Madam Speaker, I have a few comments to make. I want to emphasize how important this bill is in terms of removing the discretion to register, both in respect of the sex registry and DNA, to take DNA samples. It is absolutely essential and has nothing to do with, as some have suggested, not respecting the judiciary.
If one understands the administrative complications of actually obtaining a conviction and then having to bring those people back to court at a later date, one understands the complications that the police face. This is why hundreds of these people have in fact fallen between the cracks. Much like there is automatic fingerprinting in certain cases, such as when a person has been charged with an indictable offence, this would deal with mandatory registration upon conviction and it would eliminate a number of administrative steps that have only intervened to cause serious delays and therefore allowed these individuals to not be registered. From a practical prosecutorial point of view and from a police point of view, this measure is absolutely essential.
The second point I want to make, very briefly, is with respect to this distinction that we make between those offenders who are so-called violent offenders and those who are property offenders.
If one goes back to the record when this bill on DNA was first brought forward by the former Liberal government, there was a British expert who said, to suggest that these two groups of people are distinguishable is simply wrong. To get all the indictable offences under DNA where there has been a conviction--in Britain, in fact, it is when a person is charged--would allow police to cross-reference. Many times, people who are guilty of house burglary will also be found to be sexual assaulters, or guilty, indeed, of crimes like murder.
That is something that this bill would not do, but I think we need to examine that entire issue. That has not yet been addressed.