Mr. Speaker, it gives me great pleasure and honour to stand in the House today to discuss the need for effective information handling on sex offenders.
It is important to recognize that the Government of Canada is moving forward with a comprehensive solution to enhance public safety and increase the confidence of Canadians in our criminal justice system. It will be of interest to my colleagues to know that this would deal not only with sex offenders but with all offenders.
In 1999 an integrated justice information action plan was launched to create the Canada Public Safety Information Network, CPSIN. CPSIN is fundamentally about networking and sharing information electronically across the many jurisdictions in Canada's criminal justice system. All the practitioners within this system, police officers, parole or correctional officers, prosecutors, or customs and immigration officials at the border, have one thing in common: They need current, complete and timely information in order to make informed decisions that preserve public safety.
Included is information on sex offenders as well as critical information on violent offenders. What the government is doing in its integrated justice action plan is first and foremost enhancing public safety through the elimination of obstacles to quick and effective information sharing across the criminal justice system. This means being better equipped to locate and capture criminals, including sex offenders, as well as process them through the criminal justice business cycle. It also entails getting connected both locally and nationally.
In this future environment there would be a new tool to connect these sources, called a national criminal justice index, or NCJI. Through this index data could be gathered instantaneously and electronically from across the country and potentially from around the globe whether on sex offenders, terrorists, organized crime or any other type of criminal. Putting all the various pieces together electronically would create the Canada Public Safety Information Network which would support the information sharing that is crucial to ensuring public safety.
Within CPSIN police officers as well as other criminal justice stakeholders would be able to do a number of things that they could not do at the present time, such as: determine the correctional status of any person; access the complete criminal history, including sexual offences, of any person, including provincial infractions; and view a judge's sentencing rationale for a decision immediately upon being rendered.
At the federal level two key components of the initiative for the Royal Canadian Mounted Police would include, first, a renewal of the Canadian Police Information Centre, CPIC. CPIC is a national tool used by virtually every law enforcement official in Canada, including police, customs officers, correctional officials, immigration officers and various others. CPIC renewal would be the first critical step in the commitment to link criminal justice information. CPIC is accessed over 150 million times every year. The modernization of CPIC is well under way, being delivered in phases from the year 1999 and to be completed in 2005.
Second, it would include the police reporting and occurrence system, or PROS. This system would provide direct support to front line RCMP officers in their response to service calls, investigation of occurrences, the processing of individuals and the preparation of essential information for the RCMP, courts and external agencies by simplifying the process and reducing the time spent by officers on administrative and paperwork functions.
The conditional release system of the National Parole Board would provide enhanced support to assist National Parole Board members in making fully informed conditional release decisions in support of public safety, including those pertaining to sex offenders seeking parole.
Correctional Service of Canada would renew its offender management system through the use of modern technology to facilitate the exchange of information with criminal justice partners. Among other things, this would give it a better tool to prepare sex offenders and others for eventual reintegration into the communities following their sentence.
These systems are large and complex projects which would take several years to fully complete. To be successful, we would require these organizations to work together. It is important to establish a strong sense of partnership to have effective mechanisms for co-ordination. The machinery, as the minister indicated, is in place at the federal level and work has begun with the provinces toward a national approach.
Thus far, the co-operation between the partner organizations has been excellent, based on a shared sense of what is important and what is necessary. Everyone involved believes that they must move ahead as quickly as possible with an integrated justice information system. Much of this work is pioneering, for example, the work being done on data standards to facilitate the exchange of data between agencies.
It is important to note that the events of September 11 have made it all the more imperative for the government to move ahead quickly in advancing this integrated justice information initiative. Although this is not something that can be realized overnight, great strides are being made to achieve the complex but eminently worthwhile goal of an integrated justice information system.
The Canada Public Safety Information Network would be extremely helpful in addressing the handling of sex offender information as well as the information pertaining to all other criminals and offenders in Canada. We will continue, as the minister has stated, to work to ensure that we have the best possible tools available to protect Canadians.
The solicitor general explained a little earlier the importance of working together with our provincial and territorial partners on these files. We cannot have an effective national approach without a national consensus. That is why we cannot support the motion at the present time.