Madam Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity to speak on Bill C-3, the taking and storing of DNA samples.
When the solicitor general introduced the bill last fall I attended the press conference for the release of the bill. One of the biggest concerns members of the media had was how we would protect ourselves, protect society from the misuse and abuse of someone holding key information that we all contain in our bodies, DNA sampling.
I want to make it straight, up front, plain and clear that we in our party felt the idea of a DNA bank and sampling was a great idea, a wonderful idea. Make no mistake, we certainly support that type of thinking.
I spent a week in Washington, D.C. last fall speaking with experts about DNA sampling and other justice matters. One of the things I discovered when I was there is how much faith the Americans are putting into this DNA bank. Certainly there are some things in the American system that I would not want to see in Canada, make no mistake about that. The feeling among the scientific and technological community in the United States is that this is the biggest breakthrough since the introduction of fingerprints in being able to identify criminals. That is a huge step. This DNA identification act is such an important part of such groundbreaking technology that it has the absolute ability to solve crimes committed many years ago. Where most evidence may have been lost, misplaced or forgotten about, we have the ability under this bill with this kind of technology to solve a crime that has remained unsolved for years. Think of the impact that is going to have on families of victims.
Many who have never been able to find out who committed a terrible act against a member of their family will now have that opportunity through this technology to solve those crimes.
On the other side of that, and we have seen it recently with a couple of major cases in Canada, is the ability to exonerate people who have been wrongfully accused. There are people on both sides of this issue, also those who would like to see DNA not used for many reasons. We have now the ability to exonerate people who have been wrongly convicted. I think that is just as important as it is for those who need to see crimes solved.
The key to this is that the samples for this DNA registry must be taken at the proper time, used properly and stored properly. That is what Group No. 3 deals with, the absolute assurance that these DNA samples will not be used for other types of activities that would be both illegal and morally wrong.
I have been a strong supporter of the idea that we need to take DNA samples at the point of arrest because obviously that is the most beneficial time. We need to have those samples go with that accused person right through their trial and if they are found guilty, those DNA samples would remain a part of our DNA registry that would become a large part of our criminologists' files.
The final step is that the samples of those people who are found not guilty must be removed from the registry in order to safeguard the privacy of innocent people.
Group No. 3 also talks about the ability to assure our society that these samples are not used improperly. This is an opportunity to have a very strong set of regulations in this area. I spoke a few minutes ago on Bill C-26. I said government overregulates and we have far too much bureaucracy and I still believe that. But here is an area where we must come down hard. We must use the maximum amount of punishment to assure people that their DNA samples will not be used for devious purposes. This is an area where government policy and laws need to play a very important role.
We all know people have access and have the ability to hack into computers. We know this is happening. There is no question in my mind that people are getting into our police computers on a regular basis and it is pretty hard to stop. We must have strong enough laws in place to make sure that those people are caught, convicted and punished to the full extent of the law.
That is the only way we are going to see a DNA registry really have the acceptance and the success that I think it can have. It can be a major breakthrough in crime detection and even prevention. We know a criminal will say that if there is an increased chance they will get caught for this crime, they will think twice about committing that crime in the first place, especially in the areas of rather petty crimes.
We have to put all the links of this chain together to make Bill C-3 successful, in the taking and storing of DNA samples.
Without all those pegs being put into the proper holes, the registry or the bank itself has the very strong possibility of not being successful and not being used to its fullest extent.
I really support the kind of idea where we would come down heavy. I want to also be a little negative toward the government because in some areas of other amendments that we proposed for this bill, it has pretty much ignored us.
The government is not prepared to move on some of the amendments we talked about such as taking samples at the point of arrest. I think without having all these links in place the bill itself may fall far short of what it is really capable of.