Madam Speaker, I am pleased to rise to speak to the motion before us today.
It is important when Canadians look at their justice system that they feel the system actually has the ability to achieve what it sets out to achieve. It is vitally important that the justice system have teeth in it for those who would break the law.
One of the biggest criticisms—and it is coffee shop talk everywhere we go in the country—is that there is not sufficient teeth in the system right now. Many Canadians feel that serious and violent offenders are getting off with a mere slap on the wrist in many cases.
It is also important to have built-in safeguards to protect the safety and the privacy of citizens and to respect their individual rights. I have spoken many times in the House on my very deep commitment to individual rights in Canada, something that I do not think we stress nearly enough.
Therefore I am very supportive of the motion which would provide a much stronger guarantee to individuals that information obtained from a DNA profile would not be used improperly. In fact anybody who would do so would be faced with very severe penalties.
It is important that those penalties be articulated in the act and that they are tough. I do not want to see this databank abused.
As I said, Canadians are very much tired of a justice system that does not deliver. They are very much tired of a justice system that has no teeth in it. They are very much tired of a justice system where they see plea bargains that end up with serious and violent offenders getting a mere slap on the wrist for committing heinous acts and crimes.
It is no different when we are talking about the protection of individual rights. I believe that we have to consider the rights of individuals to their privacy. We have to accept the fact that the government has a very strong obligation to ensure that information obtained under a DNA profile is not abused.
I am very much in favour of the notion of DNA databanks. As a person who has absolutely no intention of ever committing a crime, I have no problem signing up for the program and making my DNA available to a databank right now.