Madam Speaker, it is a pleasure to speak regarding Group No. 3 in this DNA bill, particularly to speak in support of Motion No. 7 which amends clause 11 of the bill. It proposes that the penalty be increased from two to five years for anyone who violates, misuses or communicates any part of a person's DNA sample.
This motion would clearly be a deterrent to those who would be inclined to use this information for criminal purposes.
I can understand why this motion is necessary since there is considerable nervousness surrounding the privacy of individuals. The privacy commissioner has stated on a number of occasions that he has serious reservations with the storing of DNA samples themselves rather than just the analysis.
He felt this legislation seeks to use DNA to link specific offenders with specific crimes. Keeping the DNA sample itself would inevitably invite further uses of the DNA that have little to do with identifying offenders such as allowing researchers to use the material to study genetic links to criminal behaviour. That is the idea being proposed now in Correctional Service Canada.
I have been told by the commissioner's office that we are looking for alternative therapies to criminal behaviour. The problem with the privacy commissioner's theory that the analysis of the DNA is sufficient without the need to preserve the actual sample is that he did not take into account that in order for the databank to keep pace with technological advances the samples are needed. If not we would have recollect samples should the original analysis be obsolete.
The expenses associated with the repetition of these tasks would be astronomical. I hope that that would be taken into account.
The motion of my hon. colleague from the NDP should put the privacy commissioner's fears to rest knowing that a strong penalty was in place for the misuse of samples. There is only one word in this whole business that I have mentioned that frightens me a bit in the sense that it is a word which would cause most Liberals if not all of them to reject this kind of amendment to a bill.
The word is deterrent. Anytime we talk about creating penalties for breaking the law, penalties for doing wrong and that we need to impose penalties that would be a deterrent to individuals doing these things, the Liberal government seems to reject it. Deterrent is not part of the Liberal government's language.
Liberals have these flowery ideas, soft cushy mushy ideas that criminals have to be coddled in all fashions imaginable in order to change in their lives and make things better. I hope the Liberals will look at this part and say that yes we do need to deter people from misusing DNA samples that are collected. Anybody who would misuse or abuse that position should suffer the consequences. It would cause others to think twice before they did the same thing.
I only wish we could put people into power. Maybe someday we will, when we get rid of these pussycats in the government's front row who do not know the meaning of good law and order and strong discipline. The government is forever coddling criminals. It is to the point that in the penitentiaries the disposable income for a convict is $150 per month whereas the disposable income for a soldier in our army is about $40 a month. We do not look after law-abiding people nearly as well as we do the people behind bars.
Anytime any kind of bill is introduced that would be strong enough to deter people from other activities along those lines would be wonderful. It would bring about some changes this government would not want to see, not the way the government coddles up to the convicts making sure their rights are looked after while the victims rights in our land continually go downhill, depleted day in and day out. The victims are just poor victims but the criminals, man oh man, the things that are done for them.
We really have to be careful when we take these DNA samples according to the government. Criminals immediately get psychological attention. They can get massages, legal aid, all these things come to their rescue. I have talked to family after family after family of victims. If they need a psychologist to deal with someone who has lost a loved one, they have to pay for the service themselves, if they can afford it and most cannot, but we make sure the criminal gets that. If a criminal needs psychiatric help and has to be placed under observation for 30 days, we make sure the taxpayers pay for it while the victims, if they want any service at all, will have to pay for it themselves, if they can afford it and of course most of them cannot.
It is high time we focused on the victims in our country. The victims are the people that are being terribly offended in this nation by a government that does not seem to care at all about them. The government shows about as much care for victims of criminal activities as it has shown for the people who were affected by hepatitis C before 1986. This caring loving government.
The government is completely off track. These amendments would help bring it back on track. The police association and all those who work on the front line, the ones who want to make the arrests who want to clean up the problems we are having with criminals in our land are saying to the government “Let us take the sample at the time of arrest, let us take it at the time of charge”. But no. We are not going to allow that to happen until after.
Those are the police all over the country and anyone who works with crime and law and order. Walk into a police department in Calgary, Toronto or anywhere. Ask the police when it should be done and they will say that it certainly should not be done after conviction because it does not make sense.
However, we have to be careful when we do anything in this country because we will offend the charter of rights of the criminals. This is the charter that the mighty government under the Trudeau leadership brought in, to our great nation's dismay. It has been a roadblock to good justice in this land for far too long. I for one am really getting tired of watching progress being moved in a direction only to have the Supreme Court of Canada rule that under the charter of rights and freedoms we cannot go any further in that direction because it would offend or hurt the poor criminal.
I hope Canadians wake up to what is really going on in this land and that this government gets what it deserves in the next election, booted out of here so we can put something in that will do something with law and order.