moved:
Motion No. 7
That Bill C-3, in Clause 11, be amended by replacing line 6 on page 9 with the following:
“exceeding five years; or”
Madam Speaker, I am the only member with a motion in Group No. 3, so I suppose that makes it somewhat exclusive on my part.
I would like to make some general comments first. Some members of the Reform Party have commented on the importance of ensuring that police have an investigative tool. The NDP supports this wholeheartedly.
The average police officer on the street today needs every bit of assistance he or she can have to investigate the commission of a crime and do their job properly. The NDP certainly supports them in the work they do and we hope this bill with its flaws will provide police officers with some of the investigate tools they require to properly bring to justice those who have committed crimes.
I make the distinction between the accused and the criminals purposely because a couple of my colleagues in this House, the hon. members for Calgary and Calgary West, said at different times when speaking about the NDP that we wanted to put the rights of the criminals ahead of the rights of the victims. Nothing could be further from the truth.
We want to ensure that the rights of the accused are balanced in the justice system. Certain members forget that one is not a criminal when one is accused. Certain members forget that anyone in this House, including the members who have used the terminology, can be accused of the most heinous crimes. They are not criminals at that point and indeed the reason we have safeguards in the system is that many people over the years have been wrongly convicted.
As a responsible and just parliament and as a society that takes its responsibilities seriously, we ensure there is a balance, that police have the necessary investigative tools to do their job and the courts have the proper rules to ensure innocent people go free and criminals are punished.
I move to my motion which increases the penalty for someone who violates the law. The current legislation provided by the government states in section 11:
Every person who contravenes subsection 6(6) or (7), section 8 or subsection 10(3) or (5)
(a) is guilty of an indictable offence and liable to imprisonment for a term not exceeding two years; or
(b) is guilty of an offence punishable on summary conviction and liable to a fine not exceeding $2,000 or to imprisonment for a term not exceeding six months, or to both.
Because we recognize how important DNA information is and how private it has to be, the act provides that no person who receives a DNA profile for entry into the databank shall use it or allow it to be used other than for the purposes set out in the administration of this act.
Anyone working in the laboratory who receives the DNA analysis must keep that information confidential and can use it only in the way parliament deems it should be used. Subsection (7) goes on to say:
(7) No person shall, except in accordance with this section, communicate or allow to be communicated a DNA profile that is contained in the DNA data bank or information that is referred to in subsection (1).
What I am saying in a capsule form is that the act makes it a crime to communicate improperly any information on any person's DNA. The maximum penalty for committing that crime is two years imprisonment. My motion says we should increase that penalty to a maximum of five years. We still have a minimum penalty that can be imposed. The courts have some discretion in determining how much of a penalty could be imposed.
The reason I suggest we do that is that, once again, the taking of the DNA and the index has to be kept regulated government and properly administered by the government. Anyone who breaches that should be considered breaking the law of this House and should pay a serious penalty. This would bring home to individuals how important it is to keep that privacy.
We live in a scandalous age in some ways. We have people selling love letters of the Princess of Wales for millions of dollars. We know that a taped interview of someone speaking to a political person can fetch thousands of dollars on the open market from the tabloids. We have to recognize that this most personal information, be it mine, be it anyone's watching the House debate tonight, be it anyone's on the government side or the opposition side, is so personal and so private that any attempt to communicate it other than provided by law ought to be punishable with a severe sentence. By increasing the sentence we would be sending out that message.
It is an important issue of law and order. Let me be very clear. The New Democratic Party is concerned about the safety of people in the communities of this country, those who are concerned about crime.
We also have a concern about misinformation that gets sent out to people. It was said in debate tonight that we know, we can take as a fact, that someone in our families will at some point be assaulted or be the victim of crime. That statement was said willy-nilly without a single statistic to back it up. Many people sitting in their living rooms watching this debate because we are parliamentarians accept with some respect what we say.