Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to engage in debate on Bill S-2 at the third reading stage. This is actually the first time I have had a chance to look through the bill at any depth or precision.
I have to say at the outset that my party and I support the bill both in principle and in much of its detail. As happens so often here, there may be minor details in a bill that are not to the liking of everyone, but we tend to give our bills marks out of 100 and anything that gets more than 50% or 60% seems to fly. However, in this case I too have some remarks on the bill, out of sensitivity for the area that we are legislating in.
The principle and thesis are good. We in the Liberal Party believe that more robust state intervention in documenting those who have committed sexual offences in the past would lead to improved police enforcement and greater protection for the general public. It is not just for the protection of children but for the general public.
I can accept that because, with 20/20 hindsight, there have been many public incidents across the country where sexual offenders have moved around and continued to commit offences without detection or at least without being apprehended. Most think that if these people had been properly documented, it would have allowed police to access records that might have allowed them to connect the dots, keep closer tabs and prevent offences of this nature.
One of the most important principles is the one that says inclusion of an offender on the sex offender registry should be based on risk to the public. It should not be seen as punishment. Punishment of a convicted sex offender should be handled by the court and the sentence should be appropriate. I think we all agree on that. However, the sex offender registry is intended to identify risk.
The approach of the government, as other colleagues have pointed out, raises the possibility of over-inclusion, of unnecessarily putting too many individuals in the registry, which may affect the workability of the registry. It essentially has to do with the efficiency with which the registry will be used to protect the public. I will come back to that later in my remarks.
The bill generally focuses on four classes of persons. Most of them, of course, are not controversial. The first one is persons convicted of offences of a sexual nature. The bill goes a long distance toward broadening the scope of those offences, and so there are a lot of different types of persons and offences now being included.
A second category is those who are not found guilty of a criminal offence of this nature but found not criminally responsible by reason of a mental disorder. In that case, there is no conviction but there is an offence. I will come back to that later as well. The third category is under the National Defence Act, for armed forces members who are not governed by the Criminal Code directly but by the National Defence Act.
The last category is individuals who come back to Canada having been convicted of this type of offence internationally. In most cases, they will have applied and been transferred back to Canada under an existing arrangement. The offence, conviction and facts are known, and there is a need to include some of those individuals in Canada's sex offender registry.
As I mentioned, this is not just a registry that lists a name, address and telephone number. The registry actually includes DNA, and here we are getting pretty much definitive identification. People who are required by court order to be included in the registry, or now in this legislation, virtually automatically, have to provide appropriate DNA samples, and that is recorded.
The bottom line, just in the overview of this bill, is that it is intended to enhance public safety and the existing procedures both for the appropriate inclusion of individuals, although the procedures in the bill are virtually automatic and do not directly address the issue of risk, and for access to the registry by police or appropriate police officers in Canada.
In reading the bill, I have to say I was rather struck by clause 2 of the bill. I am hoping I will have a chance to ask a question of a government member here later. Clause 2, for reasons that have not been explained, does not have anything to do with the sex offender registry, and it actually changes subsection 173(2) of the Criminal Code.
I know some of us will be uncomfortable when I go into this, but currently, subsection 173(2) criminalizes the exposing of genitals to a person who is under the age of 14. That is what the section was. I do not think it was ever explained, and in fact I took a look at the summary of the bill and it does not even mention this. This bill now criminalizes that same act for persons under 16. At first blush, one might ask what the difference is between 14 and 16 for exposing genitals, and I have to say—