Public Safety committee  That's possible, yes.

Public Safety committee  For employment purposes, there's much more leeway. There are private companies you could go to for employment purposes, and you could do the process through these private companies.

Public Safety committee  They'll be—

Public Safety committee  But they're also available on the Internet, so I don't know exactly how they've....

Public Safety committee  Well, no, you don't necessarily have to do fingerprints.

Public Safety committee  There's also a name-based check process that can be done. But it becomes a much narrower group that has to be fingerprinted. Through the new ministerial directive, whether it's for a vulnerable sector or for employment, if they have a criminal record they can disclose it to the police.

Public Safety committee  It's related to that, yes.

Public Safety committee  Yes.

Public Safety committee  The short answer is yes, but I will qualify it a little bit. We're still developing RTID, and we're not at the end stage yet. But theoretically there isn't anything to prevent that. We are currently making changes to RTID to strengthen it, to give it more capacity that way.

Public Safety committee  We do that through a variety of mechanisms. Once we had this technology up and running--had that done in October--in November I sent a letter to all chiefs of police across the country giving an update on where we were with vulnerable sector screening and some other things. In closing I also said that we now have this availability to connect electronically and encouraged them to do so.

Public Safety committee  For something like that, there are other mechanisms available for them to either have them taken through one of the private fingerprint companies that has LiveScan.... We wouldn't have anything against them if they went to another police service that has it, but it would obviously be something where that police service would have to be in agreement to do it.

Public Safety committee  I think that would be very difficult. Certainly right now we're encouraging police services to do so. We've had discussions at one point with our partners to say maybe we'll put a cutoff date and say by such and such a date we're not going to support maybe paper-based processes, but I think it's premature to say that right now.

Public Safety committee  I think we have to make a distinction. The DNA Identification Act does not allow us, people working at DNA databank, to know who is in that databank. That is the reason for having taken the DNA sample and also taking a fingerprint. However, if we don't have somebody entered into the national criminal record repository, through a legal process—which is a C-216 based on charges that we have to see and verify that allow us to enter it—we're not in a position to make that link between the DNA sample and a person.

Public Safety committee  The civil screening?

Public Safety committee  No, as long as it stays within the confines of the ministerial directive, which requires that the local police have jurisdiction to complete the vulnerable sector verification. But there would still be mechanisms for that to take place. We would be completely open to those kinds of set-ups as long as, as I say, they fall within the confines of the ministerial directive.