Strengthening the National DNA Database (BNDG) to allow authorities to use technological advances to solve unsolved crimes: this is the idea of Senator Claude Carignan, who wants to make the registration of profile DNA automatic of almost everyone new offender.
Posted at 7:00 am
Canada is “late” in the field of genetic analysis, the senator says in an interview with La Presse. “Many situations could have been resolved now and several current situations could be resolved,” he emphasizes on the phone.
For this reason, Claude Carignan brought Bill S-231 into the Senate. The aim of the latter: to automatically take a DNA sample from almost everyone convicted of a crime in Canada.
PHOTO SEAN KILPATRICK, THE CANADIAN PRESS ARCHIVE
Conservative Senator Claude Carignan
Because if a DNA sample can currently be taken from people convicted of certain crimes, the current list of those is “long and complex” and does not include all crimes.
That way, more data could be collected to populate the NDDB, a massive directory maintained by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and available to police forces across the country to aid in their investigations. By comparing the DNA found at the crime scene with the samples found there, police can easily determine a suspect’s identity, provided they are registered there.
However, compared to similar banks in other countries, the NDDB contains relatively little data, argues Claude Carignan.
England has ten times more DNA profiles per capita than Canada.
Conservative Senator Claude Carignan
If passed, his bill would also allow “in certain circumstances” to use the NDDB to conduct a family relationship search, allowing authorities to take advantage of recent technological advances in the field of analysis.
Broadly speaking, police forces could identify a suspect from the DNA they would have left at a crime scene by comparing it to that of a biological relative who would have provided the bank with their DNA as part of a conviction.
Turn the page earlier
The senator received significant support for his approach, that of the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police (CACP). “This is a significant change,” she argued in a brief submitted to the Senate Standing Committee on Legal and Constitutional Affairs in early February.
The CACP cites the case of Christine Jessop, whose kidnapping and death in 1984 shocked Canada and led to the conviction of an innocent man. The real culprit, Calvin Hoover, was identified 36 years later, in 2020, by Toronto police thanks to technological advances in the field of genetic analysis2.
However, if Senator Claude Carignan’s bill had been in effect in 2007, when Hoover was convicted of disability driving, his DNA profile would have been included in the NDDB.
Christine’s murder could have been solved 13 years earlier. Mr Hoover, who died in 2015, could have been tried for Christine’s murder. The Jessop family could have found justice and Mr. Morin could have turned the page a little further.
Excerpt from the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police (CACP) briefing
‘We have no right not to use all the tools that science offers us,’ concludes Mr Carignan.
Ethical issues
But the changes proposed in his bill raise several ethical questions, says bioethics professor Bryn Williams-Jones, director of the Department of Social and Preventive Medicine at the University of Montreal’s School of Public Health.
Unlike fingerprints, which are already more common but are “individual,” DNA is “family,” he points out. “If my father or grandfather was registered but I was not involved in anything, is that data still there? ‘ he asks as an example.
According to Claude Carignan, his bill provides several mechanisms to protect the personal information of contributors to the NDDB.
In addition, the Supreme Court has already reviewed the constitutionality of DNA sampling from criminals, ruling that the quality of the information provided takes precedence over invasion of the criminal’s privacy, he recalls.
The senator hopes his bill will make its way through the Senate by next summer’s break in work. After this step, an MP must then sponsor it for it to be officially passed in the House of Commons.
If few Senate bills have yet to be approved in the House of Commons, so did another project led by Claude Carignan to protect journalistic sources.
This latest piece of legislation, tabled in the wake of revelations about the surveillance of several journalists in Quebec by the Montreal police and the Sûreté du Québec, including La Presse columnist Patrick Lagacé, was passed unanimously by the House of Commons in October 2017.
Learn more
484,445 Number of samples from convicts registered in the National DNA Data Bank (NDDB) since its inception in 2000. Of these, 82,629 are from Quebec.
Source: Royal Canadian Mounted Police
75,437 Number of matches made by the NDDB since its inception in 2000 between a convicted person whose DNA profile was found there and DNA found at a crime scene in Canada.
Source: NDDB Annual Report 2020-2021