Madam Speaker, I thank the hon. member for Elk Island for his indirect compliment that he was not completely offended by what I had to say.
I do wish to add that I would be very disappointed if as a result of my remarks I were to be painted as somebody who sympathizes with criminals and will give the benefit of the doubt to criminals before the victims. We always must remember that no one is a criminal until he or she is convicted.
One of the difficulties with this debate in the whole pursuit to try to bring people to justice and to spare victims injury from the acts of criminals is that we must always bear in mind that people are innocent until proven guilty before the courts. There is no question if somebody is convicted that all the DNA sampling in the world ought to be available to the police authorities.
My reservation is before a conviction. This is where I have difficulties with the position taken by some members of the opposition. This is something we have to give second thought to.
The member for Elk Island drew the analogy with blood samples in drunk driving cases, when there is a possibility of charges being laid in the case of drunk driving. I suggest to him that in the very analogy he brings forth there is still some doubt about whether or not this is an infringement of a person's individual rights. We do believe in this country, or we used to believe, as far as I know, that we were not to be required to testify against ourselves. There always has been a problem even with respect to the breathalyzer and whether the breathalyzer takes it too far when it comes to getting the evidence from a person as a result of charges being laid.
I will make one final comment. DNA sampling is a far more invasive and intrusive process than a blood sample or a breathalyzer in that it actually gets genetic information. This is big brother. This is the new world order. We have to be cautious as a government and a parliament when we debate these issues.