Mr. Speaker, the bill before us today deals with a very important issue, something that cannot be taken lightly.
We must decide today, in our consideration of the bill, what is most important: the fight against crime or the respect of individual rights and freedoms, including respect for an individual's private life and person.
In principle, the Bloc Quebecois supports the bill, because the crime rate in this country can never be too low, because the number of unresolved crimes is never too low and because the work of the police is too important for them not to have all the tools they need.
We all know that a DNA profile is the best way to identify someone. It raises some questions, however, first because it involves an individual's person, second, because we are talking about people's DNA profile and, third, because the possibilities of improper use are limitless. We must therefore ensure a very high level of confidentiality for the bank.
What sort of questions might we have? There are some I would mention here today. First, the bill contains provision for the storage of bodily substances taken. I would like to know why a sample will be kept once the genetic information has been taken, because the comparison is not done with the sample, but with the information taken from the sample. The point of having the bank is to establish a relationship between an individual and the scene of the crime, which can be done without the need to keep the sample once the analysis has been done.
Who is to say that, if these samples are preserved, there will not be pressure from a segment of the population saying “Let's do genetic testing to see if there is not some genetic predisposition for becoming a criminal”. Once again, these are huge ethical questions. Where will it stop? This is a slippery slope, one which we ought not to embark upon, in my opinion. By destroying the samples, while keeping the information gleaned from them, we will be able to resist the temptation to carry out unnecessary testing.
I have another concern. The bill provides that samples may be taken by a law enforcement officer. In the opinion of the Bloc Quebecois, samples ought to be taken, not by a law enforcement officer, but by a health professional, either a physician, a nurse or a qualified medical technician. I have good friends on the police force and I respect their law enforcement work, but if they came after me with a needle I would feel pretty uncomfortable. Let us give sample collection over to qualified medical personnel.
There is also the question of the disclosure of profiles. It is possible, and somewhat normal in today's world, for information to be transferred between countries or between organizations. I am thinking of such things as the FBI or Interpol. Once a foreign state or organization has been given information, what assurance is there that if a file is sealed in Canada it would be sealed elsewhere?
Perhaps there could be a notification process whereby foreign states to whom information had been forwarded could be told that the file had been sealed in Canada and asked to seal it as well. Agreements could also be drawn up between Canada and these states so that once a profile is sealed here in Canada, it could also be sealed in the foreign state to whom we transmitted the information.
Another question we have concerns access to the information in the data bank. As it now stands, the bill gives commissioners considerable leeway. This raises certain problems of confidentiality of data.
Perhaps we could put measures in place, or require the commissioner to make public the list of persons with access to this bank so that there are certain limits to the commissioner's discretionary authority.
In conclusion, we support the bill in principle, but feel that there should be very serious consideration of certain provisions, some of which I have just mentioned. It merits serious consideration and we in the Bloc Quebecois would be very pleased to take part in such consideration.