Madam Speaker, I just want to respond for a moment to the comments that were made by the government representative across the way.
He said that “a fingerprint identifies me but DNA is a part of me”. If that is the argument then in fact he should support this amendment. At the present time if this DNA data is being used for purposes anything beyond what a fingerprint is used for, we are saying there should be a punishment for that. That punishment should fit the crime. I applaud the NDP representative who brought forth the amendment. I am glad to see they did it. If in fact what he said is a valid argument then he should be supporting the amendment. He said that “DNA is a part of me”.
Let me give a little science lesson here. When you leave a fingerprint behind the technology is going to be there in the next year or so to take from that fingerprint the same information that you could get if you took a hair or a saliva sample from someone. We need to have appropriate punishments in place if someone uses that. The government should be supporting this amendment.
We will have the technology soon to do all kinds of things and we should be protecting the public from misuse of this information. The DNA data should be used in the same way as a fingerprint is used to identify the person; no more, no less. We would support that.
I agree with what the NDP has done here. It is interesting and it is almost historic that the NDP recognizes the severity of a penalty does send a signal to society on the severity of a crime. I think we need to do that. If people can devise some kind of method in the future to misuse the DNA samples and invade people's privacy, we should be looking forward and making sure there are appropriate punishments in place.
Maybe we do not see the big picture, but the question that is before us in regard to this amendment is should or does the length of a sentence send a signal to the public as to the seriousness of a crime. That is what we are debating and that is why the government should support this. There is the potential to commit some serious crimes with the misuse of these data.
The public also has a concern that the courts are not using the provisions of the law to send a signal to society on the severity of some of the crimes. I may be off on a little tangent here but in my riding we had some very serious crimes committed, murder in fact, and the courts dealt very lightly with them. Some of the penalties were less than eight years. One penalty was four years. They were out in less than two years on parole. That sends the wrong signal to society. It is abundantly clear that we need to send the kind of a signal that this can be very serious.
In conclusion I want to talk a little bit about the contradictions that this government is making by not supporting an increase in the penalty.
The government put in place legislation that if you make a mistake on the gun registration certificate, the little piece of paper you fill out when you are supposed to register your gun in a few years, you could get up to 10 years in prison for making a mistake on that. Here you could do something much more serious, misuse DNA data, and you only get two years. I find that ironic. If find it unbelievable that this government would do something like that. It is a real contradiction and that is why the government should change its mind and support the amendment that the NDP MP has put forward.