Public Safety committee  In terms of a pristine comparison sample taken specifically from an individual for purposes of comparing it to a crime scene sample, the preferred sample is a blood sample. It strikes the appropriate balance between ease of sampling and ability to obtain a sufficient amount of DN

Public Safety committee  It's blood.

Public Safety committee  We can all learn from each other. I don't think there's a single jurisdiction that is seen as being the Holy Grail of forensic DNA analysis. There are things to be learned from jurisdiction to jurisdiction, whether it's between the Centre of Forensic Sciences and the RCMP in Queb

Public Safety committee  It's a combination of both, and Dr. Prime alluded to this. As laboratory practitioners we are always looking for ways to work faster and more efficiently, but ultimately there's a limit to our ability to do the work. With the advent of Bill C-18, 1,500 additional cases are pred

Public Safety committee  I think Ray summarized it quite well. Fingerprints are different from DNA inasmuch as your fingerprint is not an inherited characteristic. You can't look at your parents, for example, and look at your own fingerprint and see similarities between the two. DNA is an inheritable c

Public Safety committee  That's a question that we get asked quite a lot. It's difficult, if not impossible, to conduct a meaningful survey--just to go back to your one example--of defence attorneys to determine what exactly has compelled their client to register a guilty plea. We know from police inve

Public Safety committee  If I can answer that, I'll take the so-called British mistake first. It's interesting to note—and you'll detect from my accent that I have some contacts back in my home country of the U.K.—that it's not referred to and not in fact known as the British mistake in the U.K. It's kno

Public Safety committee  I think it's important to understand that scientists don't work in a perfect world. Science is all about uncertainty and the unknown and moving forward to reveal information that improves confidence, but scientists don't deal in absolutes. As Ray has pointed out, with any hit to