Mr. Speaker, I am glad to have the opportunity to speak in this debate. It gives me occasion to raise with all members what I think is quite an important issue which spins off from the debate about DNA sampling.
I will first address the DNA sampling issue as I see it. If I were on the other side of the Chamber and if I were listening to groups like the Canadian Police Association, I would indeed take the stand I hear from those on the other side. Fair is fair.
There are some good grounds for believing that if DNA samples were taken on charge there would be advantages in tracking down criminals and bringing more safety to our streets. I do not think there is any doubt that the more tools we can give our law enforcement officers, tools which they demand and want, the better they can carry out their jobs.
However, I must be frank with members opposite and tell them why I cannot support that position. I sympathize with what they are saying, but I cannot support it. And this is me speaking, not the government. The reason is that DNA sampling takes personal identification to a much higher level than just fingerprinting.
We heard people say earlier in the House that DNA sampling on charge is not much different from taking fingerprints. They said that taking fingerprints had not been a problem with respect to the charter of rights. Actually, there had been a problem. When the breathalyzer test procedure was first introduced it was challenged before the supreme court, which found that while on the surface it would appear that forcing people to give breath or blood samples appeared to be contrary to their charter rights, there was an element of reasonableness in the procedure, the good it did for society, which permitted the courts to uphold the principle of taking a breathalyzer test or a blood sample at the time of charge, or at least forcing them to be taken.
If we go from fingerprinting to breathalyzer testing to DNA sampling, we go into an enormous domain that goes much beyond simply blowing into a container. The problem with DNA sampling is that it is the ultimate fingerprint.
DNA sampling is based on the fact that each one of us as individuals contains unique sets of DNA markers on our chromosomes. Consequently, any sample is believed, at least so far science tells us, to be uniquely identifiable with an individual. One can see where this could be an enormous crime fighting tool.
But a DNA sample is like a tattoo that we all carry. All that has to happen is for an authority to peel away a tiny bit of skin, reveal the tattoo, put it on the record and there it remains.
This is where the difficulty comes about. It was only 55 years ago that a similar tattooing procedure existed in Europe. I do not want members opposite to get excited about this because I am not casting aspersions on their position. But the reality is that at one time in European history tattooing became a useful tool of the police forces to keep track of undesirables in society. These undesirables were Jews, gypsies and the mentally infirm.
We know where that led in the end. That led to a genocide that this world has not forgotten and I hope never will. It was a systematic genocide. It was conducted with the agreement of the state, using police forces.
The problem is that when we come to something like the absolute identification of us as individuals, we become that much closer to that type of state interference in our personal and private lives which led to the atrocities that finally occurred in Nazi Germany.
I am not saying that this could happen in Canada, although we have to always remember in a democracy that there is always the danger that if we allow the state too much intrusion into the privacy of the individual, into the identity of the individual, we run the very serious risk of becoming a cipher, of becoming a tattoo, and if the state or the police get a little out of control, then the rights of citizens can indeed be destroyed.
It is an ethical issue that disturbs me. I am not saying that a DNA sampling at charge is necessarily not the thing to do. What I am saying is that it is too early for us as as a parliament to make that grand a decision. We have to go out into the community and, over time, talk to the people who are concerned about ethics in society: talk to the church, talk to all those who are worried about the human dignity of being an individual, rather than a number. When we look back at the tattooing that was done during the period of Nazi Germany, what distresses us most is not just the death it led to, it is the fact that human beings were reduced to numbers.
I say that DNA itself is nothing more than a human bar code of the 1990s. Before we engage in using this as a tool for the police we have to have a very serious debate, not just with parliamentarians, not just with the police, but also with church leaders and others. I would think the Jewish community might have something to say about this whole question.
Nevertheless, the real point that I came before the House to discuss was not the DNA sampling because it is an ethical issue. I did not expect to change the minds of those opposite because they are charged to be in the opposition and to speak in opposition to government bills. But one of the things that disturbs me in this whole debate is that I, like every MP, received correspondence from the Canadian Police Association, lobbying heavily to have DNA sampling accepted at charge rather than after conviction. I have no problem with the Canadian Police Association lobbying for this because it is very concerned about successful law enforcement.
Where I have the problem is that the letter I received from the Canadian Police Association contained a threat. What it basically said was that if I as a parliamentarian did not agree with the Canadian Police Association, that if I chose not to—that is, not to support the position of the Canadian Police Association—the letter tells me that “we as police officers will be forced to explain to the grieving family members that his or her government had the information and the ability to prevent such an act of violence but chose not to”.
What is happening is that the Canadian Police Association has taken it upon itself, in this instance and in other instances, to apply political pressure on the people in this Chamber to do what the Canadian Police Association thinks is right.
Also I refer to the campaign that was conducted by the Canadian Police Association during the last election in which it took out huge billboards showing pictures of known murderers and compared those people to the local Liberal MPs who rejected the private member's bill that would have made retroactive the legislation regarding the faint hope clause. It would have made it retroactive so that no convicted killers could go before the early parole procedure which then existed. Our justice minister changed that provision but did not make it retroactive. The billboards occurred during the election campaign. They were propaganda and they lied.
During an election we accept a bit of stretching the truth. It occurs not only among politicians during an election, but among the special interest groups that back one political party or another. We accept that. However, what was happening in this case was that we had a police body engaging in an attempt to influence politicians.
This is an issue of great concern to parliamentarians. The British parliamentary tradition is that the legislators, the courts and the police are supposed to be separate. I cannot interfere in a police investigation or with the courts. The courts cannot interfere with the politicians, and so it should have been with the police. It has always been our tradition that the police do not attempt to put direct pressure on politicians.
This is now occurring in Toronto as well. The Toronto police association is attacking local politicians over their attitude toward the special investigation unit.
I suggest that this is a serious threat to our fundamental democracy in parliament and every parliamentarian has to be very concerned. The reason we have our own police force in the House of Commons and not a state police force, the RCMP or any other body, is because of the tradition that parliament has to keep the police and the military separate from politics. I hope the police association hears my remarks and considers very carefully what it has been doing in the past.