Mr. Speaker, it is important that the House understand the history of our DNA legislation and how it applies as an investigative tool for our police forces across the country.
Approximately five years ago, after quite a long investigation by various parliamentary committees, we finally had legislation with regard to taking DNA samples. The justice committee spent a good deal of time during the spring and fall of 2004 analyzing a new bill, which passed in the spring of 2005. This issue is back before the House because a number of points were missed in that legislation. This may be the Irish in me coming out, but I want to say “I told you so” because we rammed the initial bill through too quickly.
When we went to implement that law, it became apparent that a number of points needed to be corrected. That has now been done in Bill C-72. A good deal of these points concern forms that have to be updated to comply with the new legislation. Most came to the attention of the government as a result of a federal-provincial conference of attorneys general and solicitors general that was held in the late spring. There really is nothing in this bill that would not have been in it in the spring. We are going to support these changes because they are badly needed.
It is hard to say how effective this technology has been without pointing to specific cases. Another case was broken this week concerning a murder that happened about 21 years ago in one of the western provinces. Officials were able to make a positive match as a result of a DNA sample that was made available as a result of the legislation we passed in the spring. The person, who is in custody in Ontario for other crimes, has been charged with that murder because of the DNA evidence. That is being repeated many times.
It is really important that this legislation be in an effective format so that it can be used efficiently by our police forces across the country. For all these reasons, we will be supporting Bill C-72.