Chiefs of police are endorsing a private Senate bill to permit DNA sampling of people convicted of non-violent crimes like drunk driving. The measure might have averted one of the country’s most notorious wrongful convictions, they said..“The National DNA Databank is under-utilized and the Association sees the bill as an opportunity make the databank more effective for law enforcement,” the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police wrote in a submission to the Senate legal and constitutional affairs committee. The current law is “restrictive,” it said..According to Blacklock's Reporter, the databank dates from Parliament’s passage of the 2000 DNA Identification Act. It permits DNA sampling of criminals convicted of violent offences including murder, aggravated assault, hijacking, terrorism and sex crimes..“It now stores over half a million DNA profiles in the criminal indices which have produced more than 73,000 matches to date and assisted law enforcement agencies in the identification of suspects and victims,” the RCMP wrote in its last Annual Report on databank operations..Bill S-231 An Act To Amend The Criminal Code would expand the scope of DNA sampling to anyone convicted of crime punishable by five years or more like impaired driving, drug trafficking, breaking and entering or theft over $5,000..Police chiefs cited the case of Guy Paul Morin in petitioning senators to pass the bill. The Queensville, ON factory worker in 1992 was convicted of murdering schoolgirl Christine Jessop, 9. Subsequent DNA testing freed Morin and identified her likely killer, Calvin Hoover, a family friend who subsequently committed suicide..“If Bill S-231’s expanded list of designated offences had been in effect in 2007 Mr. Hoover’s DNA would have been added to the National DNA Databank when he was convicted of impaired driving,” wrote police chiefs. “Christine’s murder could have been solved 13 years earlier. Mr. Hoover, who died in 2015, could have stood trial for her murder. The Jessop family may have found justice and Mr. Morin may have experienced a little more closure.”.Senator Claude Carignan (QC), sponsor of Bill S-231, said expanded DNA sampling could solve numerous cold cases. “You should know there are hundreds of unsolved murders in Canada,” Carignan said in Second Reading debate on his bill..“The logic is that when someone is required to provide a DNA sample for a criminal offence, even a lesser offence, that sample may help resolve investigations for more serious offences, whether past or future, that this person has committed,” said Carignan. A similar bill S-236 An Act To Amend The Criminal Code was introduced in 2021 but lapsed in the last Parliament.
