Proceedings of the Standing Senate Committee on
Legal and
Constitutional Affairs
Issue 43 - Evidence - Evening sitting
OTTAWA, Wednesday, November 25, 1998
The Standing Senate Committee on Legal and Constitutional Affairs, to which was referred Bill C-3, respecting DNA identification and to make consequential amendments to the Criminal Code and other Acts, met this day at 7:04 p.m. to give consideration to the bill.
Senator Lorna Milne (Chairman) in the Chair.
[English]
The Chairman: This is the committee's second meeting on Bill C-3, which provides for the establishment of a national DNA data bank to be maintained by the Commissioner of the RCMP and used to assist law enforcement agencies in solving crimes.
The bill was passed by the House of Commons on September 29, 1998, and received first reading in the Senate the next day. The bill received second reading on October 22, meaning that the Senate has now approved this bill in principle. Bill C-3 was then referred to this committee for detailed consideration. That consideration began earlier today with the appearance of Mr. Jacques Saada, Parliamentary Secretary to the Solicitor General of Canada, the minister responsible for Bill C-3.
The committee will now hear two witnesses from the Central Forensic Laboratory of the RCMP. They are Mr. Barry Gaudette, Chief Scientist, and Dr. Ron Fourney, Research Scientist, DNA Methods and Data Bank.
Following some introductory remarks by Mr. Gaudette, there will be a slide presentation by Dr. Fourney. Then there will be questions and answers.
We welcome you both. Please proceed.
Mr. Barry Gaudette, Chief Scientist, Central Forensic Laboratory of the RCMP: Madam Chairman, we are very pleased to be here tonight. We had the privilege of sitting in on some of the discussions earlier this afternoon. We hope that what we are able to give you tonight will contribute to your understanding of this legislation and help you in your consideration of it.
The best place to start is with some introductions. First, I should like to introduce my colleague, Dr. Fourney. Dr. Ron Fourney joined the RCMP forensic labs in 1988 following a distinguished career in cancer research. His initial contribution to the RCMP was that he was one of a group of people who was instrumental in getting our DNA program operational in the RCMP forensic labs. Without Dr. Fourney and his contribution, we certainly would not be in the place we are today.
About three years ago, he was designated to head up our new DNA data bank unit in the RCMP. He can bring a lot to that position. I am sure he will give you some good explanations this evening.
As for myself, I have been with the RCMP since 1969. As mentioned earlier, my job title is Chief Scientist, Biology. As part of my duties in that job, I oversee a group that is responsible for providing operational support to all of the people in our six forensic laboratories who conduct DNA case work and other case work in our biology sections. We have 80-odd people across the country doing that work. Our group provides support in terms of quality assurance, training, and other logistical and administrative support.
I am also responsible for providing scientific and policy advice to RCMP senior management and various government agencies. It was in that role that I first became involved with the DNA data bank and DNA data bank legislation back in 1992. I was co-chair of an internal RCMP committee on the DNA data bank.
In 1994, I was invited to become a part of a Department of Justice working group on DNA legislation. That eventually lead to the passage of Bill C-104, the DNA warrant scheme. In 1995, the Department of the Solicitor General formed a working group. I was invited to be part of that. In 1996, I was part of a consultation team on the DNA data bank that went across the country. I have been working in this area ever since.
Mr. Ron Fourney, Research Scientist, DNA Methods and Data Bank: Madam Chairman and honourable senators, it is indeed a privilege for me to be here tonight. As a molecular biologist, I feel like a fish out of water. I have never been in the Senate before, let alone a witness in such a forum. There have been many interesting questions this afternoon, many of which are technically oriented.
I took the liberty of completely redoing my talk while you were out at supper, and I put in many slides that I hope will present some of the technical issues and perhaps answer some of the questions that you posed earlier this afternoon. It will be my pleasure to answer any questions after the presentation. I have given some handouts to the clerk. One is a handout both in French and English on the national DNA data bank and the second is a general paper I wrote for an American journal a few years ago on the basic concepts of DNA. Many of your questions stemmed from an interest in the technology and how it will be applied. It is important to recognize how we are harnessing that technology.
Unlike Mr. Gaudette, my job is fairly simple. I am just supposed to make the science work for the benefit of justice in Canada. You have a difficult problem in addressing some of these issues and making the science work in a legislative manner.
As Mr. Gaudette told you, I am part of a unique section in the RCMP. We are responsible for harnessing the science, in particular the DNA technology, and looking at how it will be applied in the Canadian system.
DNA science in general is a very early comer to the technologies in forensics. DNA technology started along this path in 1983 on November 21 when the body of Linda Mann, a 15 year old, was found about 15 feet up a path a few miles outside of Leicester, England. At that time, after doing every known test, and they did not have DNA at the time, they were able to match approximately 10 per cent of the male population in England. It was not very discriminatory. Three years later, another young victim, Dawn Ashworth, was found murdered about five miles away. The same situation applied. The testing that was done at that time involved proteins, and essentially it matched 10 per cent of the male population.
A geneticist out of Leicester by the name of Alec Jeffries -- now Sir Alec Jeffries, as he was knighted for his work on DNA typing -- was working with an evolutionary study. He was interested in how genes, the genetic building blocks that encode the basic functions in the body, evolved. In fact, he found a discrete piece of DNA that seemed to be variable from person to person, and he zeroed in on that. That is really the story and the history of DNA typing and the very first time DNA typing was applied. Soon after the second murder a young kitchen porter was picked up. I believe he signed a confession. He knew the second victim. There was a proximity situation where they could place him at the scene of the crime. The police thought they had the right person. When they did the DNA typing, Dr. Jeffries actually answered two very important questions. First, both young teenagers were assaulted and murdered by the same individual. Second, they had arrested the wrong person. On November 21, 1986, the young kitchen porter made legal history as the first person to be exonerated through the use of genetic evidence.
As I talk here, you must realize that we are dealing with a double-edged sword. It provides information for the prosecution of offences, but it is also the number one exoneration tool in forensics today.
This is what DNA looks like. It is deoxyribonucleic acid. It is a very unique molecule in your body composed of only three components, an organic base of sugar and a phosphate background. The bottom line is that it allows us to do certain things that are extremely important to forensics.
Essentially, the genetic molecule looks like a double helix. You inherit half from mother and half from father. When all is said and done, it is a very complicated molecule. From a forensic DNA-typing point of view, it is highly discriminating. No two people in the world have the same DNA typing except identical twins, and they are in fact clones.
Genetic continuity is extremely important for forensic continuity. The DNA you are born with will be the DNA you die with. Every cell in your body has the same DNA molecule.
It is sensitive. We do not need very much. The technology is evolving partly because we are able to do much more with smaller amounts left at the crime scene and partly because of stability. That is a key component to forensics. We have been doing case work now going back 17 years and 20 years and more where old stains are found at the scene of the crime. We are able to process them and provide DNA evidence and in some cases exonerate individuals.
We are in the situation of human identification. These two young FBI agents training in Quantico are composed of genetic molecules. We know certain things about these individuals. They are probably brothers and, in fact, they have inherited from mom and dad part of their basic DNA or their genetic blueprint. They got one band from dad and a second band from mom.
I am pleased with this particular result. First of all, these are my children. It was not that I was concerned about any kind of paternity question, but we have a situation here that clearly shows from a genetic point of view the importance of DNA. You inherit a different pattern from your mom and dad. These individuals are truly unique but distinguishable through their biological heritage. This shows genetic continuity. It is very sensitive, unique, and highly discriminating.
Over the last 10 years, we have developed several technologies. How quickly the technology has evolved is one of the reasons that we are interested in the data bank and in maintaining some of the actual samples. Probably nothing except perhaps computer technology has kept pace with biotechnology. As a molecular biologist, when I worked in cancer diagnostics and molecular evolution 10 or 12 years ago I did many of these things by hand, and now they are done by machines.
The second major generation or technology revolution was what we called the preliminary chain reaction. In 1993, Kary Mullis got the Nobel Prize for that work. I will try to simplify this to show you how important it is that the technology applied to the data base is the current technology we use in case work today.
Preliminary chain reaction is much faster than previous procedures we have used. When we first started ten years ago, we needed a blood sample the size of a quarter. Now it requires very small amounts of sample. What would fit on the head of a pin would be satisfactory. It works extremely well in degraded material. This new technology works well on old case work. It is excellent for data base considerations because you need only a small amount, and it is very fast. It is amenable to automation, and through automation there are certain quality-assurance measures that can be put in place.
I will go through in the national data bank to tell you some of our plans and how we expect we will harness this technology. This is the technology that was used in Desert Storm and Desert Shield to identify the casualties of those particular wars. When an armoured personnel carrier, for example, was hit by a missile, five people perished, and the largest piece of material left of an individual was probably the size of your hand. With this technology, even following the incineration and the total devastation of that human being, they were able to distinguish those people. It is a very powerful tool.
This technology has applications in molecular anthropology. We do not think this gentleman was murdered but we do know that he is about 4,500 years old. This is the iceman found near the Italian and German-Austrian border. Currently, scientists in Austria, Italy and Germany are looking at the DNA profiles on this person to find out how we have evolved in the last 4,000 or 5,000 years.
This technology was also used to identify the last remains of the Russian Royal Family, Czar Nicholas and his family. That was done at the Forensic Science Service, which is located in the United Kingdom. After 70 years or more of samples that had been burned, buried twice and had had acid poured on them, the scientists were able to retain a DNA sample that allowed them to identify those individuals.
We used that technology for the identification of 222 people who died aboard Swissair flight 111 on September 2. My group and the entire forensic laboratory in the RCMP, as well as the Centre for Forensic Science in Toronto, were tasked with forming a national DNA task force to identify them. We looked at 1,206 crash-scene samples, 298 family record samples -- that is, samples from people who were relatives of those who were killed -- and 89 personal effects such as hair brushes, baby soothers, blankets and favourite toys. Using DNA technology and other current methodologies such as dental records, x-rays and fingerprints, we have so far been able to identify all but six of the 222 people. There was one set of identical twins aboard the flight. The best we could do was to identify that they were identical twins and we know who their parents were. Those people are in the process of being notified.
In this case, the identification technology applied was successful. It was a uniform method and it was the largest single DNA identification procedure used in a national mass disaster to date in the world. The same procedure will be used for the national DNA database.
This technology also allows us to get DNA evidence from receivers such as bloodstains. Old bones, cigarette butts, postage stamps and chewing gum all provide key information when left at the scene of a crime.
I will now try to simplify my explanation about the technology. We search the exhibits and do a presumptive test that tells whether there is blood, saliva or semen located there. We extract the DNA and clean it from all the proteins and molecular constituents of a cell. It is then put into a thermocycler, which is a like a molecular Xerox machine. By adding labelled dyes and enzymes, we are able to amplify those unique pieces of DNA that distinguish you from your brother and from your neighbour and make you unique. That material is run on a sequencer.
We will talk quite a bit about this because it stems from questions that were asked this afternoon about the technical limitations of the technology and why we cannot cut a piece of the DNA out of the whole puzzle. It produces a nice pattern like this and the entire information is incorporated into a digital database with computers.
I will not go into this in great detail, but we split apart the pieces of DNA. The yellow and orange areas are the pieces that are different from person to person. We then amplify those, using enzymes to make more copies. That will enable us to get more information from a smaller amount of material.
Senator Beaudoin: What do you call that?
Mr. Fourney: It is called preliminary chain reaction or PCR. It is probably the single most important technology developed in this century. It will make billions for people and will become the diagnostic tool of the future. It is certainly the key element used in forensic applications today.
This is what a molecular Xerox machine looks like. We put all of the ingredients into a tube, including the target primer, for example, the piece of DNA that we took from the crime scene, and we amplify it.
This slide shows an actual sequencer. This is the type of equipment that we use to run it. I want to show you how it is hooked into a computer. There is a big plate here. We actually segregate the DNA into size fragments using an electrophoresis current. It is like a molecular race. We cut the DNA into small pieces but they are different sizes. We load them on to what we call an acrylimide gel between glass plates. It is like pouring cement, only it is a clear solution. We then apply a current and it becomes a molecular race. The small pieces go off the bottom faster than the larger pieces. It allows the DNA to be segregated into different fragments.
This is what we are currently using today. There are nine different tests here. On this slide, you can probably barely see how there are two bands as opposed to a single band. That person is a male and the rest are all females. This distinguishes between the X and Y chromosomes. If you have a Y chromosome, we presume you are male and you will have two bands; if you are female, it comes across as a single band. All of the other tests and various colours are lined up so that the largest are at the top and the smallest are at the bottom. These red ones are like rulers that allow us to measure the size of the fragment. Each one of these tests has a unique association with that individual. An individual may share one pattern with someone else. However, when you put nine of these patterns together, the discrimination is one in 93 billion. The most common pattern that we expect to see in the Canadian Caucasian population is 180 million. It is a powerful technology.
When I give talks to my sons' grade 6 and grade 8 classes, I compare DNA to building blocks. Essentially, that is what DNA is. It is your genetic blueprint. You have three billion pieces of DNA all stuck together into your chromosomes in every single cell. If we say that three-centimetre Lego blocks are representative of the DNA found in your cells, you would have enough DNA, or Lego blocks, to cover 90,000 kilometres of coast line -- that is, the entire coast line of Canada. Out of those 90,000 kilometres of DNA Lego blocks, the only difference between two people is 90 kilometres. Approximately 0.1 per cent of the DNA is different. As a forensic scientist, I am interested in the differences among people.
In molecular diagnostics and in medicine, they are often looking for other components. However, people interested in the application or the evolution of DNA are looking for pieces of DNA that do not code for anything, that are, essentially, anonymous. Those pieces can differ from person to person. Something that is important will not be different. If it is important enough to have the correct hemoglobin specified in the genetic pool, it will not change because if it changed it could have a dramatic effect.
Today we know a lot about DNA. Scientists all over the world are trying to sequence the entire genetic code of a human being. That is the single largest scientific task. In fact, it is probably larger than the American space program. They want to put all three billion of Lego blocks side by side and eventually be able to distinguish which pieces of Lego blocks may code for predisposition to breast cancer, and so on. That is what I was interested in before I got into forensic science.
As I said, as forensic scientists, we are interested in everything that does not code for anything. That is to say, we are looking at anonymous pieces of DNA. By international convention with Venice in 1993, forensic scientists all over the world agree that we will take STR markers -- that is, short tandem repeat -- or pieces of DNA. By convention, the only ones that we are permitted to use in forensics are those that do not predict any medical, physical or mental characteristics.
We have developed working groups and professional associations not only with our forensic counterparts but also with world-class population geneticists, cancer and medical applications specialists, even agricultural and veterinarian medicine. We are interested in working with people to develop standards.
We are members of the Technical Working Group for DNA Analysis Methods. That is a group sponsored in North America and hosted by the FBI. About 40 labs get together and we go through problems, trying to solve those concerns and issues that are similar to those that you had this afternoon.
We do it from a scientific, technical and forensic application. We have working groups in order to have conventions for naming the DNA, standardization, and specific procedures. We wish to share databases in the future, provided that safeguards are in place. If we do not have the same approach to developing the data, we will never be able to share that data. It is important for us to have certain standards and quality-assurance measures that allow us to do that.
There are six RCMP forensic labs, our own lab here in Ottawa, and two provincial labs, one in Montreal and one in Toronto. As a group, we share information as well. We just had a meeting in October regarding certain aspects of DNA typing.
Similarly, we are working with 26 other forensic laboratories in North America, including the FBI, and we have looked at many different and anonymous pieces of DNA. We have adopted 13 sets of standards that are applied and used in North America. Many of those are also applied and used in Europe.
Part of the rationale for accepting those standards is that we can specify certain quality assurance and scientific measures as safeguards. Genetic privacy comes up here. When the molecular geneticists or human population geneticists talk, for instance, even to this group, they are concerned about certain parts of DNA, but we have already looked at standards with world experts. Those are exactly the pieces of DNA that we need to look at, specifically because they do not code for any known function.
As a result, we have developed two mechanisms, 13 systems. This is what they look like in a gel, separated into fragments, and this is exactly the technology that we applied in the identification of victims of the Swissair crash.
When I worked in cancer diagnostics, the samples I got were frozen in liquid nitrogen and handed to me by an operating theatre nurse. I would go up to my lab, extract the DNA and look for predispositions of triggers for breast cancer. As forensic scientists, we look at samples that have been buried, found 20 years after the fact, exposed to manmade insult, fire, chemicals. They will also be exposed to environmental insults, like Swissair flight 111 was, buried in the ocean at 190 feet for two months.
The procedures we use must go through a tremendous amount of verification, validation and testing. When we settle on a series of STR loci, or a series of DNA tests, it is by no small consequence that it is chosen. We have been working with this since 1990 and we are only now developing procedures that are robust enough to be used in a database.
From the point of view of a research scientist coming from an academic arena, I think scientists should be asked how many times they have tested their procedures under water, exposed them to chemicals, sunlight, you name it, and over what period of time -- three, four, six, or 10 years. The procedures must work and must give the right results.
With respect to the national DNA data bank and technology advancement, one of the questions that came up was why we would want to retain samples. Given how rapidly the technology is moving, we want to be able to address and utilize the best procedures, not only scientifically but also legally and possibly even from a security point of view. For instance, if for some reason down the road someone finds that you are predisposed to schizophrenia, we cannot use that test any more. We must find a new one. We must go back and revisit the question. Therefore, it becomes very important for us to have the ability to resample the actual initial samples.
I will give you an idea of how fast this has moved. When I worked at the Alberta Cancer Board, we looked at that type of DNA profile. Imagine going into court and saying that this sample matches that one. We would have a tough time. It was reduced to something like that within a few years.
This is an example of an RFLP, or restriction fragment length polymorphism, test from 1989. These are bloodstains found in the trunk of a car. They match a tooth that was pulled out of a Dumpster where the body of a young female was incinerated with several gallons of gasoline and was rendered to a few pounds of bone. There were a couple of teeth in there. We were able to pull the bone marrow out and get a DNA profile that matched back to the victim's car where the body was transported. This is tough technology capable of picking out very challenging samples.
Less than 10 years ago it took eight or nine weeks to perform one test. Now we have a procedure whereby we are able to process 1,204 samples in less than two months using nine different tests simultaneously with a fluorescent marker and the whole thing is quality assured for sequencing. As a further example of how fast this technology has changed, the first thermocycler I used as a post-doctorate student is now on display in the British science museum. The bottom line is that this technology is extremely powerful.
We would go to a crime scene, pick out the most important samples, and log the others away. The discriminating samples that are important to the case will be processed in the forensic lab, tagged with unique identification, and run through the sequencer, producing this type of gel format, this colour profile. We can do better than that. We can actually render this very complicated pattern. For example, in this case, which was a sexual assault, person 9 matches person 11. The victim is in fact person 10. We were able to separate the DNA component from the male semen and the female vaginal swabs. The DNA determined from the semen stain containing the spermatozoa matches the accused here. That person was exonerated. There are control standards.
We can render the procedures and results to look like this. We do not need to use a gel picture. We can actually use profiles. It does not take much practice for people to quickly relate to the fact that these two are very similar and this is an automatic exclusion. Once again, this is a very important technology for exoneration.
Let us get back to what can we do with the technology itself. We have different ways of harnessing the actual genetic information. Apart from the fact that it is anonymous pieces of DNA, we can take this raw data, run it through this process and come up with a pattern that is essentially a series of numbers. The entire genetic pattern now is rendered to a series of numbers. That is what we will be using in the national DNA data bank. We are interested only in the DNA that is discriminatory and unique to an individual. The actual profile storage of the data that we will use for matching are these series of numbers, not unlike a bar code.
I also wish to indicate that we have come a long way with the actual technology for deciphering the DNA. We will take a bloodstained card or a swab from inside the mouth or even hair for the database. I have some sample kits if you want to see what they look like. These sample kits were actually used in the Swissair disaster where we had to send several hundred sample cards to 12 different countries throughout the world in an effort to obtain reference standards from relatives. We had brothers, sisters, mothers, fathers and grandparents contribute samples on these cards.
We took a punch and a one millimetre cut-out of this blood stain. That is all we needed to do to generate the pattern. Even there, we only used about one-three hundredth of the total volume. We are not using very much of the sample and it is controlled in a process that will only render a specific type of information.
The DNA database is what I would call the next revolution in forensic identification. Before we had operational casework; now we have a forensic investigative database. That is exactly what it is, an investigative tool. We will use this as a resource to compare crime scenes from across the nation and also to compare to previous patterns of DNA profiles established from convicted offenders. Remember, these people have been convicted of a particular designated crime.
The database itself can link crimes together or direct the investigation towards a particular offender. Any further processing in a court of law, from a forensic operational perspective, will require you to go back and obtain a DNA sample from that individual. It is that sample that is reprocessed for the actual forensic case.
The database is like a library. It is meant to point people in the right direction. It does not contain any personal identification, nor does it contain any crime scene information. It does not contain any information on known disease, or any physical or mental characteristics. This is truly anonymous DNA.
The criminal offender index is something to which other countries refer. As indicated by one of my colleagues today, unlike the Forensic Science Service, which can obtain a suspect database, in Canada we can only develop a convicted offender database based on when a person is charged with a particular crime. The crime scene index refers to anonymous pieces of DNA found at the scene of a crime.
We predict that there will be roughly 18,700 primary offences per year and up to 94,000 secondary offences. That is a lot of secondary offences, but it is at a judge's discretion. If we assume it is 10 per cent of what we may see, you can calculate that on average approximately 28,000 samples will be processed per year.
This next slide is very busy so I will not go into it in detail. It portrays the figures found in the handouts. It goes through the crime scene and shows the processing. It then comes down to how this actually will be searched. We will go to that now.
From a crime scene point of view, the laboratory will develop a profile at a crime scene. Essentially, there is no preconceived idea of whom that matches. It is a DNA profile found at a crime scene. It will be submitted only in the alphanumeric numbers, the bar code numbers. It will have a unique identifier and will name the submitting agency. It could be the Centre for Forensic Sciences in Toronto. For example, this is the identifier of the sample, the Centre of Forensic Sciences and their case reference file. All the pertinent information regarding that crime scene sample does not exist in the national database. It is in their case reference file. It will give you the date of submission and this genetic profile. This is what will be searched in the database.
All I can tell you from a crime scene point of view is where it came from and when it was submitted. I can also tell you the digital bar code, which does not code for any known medical, physical or mental characteristic. I cannot tell you if it is blood or semen, nor can I tell you if it is a certain individual. I cannot tell you how old it is. All that information is contained within the operational laboratory because that is their case reference file.
I could have a similar number coming in from the Centre for Forensic Sciences. Earlier on, our forensic laboratory in Vancouver might have submitted another sample from a crime scene. Well, they match. We would make the match and then notify both submission laboratories that there is a match. It is up to the laboratories at that time to pursue the case, cross-reference the file, and obtain further samples to carry on the operational case load. Essentially, we are a library of information.
This slide should read "convicted criminal offender index." If it matches an individual who was previously processed in the Convicted Offender Index, we will only be able to identify that person through the criminal history file, which is maintained in another section. They will be able to notify the laboratory.
At this point, the national DNA database still does not know whom the samples are from in the Convicted Offender Index. We maintain an arm's length policy where we do not want to know the name of the person who contributed the genetic profile. This can only be deciphered if the same fingerprint number can be deciphered. It has to go through another agency, in this case the convicted criminal index file.
Let us talk about considerations of genetic privacy. I was interested in your concerns, which I think are justified. As a scientist, I have a slightly different perspective. I think there are four aspects to privacy -- the scientific, the legal, the logistic and the physical.
With respect to the scientific aspect, only 0.1 per cent of a person's total human DNA is different. We are not looking at whether you are schizophrenic, or have a predisposition to breast cancer, or any other mental or physical attribute. We are looking at variations in a personal profile that are truly unique. They do not code for anything. Very few regions of human DNA are discriminating enough and have been validated by us for this purpose. None of the regions are code for any other ailment. This point is totally different from a medical perspective.
When Dr. Robert Korneluk found the myotonic distrophy gene at CHEO in Ottawa, he went through families looking for cross-referencing, similarities and differences between carriers of the gene. We are not interested in that because there is not enough discrimination. We are not in the business of looking at mental, physical or medical abnormalities.
Through international agreement, policy has been set exactly as to which STR or DNA typing standards will be used. Through international agreement and in collaboration with the leading scientists in the field of human genetic population biology and medical molecular biology, a strict set of guidelines have been adopted regarding the use of DNA for forensic analysis. We shared in the drafting of those documents through TWIGDAM, the Technical Working Group for DNA Analysis Methods, and other international agencies.
From the legal point of view, any unauthorized use of the DNA profile and/or samples will constitute a criminal offence.
From a logistical point of view, all samples entering the national database can only be identified through a fingerprint reference number if they are taken from a convicted offender. Samples from the crime scene only have specific information, none of which identify the individual, the nature of the sample or the age. None of that information was there.
The only way we can cross-reference these samples is through a fingerprint identification number maintained and processed by the Canadian Criminal Services Unit, which maintains the Canadian criminal history filings.
From a logistical point of view, no personal identification is in the national DNA database. Even if I wanted to tell you who it was, I could not.
Senator Beaudoin: Why?
Mr. Fourney: All the samples are encoded with a unique number which is controlled at the operational lab from which the crime scene case came or the convicted offender sample which is processed through a finger print identification number, to which I do not have access for the identity of the individual.
From a physical point of view, the access to the data bank and samples will be strictly limited to specific personnel. For secure physical limitations, we are currently building a new laboratory, which will house the national DNA data bank. Once it is finished, I invite all of you to visit.
We will have special computer terminals, protected with passwords and log-in restrictions for data transmission and all the transmission will be encrypted. Even if the transmission-encrypted data were broken from a secure terminal by breaking into an operational lab, it would not mean anything. It is a series of anonymous pieces of DNA that do not code for any attribute.
The deciphering of any interpretable data will require access to the criminal history file or the original case reference file. It would be more difficult than trying to access it through a laboratory like the national DNA data bank. In summary, access is restricted. The data itself is close to non-information. Linking to any specific individual can only be done through criminal history or operational case files. In the end, there is no personal information.
The issue of pardons and a national DNA data bank is being addressed as we speak. I can tell you how I see it possibly working from our perspective.
A flag will be posted on CPIC, the Canadian Police Information Centre, to indicate that an individual has been entered into the Convicted Offender Index. A pardon unit, which exists in the Canadian criminal information service, will be notified that a pardon has been issued. The national data bank will be advised by the pardon unit to remove the link to the data bank and there will be no name or access remaining to the DNA data. It will be documented that all the information and access has been removed.
After someone is convicted of an offence, a specially trained law enforcement officer -- or medical personnel in the case of Quebec -- will have a sample form and a blood stain collection card. The sample form will include all the personal history. A fingerprint will be taken and will be assigned a unique identification number. For reference here, it is called the data bank reference number. The blood stain card will have the sample and the data bank reference number.
The personal information, with the unique identification number, is sent to the criminal information service. The national DNA data bank for DNA processing will receive this sample card with that particular number.
The fingerprint identification number, certified by the automatic finger print information services, will confirm that the sample indeed came from that individual, based on his fingerprint; that it was not an alias; that it was not someone stepping in to give a sample. There have been instances where people have tried to swap samples at the time of giving them. This will be cross-referenced with our reference number. The biological sample is processed by DNA typing once the fingerprint identification number has been verified by these folks.
All future access to the genetic information will only be done through cross-referencing with this particular unique number, or through the fingerprint identification number.
In this way, we will control access to the information. We do not have the individual identity in the national DNA data bank. All we have is the number of the sample, not a personal identifier.
Let us talk about removal of information. In the next five minutes, I will try to make you technical experts.
This slide shows a DNA genetic sequencer, worth about $180,000. We have 12 of these across the RCMP system. We share the same technology with the Toronto and Montreal laboratories.
At the bottom is a small laser. As the DNA fragments go by, this laser excites the fluorescent molecule and an image is given off which is captured by a camera. It is actually a charged couple device.
There are 40 scans per minute, one scan every 1.5 seconds. The laser is going back and forth. You see the camera, the laser and the gel fragments. I told you about the molecular race; they are loaded at the top. The gel fragments are run through an electric-rated current. As the laser excites the various colours as they go by this window of opportunity, it takes a picture and captures the information.
This is a moving target. The smaller fragments run off first, the larger ones stay on top. It is a way of segregating the DNA conveniently into pieces of digital data. Imagine a fragment is running by. You see the laser and the gel. In 20 minutes, the red has not gone by. In 26 minutes, the red is just starting to go by. After 30 minutes, the red is almost off the end of the gel, and the blues are going by. At 45 minutes, we have almost completely taken all the DNA off the gel past this laser. The DNA is going through and being captured by the laser.
The person who developed this technology realized that, instead of scanning one lane, we could load each one of these as one person. We can load 36 of these. The only way we can capture all 36 pieces of information as it is running by is actually having the laser move as well.
Therefore, at 0.3 seconds, it is at one point; at 0.5 seconds, it is at another point; at 0.75 it has moved again; and so on. At the end of 1.5 seconds, it is going backwards again. We have the DNA moving one way and the laser moving back and forth.
The equipment organizes the piece of DNA as it is coming off past that window like coloured beads on a string. You see the tenth one that came off; the twenty-third, and so on, to the one hundred and ninety-third.
Think of the beads on a string as linked together to form a gel. If you cut the link now, by trying to take one lane off, the whole thing unravels. You cannot cut one single lane out because you lose all 36 of the remaining pieces of information. This is the technical limitation I spoke of.
It would be like being told you have to get rid of a particular file in a filing cabinet but you have to burn the whole filing cabinet to get rid of one file. This is exactly the same situation.
We propose to have this unique genetic number associated with the sample. This number tells us what this pattern means. If we cut the link at the beginning and at the end, that information will be stored. I will have no idea whom it is for or how it is linked. Furthermore, access essentially has been eliminated.
Even if there is a sample, it tells me nothing. It is protecting all the other information on the gel, the other 26 samples.
Not only are there other people potentially on this gel, but every time we run a test, there are positive and negative controls. We have a lot of quality assurance procedures that go into a single gel when we run 26 samples. If I eliminated some of those samples, none of that information would be verified or of any value.
We propose to cut the link in the Criminal Offender Index. For example, if we want sample number nine removed, we simply cut the identification to it. That is, we remove the bar code unique identifying label. It remains there, but there is no way to determine whom it matches, what it is for, or who it is. From the crime scene point of view, it is just a series of numbers that can be removed.
For instance, if an innocent person accidentally had that sample put into the crime scene index, it is just a digital number and it can be removed. What is more difficult is the convicted offender sample which has been processed in our laboratory in the national data bank and which is now linked to all this other information.
I would like to acknowledge my staff who have contributed over the last 10 years to making this technology work. If there are any questions, I will be happy to answer them.
The Chairman: I hope that was clear on television, because we just had an intensive course on DNA testing and microbiology. Thank you, Dr. Fourney. It was very interesting.
Senator Beaudoin: At least I now know the difference between a sample and a profile. I still do not understand why, at the very end, you have something that is not useful at all but that you cannot get rid of. It is strange, but sometimes science is strange.
Mr. Fourney: This goes back to my analogy to beads on a string. Think of the quilt that you make with the thread that goes all the way through, and it is all tightly bound. If I took the middle thread out, or one halfway through, the whole thing might fall apart.
That is essentially what we are dealing with. This is digital data that is very important because it is time-dependent when the sample is being processed. There is a digital piece of information that is collected every quarter of a second or so. If I started to remove that one sample, I would have to figure out exactly where it ran all the way through that area. Just like the beads on a string, we would not be able to cut that one sample out because of the way it is collected. It is not just scanned down, it is scanned across and back and forth. It would unravel the whole thing.
Senator Beaudoin: You say that, except for twins, there is no possibility that a person may have the same DNA profile as someone else.
Mr. Fourney: To my knowledge, it has never occurred.
Senator Beaudoin: How do you know that?
Mr. Fourney: It is based on population genetics and principles that have been established in human population genetics. We know exactly how many pieces of DNA the body is capable of generating. In fact, it is well beyond what has already existed on earth today. There are only 5.6 billion people.
Senator Beaudoin: You said 1 in 93 billion.
Mr. Fourney: That is correct.
Senator Beaudoin: But if there are 94 billion people, there may be two.
Mr. Fourney: Possibly.
Senator Beaudoin: There is definitely a possibility of two if they are identical twins. Is that correct?
Mr. Fourney: Yes, identical twins, not fraternal twins. Fraternal twins are essentially just like brother and sister. In identical twins, the egg has been fertilized and then broken apart so it has the same genetic information. Actually, in the Swissair investigation, we had a set of identical twins. When we processed the samples, we had to go back and ask the pathologist on the team to check what he had. When he looked at the human remains, it was obvious that there were two people there.
Senator Beaudoin: If they reproduce one animal from another by cloning, will they have the same DNA?
Mr. Fourney: Probably.
Senator Beaudoin: Yes. So you may destroy the whole thing by cloning.
Mr. Fourney: When they clone a human being, it is time to leave.
Senator Beaudoin: It is possible to clone an animal, no doubt, but a human being is more than an animal.
Mr. Fourney: Primates are difficult to clone. There is also a moratorium on this type of research. Who knows what research is being done out there? Many international committees, ethics advisers, and medical genetics experts have advised against such an activity.
On the other hand, what is possible and what has been done is, for instance, making skin substitutes for burn victims and reproducing the epidermal layers. Consider bone marrow transplants. A person who has had a successful bone marrow transplant will have the donor's DNA in the bone marrow, but all the other components that make up that human being, such as hair and saliva, will have their own profile.
Senator Beaudoin: Even though cloning may be illegal or criminal, that does not mean that it will never be done. At some time, someone will try it; do you not agree?
Mr. Fourney: I really cannot answer that question. I certainly cannot say what research is being done if it is not disclosed in scientific journals.
The Chairman: To follow up on Senator Beaudoin's question, if a bone marrow recipient has the same DNA in his bone marrow as his donor, what about his blood?
Mr. Fourney: If it is a successful bone marrow transplant, they will have the same profile. However, their hair, saliva, and skin tissue will have their own. We have done work with the Canadian Red Cross using DNA typing as part of our collaboration with outside agencies because it is very important to transfer technology. One of the things they were interested in was whether we could use DNA typing and the ability to distinguish the donor from the recipient as a means of telling how successful a bone marrow transplant was.
They wanted to know if, in the cases of people who relapsed shortly after their bone marrow transplant, or even a few years later, it could be as a result of some of their old cancer cells coming back. They were interested in using our technology to answer that question and they found something very interesting. In those individuals who did not suffer a relapse and had a successful bone marrow transplant, there are no traces of their original DNA in their bone marrow or their blood. However, if you took a hair sample from those individuals, you would see their own profile. We call these people mosaics because they have two genetic profiles.
Senator Bryden: I am reminded of a prima facie identification in ordinary circumstances. That is where someone has physical features that match the person who committed the crime. That is prima facie evidence, but it is rebuttable. If a person has a DNA profile in bone marrow and blood that matches something found at a crime scene, but can establish that he received it through a transplant, and, in fact, has his own DNA profile in hair and skin and so on, I do not see it as much of a risk.
Senator Grafstein: You raise a lot of questions. You say that one-thousandth of 1 per cent is the differential test.
Mr. Fourney: One in 1,000 is what is different from one person to another. The rest of us are very similar.
Senator Grafstein: So you may have located the soul.
I want to go back to my earlier questions, to follow the samples through the process. I think I understand now about the difficulty from a digital standpoint -- the digital fragmentation to be able to dislocate a gel from the overall helix board.
How are you able to satisfy yourself that there will be non-predictive medical disabilities in a DNA test?
Mr. Fourney: We constantly monitor the literature. We review the analyses and read papers. I am a research scientist. I am in charge of knowing what science will be applied. As soon as something is encoded, such as schizophrenia, we will have to stop using it because, first, that is not the purpose of the data bank and, second, it raises concerns about genetic privacy.
Some countries are developing technologies to capitalize on this. They are interested in distinguishing traits, more from a physical point of view, such as the colour of hair and eyes, as well as height.
That is not the situation in Canada. As a molecular biologist, I can tell you that these traits are very difficult to distinguish. There are many genes involved and we are not interested in pursuing it.
Senator Grafstein: Essentially, it is an internal scientific convention, rather than a law, which says that we are not interested in this area. Is it a convention within your protocol?
Mr. Fourney: Yes, within the general scientific community as well as the forensic scientists that are involved. It is similar to ethics groups set up within hospitals to pursue the samples that come to them.
I do not think there is a law that says what they can do, but hospitals have boards, ethics reviews and commissions. More people are now involved with getting permission.
Senator Grafstein: Is this to be found in any code of conduct, or is it an internal code?
Mr. Fourney: It is in the guidelines of a Technical Working Group of DNA Analysis Methods. It is in the guidelines of the DNA Advisory Board which reports to the U.S. Congress. We are very much associated with the American situation simply because we share much of the technology.
Senator Grafstein: If I wanted to, where would I find it?
Mr. Fourney: You could find it in one of our working documents or published material that has come out over the last few years.
Senator Grafstein: Is that a handbook given to all individuals who fall under the RCMP forensic jurisdiction?
Mr. Fourney: They would be totally aware of the guidelines and it is something we have to address in the courts of law on a daily basis.
Mr. Gaudette: It is part of our training program for scientists.
Senator Grafstein: You heard my questions earlier this afternoon about laboratories. The forensic labs have the essential elements. They have the sample and they have the identifying link between the sample and the individual. You told us that the database does not have the connecting links; that it has the data but not the identifying links.
Mr. Fourney: It has the ability to link to identifying information, yes, but we do not know the identity of the individual.
Senator Grafstein: The identity of the individual is locked into the labs. How are these labs supervised? I notice that some are under the RCMP. Are there other labs that are not?
Mr. Fourney: There are two provincial labs, one in Toronto and one in Montreal, and there are six RCMP labs. There are approximately 250 American labs.
Senator Grafstein: We will deal with Canada first and then move to the next level. Would all of these materials be processed through the RCMP labs or the two provincial labs?
Mr. Fourney: Yes.
Senator Grafstein: How can we be satisfied with the safeguards in the non-RCMP labs?
Mr. Gaudette: Many forensic laboratories around the world are becoming accredited to meet internationally recognized standards. You have undoubtedly heard of IS0 9000 of the International Standards Organization. The same kinds of standards that apply to products you might buy also apply to laboratories. The Centre for Forensic Science in Toronto is already an accredited lab with the American Society of Crime Laboratory Directors.
Senator Grafstein: So it is a self-regulating body.
Mr. Gaudette: They meet international standards. The standards to which we are working toward in Canada are to be administered by the Standards Council of Canada.
Senator Grafstein: I assume that most of our DNA information will be exchanged with the United States.
Mr. Gaudette: They are accredited and their accrediting agencies either directly follow the ISO standards or are closely linked to them. The idea is to get uniform standards around the world.
Senator Grafstein: You have indicated that there is an international convention. Have we ratified that convention?
Mr. Fourney: It is a scientific convention established by our peers and it is self-governing.
Senator Grafstein: Why have we not done under this legislation what we have done in other schemes. In other words, why have we not designated laboratories so that they come under the federal regulatory umbrella?
I stand to be corrected, however, in certain areas of health, I believe that laboratories require a certain designation denoting that they are federally approved, designated, regulated or accredited under a federal regulatory regime. Why was that not adopted in this legislation?
As I mentioned earlier, the legislation refers to the ability of the commissioner to deem a laboratory appropriate. However, it does not set out what tests he must adopt to do that; nor does it really tighten the confidentiality net we are looking for as it applies to the RCMP forensic labs.
This may be a technical legal question and, if so, it might be answered by legal counsel. Obviously there is a concern here about privacy. This is an extraordinary power and therefore extraordinary care should be taken in setting up a regulatory regime equal at least to that followed in health matters.
Mr. Michael E. Zigayer, Senior Counsel, Criminal Law Policy Section, Department of Justice: All our friends and colleagues in Ontario and Quebec and the RCMP satellite laboratories have been working toward uniform accreditation so that each can have confidence in the work the other is producing. That is basic to the success of the national DNA data bank.
There is another factor though, and that is that administration of justice in the provinces is a provincial responsibility. The labs in Quebec and Ontario fall under the responsibility of the provincial ministers responsible for the administration of justice. Therefore, it is necessary to come to a consensus on these issues.
It would not be well received in Quebec if it were decided that the Commissioner of the RCMP was responsible for setting the standards and issuing approval or disapproval. Ultimately, there will be some scheme worked out that is acceptable to all those involved. However, it is a matter of some sensitivity in Quebec and probably also in Ontario, that the turf be respected.
Senator Nolin: You have repeated the words "quality control" a few times in your presentation. When you are controlling quality, what are you looking for and for what reason?
Mr. Fourney: We are trying to develop a system of checks and balances that will be used on a routine basis to provide what we call a quality standard or quality result. In other words, the match is a true match, and a non-match is a non-match.
Senator Nolin: Is that what you call a hit?
Mr. Fourney: A hit or a match, whatever you want to call it.
This is not only for scientific concerns. Any medical test will also have a series of checks and balances and quality assurances built into it so that we can be confident of the results.
In other words, if you have a diagnostic test done in a local hospital, you want to ensure that a qualified and trained person performs it. This way, the results can be interpreted properly and it is possible to ensure that the particular controls, the negative and positive results, are in place to obtain the correct result and interpretation.
Quality assurance and training is an extremely important issue in the forensic community. Mr. Gaudette can speak to the actual training that we go through. However, as the person or the scientist in charge of developing and implementing many of the technologies, I can tell you that, in the end, we must have confidence that the data we store will be used properly.
Quality assurance is a complete measure that will allow us to have confidence in the results that are generated. It is the similar to having confidence in the way a car is manufactured. You get into the car and you know the wheels will not fall off.
Senator Nolin: I am convinced that there is always a possibility for fault. However, the infallibility of the system is proven. What is not proven is human error.
Mr. Fourney: Correct.
Senator Nolin: That is my concern.
Mr. Fourney: We have an understudy training program with a series of qualifying exams and we constantly monitor the product. The results are checked by two people.
For instance, in the Swissair 111 investigation, two people reviewed the DNA results and they had to arrive at a consensus. It would be similar to a doctor going through medical training. Before he is allowed to operate on you, he must assure everyone that he has the proper training, that he understands the science and technology, and that he is able to apply his studies properly.
At the same time, we must maintain in the operational setting what we call proficiency tests on a yearly basis. During these tests, people are given a series of tests, the results of which are known to us but not to them. They must write the test and come up with the correct result. This is part of a quality assurance program in an ISO-accredited laboratory.
Mr. Gaudette: From a legislative standpoint concerning the database, there is another fail-safe mechanism. Mr. Saada referred to it this afternoon. Even if a sample is found to match someone in the Convicted Offenders Index, that particular information is not used in court. That enables one to obtain a warrant and then another test is done. There is a quality control in that.
Senator Joyal: Mr. Fourney, I should like to return to your comments on the consideration of genetic privacy. Did anyone in the Department of Justice review those guidelines in the context of privacy issues?
Mr. Fourney: The guidelines I referred to were the international guidelines that we comply to for operational casework as we speak. They were developed by a technical working group of DNA analysis methods and ratified by an international group of scientists, including us.
What we must draft for the national DNA data bank is a set of guidelines specific for the national DNA data bank taken from what we have already learned, but also the special aspects of the database that are present in routine operational case work.
Currently, a group of representatives from various laboratories in Canada are meeting to draft a set of policy guidelines. We will also have members from the Department of Justice and our own legal services to review the guidelines prior to any implementation.
Senator Joyal: What parliamentary input do you foresee in the review process of those guidelines to ensure that we are satisfied in terms of the privacy protection?
The Chairman: This may be a question on which you would prefer to get back to us later or perhaps the department could provide us an answer.
Senator Joyal: We are very concerned that once the bank is there, there will be worldwide access and there will be no privacy limited to Canada. There might be good security reasons for that. You have certainly explained that there are good reasons to use this system.
There is a significant amount of additional openness to the system that begs the question as to how much further protection citizens should be given. This is especially a concern when we expect that the samples in the data bank will be deleted from the system. We must have compelling arguments to go beyond the protection to which an individual is entitled in a world where everything is accessible.
What is the privacy of an individual in today's world and in the world of tomorrow? When you say that you want to keep the samples -- if there is a good reason to go to court to get a warrant, to convince a judge that a sample should be taken -- that is in conflict with my personal conviction, the fundamental principle of rehabilitation and pardon, that a person has paid his or her debt, and it is over. Those are the roots of our administration of justice. We keep a part of that person somewhere because, one day, we may want to look at it again. That bothers me.
You are a learned scientific person and I respect your conclusions. However, with regard to that issue, I tend to differ because it is an interpretation; it is not scientific data. You are asking me to believe that, in the future, scientists will develop further means of analysis, and then, of course, at that time, we might need it for some other purpose.
The person has paid his or her debt. It is over. We delete the case. He or she has a chance to go ahead.
Senator Nolin: It is not only privacy control, it is also quality control.
Senator Joyal: My next question is further to the picture of the Romanov family. All the articles I have read indicate that it is not as clear as you have indicated as to their remains being buried in St. Petersburg. You will also remember that there was a famous dress that was the object of certain samples. The conclusions with regard to the dress were not that clear either.
At this point in time, how sure are you?
Mr. Fourney: I will first answer the Romanov question because it is of personal interest to me, not only as an historical buff but also as a scientist.
I am absolutely convinced that those are the Romanovs. Apart from the genetics and the DNA, there are many other pieces of information. This is typical of a crime scene in an operational case, where DNA is a tool that has to be applied properly in compliance with every other piece of information.
We have a lot of information concerning the time the Romanovs were shot and how they were transported. The fact that the gravesite was actually found was as a result of a tip from someone who, presumably, was either there at the time or knew someone who was. They did not just start digging around. They found the exact gravesite, which was protected for a number of years, simply because they did not want the remains disturbed and to avoid identification. They knew about the gravesite and there had to be a change in government before they could pursue it.
Two types of tests were done with the Romanovs. The first was the STR analysis, which I showed you earlier and which established the biological inheritance from father to son. There were a number of other individuals in that gravesite who were clearly identified as a servant and a doctor. They are not related in any way. The test clearly identified the children, and how they were biologically related.
Let us refer to the test that was actually used. It is called mitochondrial DNA typing. It is yet another procedure, which has not been applied in Canada. What is interesting about mitochondrial DNA is that it is inherited internally. The DNA pattern of the mother is given to all her offspring. It is exactly opposite to what we do with forensic science.
They used a second more compelling test for actual identification of that group of individuals. The problem with mitochondrial DNA typing is that it is not discriminatory. In other words, anyone who has inherited this maternal genetic pattern will have the same pattern.
They took a blood sample from the Duke of Edinburgh who has direct lineage through ascent. His pattern had one slight mutation that matched a mutation in the sequence pattern. They actually sequenced the DNA.
There was still some contest. Therefore, they took a DNA sample from the brother of Czar Nicholas. It was sequenced and it matched exactly, including the mutation that had been inherited through the entire family of Czar Nicholas.
From a scientific point of view, I am convinced that is the Romanov family.
Senator Grafstein: Does that include his son Alexi?
Mr. Fourney: A number of individuals have come forward claiming to be direct descendants. Without getting into great detail, I can tell you that many of those individuals have had their DNA tested. They probably do not talk too much about their patterns.
Senator Joyal: This afternoon we were told that the time frame within which we could delete everything was one year. We were also told to ask the scientific expert why it will take one year. Could you answer that question?
Mr. Fourney: I do not think they said it was from a scientific point of view.
Mr. Gaudette: I believe it had to do with the Criminal Records Act.
Mr. Zigayer: I have an answer for you on your comments regarding retention, senator, which is a blend of science and law.
Earlier this evening, Dr. Fourney went through the recent evolution of DNA science and he talked about RFLP. In fact, when the RCMP began its casework, in the first cases, including the Bourguignon case in Ottawa, they were using RFLP technology. At the same time, they were working with, proving and developing this new PCR technology. Most of their work is now done using PCR.
As time goes by, Dr. Fourney is predicting that there may be a quicker, more accurate and cost-effective method of doing the DNA analysis in the future. If the FBI were to adopt this new technology, along with some of our other partners in the world who use DNA technology in criminal investigation, there could be a considerable amount of pressure for Canada to adopt this next technology. If we do, then we would have to consider what to do with the data bank we already have.
If the bodily samples of the persons whose profiles were in the data bank were not retained, and we adopted this new technology, then we would have two data banks, one that could not speak to the other. We would be comparing apples to oranges.
Senator Joyal: The Americans will do the same thing. If they improve their system, their data bank will not be useful either.
Mr. Fourney: That has actually happened. They started off with an RFLP data bank. Over the course of the last two years, they have been very involved in developing PCR technology. We have met as a group to set in place a set of standards, not only quality assurance, but also scientific assurance, for that very reason. What we want to develop is data banks that will be able to talk to each other and evolve in the same scope.
What Mr. Zigayer has said is very true. I fully expect that in an another few years this entire technology will be microchip based and the process will be faster and more cost-effective. If everyone else in the world moves toward the microchip-based technology because they are able to satisfy even privacy issues with the way the data is being handled, then we would not be able to communicate with them. More important, we would not be able to harness that technology for its usefulness.
As I told you, RFLP technology, although very sensitive and robust, requires much more DNA.
In the last few years we have been able to solve cases going back 25 and 30 years with the advance of this new technology. We would be remiss in Canada if we did not apply the most discriminating, sensitive and robust technology for the application of justice.
In British Columbia alone, there are more than 200 unsolved murders that will probably be solved through the harnessing of some of this new genetic technology. If an individual has passed away, leaving his sample in a database, it will be of extreme importance in helping the investigator with any kind of serial murder case. Whatever technology comes along in the future, we can apply it in the proper manner. The chances are it will be more sensitive and more discreet in the future.
Mr. Gaudette: Most jurisdictions that have passed DNA data bank legislation have included a provision for retaining the samples for exactly those reasons. In some countries, they have had to make changes already because they started the data bank back in the RFLP days.
Mr. Zigayer: One option is to have the RCMP pay for the maintenance of the earlier data bank with the old technology, as well as the operation of a new data bank using new technology. In that scenario, casework coming in would have to be sampled and analyzed twice; once against the first data bank and once against the second.
The alternative is to forget the old data bank, and start anew. Some of the American states have had to do that. However, if you start anew, you have basically lost a lot of the investigative tools that you had invested in so much in the first place.
Another option would be to resample everyone who has been convicted. However, as Senator Joyal said, once an individual has served his time, he has paid his debt to society. Therefore, how could the crown or the police go back to those people and ask them to make another deposit in the bank. I do not think that would work.
The best approach to this serious problem of developing the evolution of science is to provide for the retention of bodily substances, thus avoiding having to go back to persons who have finished their sentences. You move on and maintain an effective data bank for the state.
Mr. Fourney: A person may actually want his or her sample retained in the data bank. This sounds rather unique, however, there have been instances in the forensic science service where a person has paid his dues to society and has been released. He has then tried to come back and donate his own sample, because when a similar crime is committed in the area, he is the usual suspect and he is questioned.
In a number of instances, people have asked to have their sample added to the data bank, in order to have it checked and verified so that they can be exonerated. It is the fastest way to exonerate someone if it is claimed that they were at a particular crime scene where a biological sample is available.
The Chairman: It is interesting to note that the first use of a DNA sample was to clear someone of a particular crime.
Senator Joyal: You referred to other countries that have adopted legislation. Could you list those countries?
Do you know with which countries Canada could expect to enter into an agreement? How wide will we expand Canada's boundaries in terms of data banks?
Mr. Gaudette: The very first DNA legislation was passed in the United States in the early 1900s. Every state has now passed DNA data bank legislation. It is a state by state system, but they also have national legislation.
The United Kingdom has the biggest and most successful DNA data bank in the world. The Netherlands and New Zealand also have DNA data bank legislation, and I understand that Austria and Germany have recently obtained legislation. There are a number of other countries and there are also many countries that are very close to having legislation, as is Canada. Notable among those countries are Australia, Norway and Sweden, and various other European countries.
At this time, I am not aware of Asian or any Middle Eastern countries that are considering the data bank legislation.
Senator Fraser: I understand the work being done to elaborate effective conventions and procedures in international systems. However, the nature of scientific conventions and the protocols tend to bind scientists. They will not bind the commission.
In law, all we will have in terms of control of what actually gets tested, is that the commissioner shall safely and securely store the portions of the samples of the bodily substances that he or she considers appropriate and destroy the rest. Are there legal safeguards in some other statute that would ensure that the commissioner does in fact restrict it to the current 13 magic uncoded elements that we can look at?
Mr. Gaudette: There are other legal safeguards in the act itself.
Mr. Zigayer: The testing protocol that the RCMP will develop as the basis of its data bank -- the way they look at the DNA chromosome -- is not addressed in the Criminal Code nor in this proposed legislation.
However, there is provision in the proposed DNA identification act for the making of regulations. It may be appropriate to consider the testing protocol as a subject for these regulations. It is only for the management and operation of the data bank, not for other purposes.
With respect to any exchanges of information with other states, it is important to note that it must be a direct request, similar to a mutual legal assistance request. It should not be simply giving the FBI access to a terminal so that they have full access to the computer. This is the way we saw it in the development stage.
For example, if a serial sex offender is operating around Detroit and a serial sex offender is operating on the other side of the bridge in Windsor, perhaps the Detroit police and Windsor police could work together to confirm they are dealing with the same suspect. This could be done either through the FBI to the RCMP or vice versa. There would be an opportunity for the two countries to work together to solve this case.
This is provided as a possibility in the legislation. No contracts have been written and no agreements have been signed with any countries. It is simply putting something out there as a possible tool that can be used if the right conditions are met. You will see that they must respect the provisions of the Privacy Act -- in subsections 6(3) and (4) of the Bill; subsection 6(5) refers back to (3) and (4). That is an attempt at a safeguard.
Senator Fraser: Clearly, we are not trying to weaken a major scientific advance here. However, there will be days when there is considerable pressure on the commissioner or his delegated officer to come up with results that might be achieved with more extensive testing. That is the way the world works. I am not saying there is anything wrong with a great deal of pressure on the police to solve a case, but the temptation to look for whatever evidence may be available will become very strong. That is why I am interested in what safeguards exist to limit what we look for, so that we do not invade a person's privacy.
Mechanically speaking, I assume the equipment that is used can test whatever you tell it to test for. They are not manufactured just to test for the 13 elements, are they?
Mr. Fourney: No.
Senator Fraser: They can look at whatever there is. You could, I suppose, build in a governor or a computer program that would limit it.
Mr. Fourney: The technology itself is developed primarily for the human genome mapping initiative, the sequencing of an entire human genome or genetic blueprint.
From a forensic point of view, or certainly from our practical point of view, each test that we apply has to be rigorously validated in a forensic setting to not only meet the scientific challenges, but also the legal challenges within a court of law. We would not even attempt to use a test that has not been completely validated for our forensic application.
As I mentioned earlier, when you start zeroing in on other components of the DNA, they are not discriminating for our purposes. Therefore, we would not be interested, and we lack the expertise. I do not have the ability to do that. I have the knowledge, I suppose, to try to do it.
In the past, when I worked on breast cancer research, that is exactly what we were doing. However, in the situation that we are addressing now, we prescribe a certain procedure. It is followed, and the rules and techniques are well established in our protocol manual as standard operating procedures. We would have no reason to test something else, nor would we wish to do so.
Senator Fraser: In terms of the intention of the profiles without their identifying codes, if I understood your explanation, you are doing that now because on one slide -- or whatever you call it -- you are running 36 different samples. Why is it essential to use 36? Why could you not just have one?
Mr. Fourney: It is simply because of costs and time. There is also a certain quality assurance built into it. When we run a particular gel, we are not only running what we call question samples, we are also simultaneously running known standards for controls. That gives us results that we can use to validate the results that we have. We also have a whole series of negative controls. We are actually looking for issues of contamination or something that might have accidentally happened. We are looking for what is not there, and we are looking for things that are there to tell us that the tests are validated. I would think it comes down to the actual costs.
I did not bring a slide tonight, but the next step is to develop validation tests to run 96 samples at a time. I think the cost will be lower for a number of reasons. One is that, if we anticipate any more samples entering the data bank, we do not need to buy more equipment to handle the extra numbers of samples. With respect to personnel, we think we can automate the procedure for loading 96 samples, whereas it was more of a manual technology for loading 26 to 36 samples. It is mostly cost.
There is an instrument out there that will run one sample at a time. It costs approximately $80,000 and runs a sample every 30 minutes. We can run approximately 30 samples in two and a half hours. We can get all those samples done with all the quality controls as well as negative and positive standards.
Senator Fraser: Do you store them until you get 36 requests and then just do a batch run?
Mr. Fourney: Absolutely. Batch processing is a very important tool to reduce the costs and to increase the quality assurance.
Senator Moore: I was interested in what you said about your work with respect to the Swissair tragedy that happened near my residence. You mentioned that twins have the same DNA. Was that discovered as a result of the analysis work after this tragedy, or did you know that before you started doing the analysis of the samples?
Mr. Fourney: We knew that identical twins have the same patterns, and we were advised that there was an identical set of twins on board.
Senator Moore: Further to senator Fraser's question, does each slide hold 36 DNA profiles?
Mr. Fourney: Our current standard is 26 samples on one particular gel.
Senator Moore: Is that 26 different individuals?
Mr. Morrison: We would say 26 lanes on which we could load a different person. We would normally run around 26 samples, and we have a number of control standards that are in there as well.
Senator Moore: Do all 26 lanes apply to one person?
Mr. Fourney: No, each one is a separate person.
Senator Moore: How big is that physically? Is it the size of a stamp or a cigarette carton?
Mr. Fourney: It is approximately the size of a pad of paper.
Senator Moore: Is that about the size of a legal-size sheet of paper? Is it in fact paper?
Mr. Fourney: No. We actually cast what we call a gel. It is a tough jello-like material. It is a polymer in liquid form. When you add the catalyst, it makes a very clear matrix. Because chemically there are small holes in this matrix, it allows you to sort out the DNA based on size. It would be similar to a cup of sand with different sizes of particles from top to bottom. You could pour different types of oil in it, and it would segregate at different levels.
Senator Moore: Does it stay in that gel form, or does it harden?
Mr. Fourney: The gel itself is hardened. We apply the sample to the top of the gel and then push it through with electrical current. DNA has a negative charge. We hook it up to 3,000 volts, and it pulls the DNA through the gel. As it is pulling it down through the gel, it is fluorescently tagged, and it goes by the window.
Senator Moore: Do you store them vertically?
Mr. Fourney: Yes, it is run in a vertical format.
Senator Moore: What is the capacity for this new building? You were talking about primary and secondary, and 113,000. Is that a forecast per year?
Mr. Fourney: We predict that we will be running approximately 28,000 samples a year.
Senator Moore: I was just wondering.
Mr. Fourney: The forensic science service has approximately 350,000 profiles in its database and I believe the U.S. now has about 400,000. When I travel and come back to Canada, it is comforting to be able to announce that we only have a few potential profiles. It makes me feel like I am living in a safer country.
Senator Moore: Did you say the U.S. has 400,000 profiles?
Mr. Fourney: I do not know the exact numbers.
Senator Moore: That represents how many individuals per profile?
Mr. Fourney: When the forensic science service does its matching, approximately 300 matches per week can be linked back. It also does a lot of other types of crime scene analysis. We are limiting ourselves to primary and secondary offences, whereas in the United Kingdom they do burglaries. All kinds of other offences go into that national database.
Senator Moore: What is the forecasted capacity of this building?
Mr. Fourney: It will not be problematic.
Mr. Gaudette: If need be, we can use off-site storage.
The British have so many samples in their data bank because their legislation calls for them to be able to sample anyone charged with any criminal offence.
Senator Pépin: Listening to the evidence this afternoon and this evening, I think this technology is great. You tell us what you can do and what you expect to do in the future. We know the difficulty that we face in keeping medical files confidential these days using the technology that you are using. It is difficult to believe that your work will be done within specific limits and that it will be kept confidential. You tell us that in the U.K., they are doing DNA for burglaries. We wonder if that is the next step in this country.
When we are looking at someone's profile, is it possible to know if that person is part of a data bank somewhere? For example, could something like an index be inserted so that when you look at it, you would know that there is information in a data bank for that person somewhere?
Mr. Fourney: CPIC, the Canadian Police Information Centre, will have a flag. If they submit a query and see a flag for a person with a DNA sample in the "convicted offender" index, that will indicate the availability of a sample for that person. However, they will not be able to tell why it is flagged.
Senator Joyal: What do you think the officer will do when he sees that?
Senator Pépin: Will he try to look at it on the system?
Mr. Fourney: No; he cannot gain any access to the information.
Senator Joyal: I agree with that.
Mr. Gaudette: The main reason for that flag is that when the police try to obtain a sample from the person, they will know that they already have one and that they do not need to bother the person again to get a second sample.
As Mr. Fourney alluded to earlier, for example, they could be investigating an unsolved crime and the crime scene sample has been run through the DNA data bank. If it does not produce any matches to anyone, they then consider a particular suspect. If the CPIC terminal shows that the suspect's sample is already in the data bank, then they will let the suspect go because that suspect is eliminated. That is the reason for the flag.
Senator Pépin: If I go to the United States, for example, and they query CPIC and find out there is a flag by my name, that indicates that my sample exists in a data bank somewhere. If they are looking for someone, will I not become a suspect because I have a sample stored somewhere?
Mr. Gaudette: When you go to the United States, they can query these kinds of data banks for criminal records anyway. The only reason you could be in the data bank is you were convicted of a criminal offence. That information is already available, even without a DNA database.
Senator Pépin: However, they do not delete the record in the U.S. It still exists there. I once worked in that field, and that is why I know about this. If there is an indication that someone is part of a data bank, that person could become a suspect. That worries me.
Mr. Gaudette: American police do not have access to the CPIC terminal except for one link from the FBI to here in Ottawa.
Senator Pépin: When you go through customs, your name is checked in the database. If your name is flagged, they can tell you that you have a criminal record.
Two years ago, American customs officers accused someone of having a criminal record. That person disagreed and an argument ensued. The person had to fly back to Canada. When he consulted a lawyer a month later, he found out that, because of something he did when he was 18, his name was flagged in the data bank. However, that information was still on the data bank in 1998 and this person did not even know.
The Chairman: This question is probably beyond the purview of the expert witnesses who are here tonight. This is a question that goes beyond how the data bank itself will be set up. It involves the administration of justice.
Senator Andreychuk: There is a data bank, a history file, a case file, the CPIC, and there may be some other steps. Data is either encrypted or accessed by passwords into computers, is that correct?
Mr. Fourney: Any of the DNA information that we plan on developing for the national data bank will only be accessed through a particular type of terminal and the software itself will be encrypted with passwords. The access is also strictly controlled from the criminal history files, but I do not know how they do that.
Senator Andreychuk: Perhaps I am not asking the right person. If I read the act and if I understand this, the RCMP will have control of the encryption and the passwords. That is to say, it will be within their systems. Who will have access to this knowledge? Usually, it is the hierarchy. In other words, it is your password but someone in the hierarchy has access to your password. There will be a possibility of one person, perhaps the commissioner, having knowledge of all the entries in all the systems, for example, the case file, CPIC, the history file and the data bank. Am I correct?
Mr. Fourney: I am not sure that there would be any one person who would have access to all that.
Senator Andreychuk: Would it be a group of people within the RCMP?
Mr. Fourney: There would be people who would have access for the normal course of their job. With encrypted data and the way software is written these days, you need not only the correct password but also a log-in entry that is acceptable through a hierarchy. Your supervisor has more of a chance to review this material. Also, there will be an accurate record kept of who accesses a file and when, where and why. This will be reviewed on a routine basis. This is not unlike a medical situation in hospitals.
Senator Andreychuk: I appreciate that there will be someone who will be logging in with a password. However I also know that there will be a supervisor who will also have access, as in medical situations, and so on.
Mr. Fourney: In our situation with the national data bank, there will probably be a hierarchy of people with access to our data, but we will not have direct access to the criminal history files. I would have to query that with another group now at arm's length, more or less. That is one of the reasons why we did not want to retain the information about someone's identity, as well as their genetic information. That is why it is handled in this way.
Senator Andreychuk: Perhaps this question is for someone else, but my point concerns the hierarchy of the data. Some people have access to the passwords in the databank. Where are the linkages to all of them? Someone must have access for accountability reasons, but that creates a problem for privacy and entry into the entire system.
I want to go back to your point on bone marrow transplants and cloning. You say that with bone marrow, you will come up with the same blood from the person who gave the bone marrow and the person receiving the bone marrow. Those two people could have the same DNA.
Mr. Fourney: If a donor gives bone marrow to a relative, usually it has to be a close match. If there is a complete transmission, both donor and recipient share the same DNA pattern in their bone marrow. In other words, there has to be complete acceptance by the other individual. If not, there would still be remnants of the original DNA patterns. The individuals would have two patterns, one in their blood and one in their bone marrow. In reality, all the other components of their body -- skin, hair and so on -- would indicate their original genetic makeup.
Senator Andreychuk: If you were able to access only a blood sample, you would not know with which person you are dealing. Would you have to investigate further to identify whether it is person A or person B?
Mr. Fourney: That is correct. It would be a very similar situation if someone did not identify his identical twin brother. Unless someone told us that he or she had an identical twin, we would not know.
Senator Andreychuk: Assuming you have something left at the scene and you can only go for further samples on either A or B, but not both, are you not putting someone in a position where they have to say that they were not the person at the scene? You are relying heavily on the fact that you will get more than what is known.
Mr. Fourney: From a personal point of view, given my experience with crime scenes and operational case work, it sometimes comes down to a select number of individuals who have access to a crime scene, such as a house where a murder occurred. For example, in cases where only three or four people had access to the crime scene, and the timing places them there, the accused person has often said his brother was guilty of the crime. We have to look at his pattern to exclude him and, generally, that is what happens. It is the fastest means of exonerating an individual.
Senator Andreychuk: Going back in time, you may not have those other people to exonerate.
I am trying to build a case. What if you find that unusual situation where you have a sample, but you do not know if it is person A or person B. Only person A is around. There is no way of discriminating to ensure it is only person A.
Mr. Fourney: You would have to base your entire case on DNA in that particular situation, correct?
Senator Andreychuk: That is correct.
Mr. Zigayer: As a prosecutor, you would not want to do that.
Senator Andreychuk: As a prosecutor, I would say it has been done.
Mr. Zigayer: DNA does not prove the case; it just puts someone at the scene of the crime. It be could be that a DNA profile is found at the scene of the crime, and the person you have been able to link to it might have an alibi and might have been somewhere else. The defence will bring this up.
Senator Andreychuk: What you are saying is highly unlikely, but it is possible.
Mr. Zigayer: Suppose a child is the donor. The donor and recipient are probably genetically related within the family. Suppose the recipient, many years later, commits a crime and cuts himself on the way out of the building.
In the meantime, the donor might have been convicted of a designated offence and might be in the data bank. The police will automatically think they have a suspect. They will try to find Joe Smith, whose sample they have in their data bank. They make the link. It turns out that Joe Smith, at the time in question, was serving time in a penitentiary.
This is all hypothetical, but it could happen. Joe Smith will say that he donated his bone marrow to his cousin Ron. If it ever got to a jury, there would be a reasonable doubt.
Senator Andreychuk: We are back to that point.
With respect to the DNA that you first took and the RFLP, the case studies I have read from the United States indicate that the procedures were highly unreliable because of a lack of training and a lack of understanding. It was a new technology. That information is still being kept in their databanks, and you are proposing that you will keep yours. How reliable is the old technology? Are you as comfortable with the old technology that has been around as you are with the new technology?
Mr. Fourney: I would have to say that one of my jobs in the RCMP has been to develop and implement technology and then replace it as new technology comes along. I am very confident that the procedures we have used in the past are highly reliable. We have an effective training program.
The reason we have moved on is not because the technology did not work or it was not valid or useful. It is because these new technologies afford us a greater opportunity to look at older samples or degraded material in smaller amounts. It is a case of scientific limitations. Timing and costs are also factors. The new method is much less expensive. We can run nine tests simultaneously, where it used to take eight to nine weeks just to do an RFLP test.
I showed the slide with the tooth pulp and the DNA because I often use it in legal conventions. We have moved on to the new technology not because the old one did not work, but because this new technology is able to do much more and in less time.
The U.S. is in an awkward situation where many states, Florida in particular, seized this technology, realizing the investigative aid it would lend to the various police communities. They are now in a troubling situation where they have very good technology that works well, but it is not cost-effective. It is not fast enough and it is not sensitive enough. They are actually going back to the police community and advising them that they are moving forward because new technology is here and will do so much more. Once again, they are not replacing it because the old technology did not work.
You are probably referring to some of the original cases that were done when the reliability of DNA was questioned. One of the reasons the professional forensic community formed working groups early on was because, in the beginning, the only way to get a DNA test for a forensic case was through a commercial enterprise. For whatever reason, they may have had other motivations or they may have jumped on the technology a bit early. We do not know. However, once we formed an alliance amongst the users and developed guidelines and quality assurance standards, we saw an international change in the way the technology progressed. Many of the safeguards in the quality assurance were built in.
Mr. Gaudette: The lack of reliability you are talking about is not the reliability of the technology itself, but the reliability of the laboratory and the people who dealt with it. You read about American examples. Because of the efforts of the people in our laboratory system, you did not read about cases where the reliability of the RCMP labs was questioned. We have tried to maintain these high standards of quality assurance right from the beginning.
You also talked about comparing the old RFLP technology to today's data bank. Trying to use RFLP data in someone's data bank would be analogous to trying to play 45 rpm records in your compact disc player.
It just would not work.
Senator Grafstein: There is only one topic I should like to explore. We will come back to constitutional and other issues at a later date.
Suppose I am a suspect and a DNA sample is taken under warrant. I immediately wish to bring this situation to some sort of closure, therefore, I have my DNA checked independently, outside the umbrella of the police process. How do I do that in Canada?
Mr. Gaudette: There are a number of private forensic labs, both in Canada and in the United States, that could be accessed.
Senator Grafstein: Do they all adhere to universal standards so that their samples are recognized by the RCMP?
Mr. Gaudette: One of the driving forces for developing these accreditation standards came from the private sector. Just as all the companies around the world want the International Standards Organization seal on their products, these private labs are looking for the same thing. As of today, we could not certify each and every private lab that is out there, however, there are some good ones.
Senator Grafstein: Are there private labs that are available to the suspect or the accused to test against police samples?
Mr. Gaudette: Yes, these private labs have been used in criminal cases as well as in several other types of cases.
Senator Grafstein: I have another question concerning the tagging mechanism. We have not spent any time talking about the safeguards within the tagging mechanism, the identification mechanism.
Can you summarize how tagging is safeguarded? In other words, how is privacy protected in the tagging process to ensure that there cannot be intrusion? We now understand that the full identification at the primary laboratory is there; a portion of it then goes in an unidentified form to the data bank. How can an individual be satisfied that his or her sample will not be invaded through tagging?
Mr. Fourney: You mean the unique identifier?
Senator Grafstein: Yes.
Mr. Fourney: Essentially, you are relating to a crime scene index point of view. We would envisage that there would be a number of samples that a person would like to query in the national DNA database. They would have one or two specifically trained individuals who have access to the secure network in the operational lab. A particular type of software would be used to encode all the information and indicate who is on it. There would need to be an identifier. At that time, an identifier would be assigned to it and it would be very difficult to actually change the identifier in the software.
I envisage more a backup concern also, because we would have a double set of test results to be able to go back and verify that it is in fact the information that was sent in. When this comes to Ottawa, we would send a note back to them saying that we received the information; this is what we received and this is the identifier. They would confirm the identification and we would begin the search.
It is as if both sides of the coin are checked to make sure that the data they queried was sent in accurately; that we received it; that we notified them that we received it; and that the search will actually go forward.
Once again, if the crime scene index information provided a match, it is up to the laboratory, at that time, to pursue the case from an operational point of view. Presumably they would go back, take a warrant sample from someone who becomes their prime suspect through a Bill C-104 proper standard, and so on. We would try to build in as many safeguards as possible through direct communication back and forth.
Senator Grafstein: In terms of that information going back and forth, is that by wire, fibre optics or wireless?
Mr. Fourney: We are hoping to set up a dedicated T-1 type line, much like we use today in communication with our forensic lab services now. However, we would need to develop a procedure also for Toronto and Montreal.
In this particular case, the only access, as far as I know, is from the RCMP. However, once again, the data transmitted from the national database would be encrypted and the only way you can decode it is if you had that particular type of software that resides in only one terminal. There will not be access all over.
I envisage a laboratory being equipped with one terminal and a few people who are trained and certified in its use. A very particular training is needed to allow someone to actually do the searching. This is the approach that the Americans have taken and we are looking very closely at some of the lessons that they have learned. They use a combined DNA index system, which they have just put on line in November. We are watching them very closely to see how well it works. They use an encrypted type of dedicated modem that has passed their security measures. We would need to do the same thing, so that it complies with our security measures within the RCMP.
Senator Grafstein: We will look at the transcript on that. There was a lot of information transmitted to me very quickly and it is late. It seems rational, but I do not quite understand it completely. We will put this off to another day.
Senator Joyal: I wish to come back to the issue of the data bank. Since Mr. Zigayer, a senior legal advisor at the Department of Justice, is here, I wish to put the question on the table so that it can be addressed at a further meeting.
In May 1998, the Solicitor General published the legal opinion of three learned justices; Justice Dubin, former Justice Bisson from the Appeal Court of Quebec and Justice Taylor, former justice of the British Columbia Court of Appeal. In an opinion tabled by Justice Dubin, former chief justice of the Ontario Court of Appeal it says that as for the banking purpose of the proposal, society's interest in solving crimes by extending the pool of contributors to the DNA bank to include all persons arrested or charged with a designated offence does not sufficiently outweigh the intrusive nature of bodily sample seizures.
Even though I did not read the entire opinion of Justice Bisson and Justice Taylor, they seem to have the same basis of reasoning.
Perhaps in a future meeting we could address the issue of constitutionality of the data bank. It seems that we have opinions here that confirm my apprehension in terms of protection of privacy and the legal rights of individuals as they are protected by the Charter. That is my first question to Mr. Zigayer.
With that in mind, my second question is: Even though Canada signed an agreement with the U.S. to share information, what kind of protection will we have when the U.S. signs an agreement with another country, giving them access to Canada's data bank?
This is a real issue. Even though we have a very good agreement with the U.S. or the U.K., what kind of assurances do we have that, through various agreements, our data bank is not open to the rest of the world?
I leave that with you.
The Chairman: Senator Joyal, those are fair questions and I believe that the officials will be back before us at some time in the future.
Mr. Zigayer: We presented these views to the Justice Committee in the House of Commons. The request for the opinion was made after the bill had been passed through the committee. It did come as a confirmation of the approach we took.
It would be my pleasure to come back to this committee with a colleague who specializes in human rights law to give you an exposé of our views on this issue.
The Chairman: Thank you very much, gentlemen. You made an excellent presentation tonight.
The committee adjourned.