Public Safety committee  No, I'm not aware of any statistics we have on that. One of the problems is that names are a provincially regulated issue, and in most provinces--outside of Alberta and B.C.--there is no requirement for people, when they change their name legally, to submit fingerprints. So there is no way for us to verify that a person who has changed her name legally did or didn't have, for example, in particular a pardoned sexual offence.

Public Safety committee  Do you want to be specific? On the whole secret side?

Public Safety committee  Automation is the big piece. You can't drive that any faster than you can drive that. Yes, we could use more money, but we also realize that financially this is a very difficult situation for everybody, and there are other priorities. What those priorities are is a government decision.

Public Safety committee  It would be important to differentiate a couple of things here. First of all, if the person doesn't have any fingerprint holdings at all, then if we're doing the electronic submission it's going to be very fast, as we discussed. I don't know that we can give you an average of what it would be right now, because under the vulnerable sector we have all these fingerprints that were sent in manually, and as I mentioned, it's taking nine weeks at the current time before we can manage them.

Public Safety committee  RTID is in effect the automation of the criminal records system. It is a major crown project. I think it's fair to say that it's significantly more complex than anyone could have imagined when it first started, as is often the case with major undertakings such as this. As we have gone along, we have automated certain components, but that development is ongoing.

Public Safety committee  I'm going to say that it's significantly more complicated than that. While it's easy to say that more resources will solve the problem, it's really not that simple. We're going from several or many legacy systems to an automated system. There are all sorts of issues, such as how much equipment is available to even do the conversion.

Public Safety committee  Not that are active right now, but we are working with some to get them hooked up.

Public Safety committee  I'll allow Madame Dansereau to give you a little bit more detail on that, but just as a preliminary response to that, for the work that comes in right now, the fingerprints that are sent in on paper have to go through the same process once they get to us. The system can manage that already.

Public Safety committee  That's right, and in fact we would not enter those onto the criminal record system. The only time summary conviction offences are entered onto the system is when there is a charge that also includes either an indictable or a dual procedure offence.

Public Safety committee  That is correct.

Public Safety committee  No, there isn't. As I mentioned previously, the only legislation that requires submission is for young offenders.

Public Safety committee  That's correct.

Public Safety committee  Well, I think that's when we can issue them a document saying that they do not have a criminal record in Canada.

Public Safety committee  I'll let you take that.

Public Safety committee  I'll just give a sort of high-level answer to that, and then if my colleagues want to add something, I'll give them the opportunity. Many organizations out there use private companies to assist them in the screening process. A certain bank might use a private company to do all the screening for all of their employees across the country.