Madam Speaker, what is privacy all about? This brings me back to a case we heard so much about in the last number of years of David Milgaard who was imprisoned for 20 some years.
David's family lived in the Snowflake area where I farmed for a number of years. People in the community always felt very strongly that David Milgaard was innocent. They knew the family and they knew what type of upbringing he had. There was always the suspicion that he had been at the wrong place at the wrong time and was blamed for an act he was not responsible for.
Had we a DNA databank and some of the information available to the police forces to double check on the evidence they had, probably David Milgaard would have been exonerated from that crime and would have been free those 22 or 23 years he was in prison.
I think society has the right to have protection and that is what government is there for, to give the type of protection from unjust prosecution.
When somebody is caught up in a crime and has violated civil or criminal law there should be a sample of DNA so that in future cases the person can either be charged or exonerated. Having the databank is not just a matter of proving people are criminal or that they were involved in the act. The databank is there to prevent people from being charged wrongly.
In comments in the previous debate the government feels this would cost too much money. It would create a bank that was too costly to manage. The gun legislation, Bill C-68, was passed in order to register guns of law-abiding citizens just to keep track of them in case some of the criminal element might pick up some of these guns and they can be traced. We have seen a number of speculative suggestions or estimates that it would cost about half a billion dollars to register all the guns of law-abiding citizens.
When we look at the databank which would serve a much bigger bank of information on catching people who have committed crime or preventing people from being prosecuted who were not involved, money seems to be an issue. It was not an issue when it came to gun registration. That does not make sense.
When looking at the hepatitis C issue it is money that seems to be what the government is hesitating to talk about. It does not want to admit that maybe it was wrong. It does not want to admit that there could have been something done to prevent the problem of poison blood. That is the same with the databank. The government is very hesitant to make the bank resourceful and to give the bank the authority to take the samples of DNA from people who are suspect of committing crimes.
If I were accused falsely of a crime I would demand that a DNA sample be taken so I could not be charged for something I was not involved in. I cannot understand why that is a matter of private information that I would not want to have in a databank controlled by the government.
Some of the amendments made by other parties concern putting safeguards into the bill in order that the DNA data information collected is not misused. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. Had we a databank giving the RCMP and the investigators the information they needed in the David Milgaard or Guy Paul Morin case it would have meant a lot less stress and hardship for those families.
Will it create any stress for people who are forced to give a sample of DNA where it is protected by government and cannot become public information? There is no problem. It is the same as the tax man. When he wants to come and open up my books they are there for him to look at. If I do not give him that information he can force me to give it to him. Is it not easier to provide the information rather than forcing somebody to give that information?
It seems only logical that we should support the amendments. The bill is going in the right direction. We should support some of these amendments to guarantee safety. We should also put in amendments which will guarantee that the legislation contains all the bullets the RCMP and investigators need to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that a person is or is not guilty of a crime. It makes sense that we should give this type of protection to our ordinary citizens, whether they are law abiding or living on the edge of the law.