[Dave MacKenzie, Conservative, Oxford, ON]

But what you have contains all the old files?

[A/Commr Peter Henschel]

You mean the vulnerable sector ones? Right now, if we get it today, it's about nine weeks before we hit it. That's a massive increase. Instead of getting 130 a month, we're getting almost 8,000. We've upped the number of people working on that, and we've reallocated people to it. But it's such a massive increase that we can't manage them fast enough.

[Dave MacKenzie, Conservative, Oxford, ON]

My friend from the Bloc was talking about agencies that may not have sent stuff in. I know from past experience that there are internal audits within those agencies to make those determinations. If someone didn't send you a fingerprint form, a C-216, you'd have no way of knowing if there had been a conviction. Typically there's an internal audit within police agencies across the country that should pick those things up.

[A/Commr Peter Henschel]

Yes.

[Dave MacKenzie, Conservative, Oxford, ON]

I'm sure the RCMP do it at their detachments, and I know that across the country other....