Daniel Robson is a Canadian independent journalist specializing in digital extremism, national security, and counterterrorism.Canada can argue about bail, sentencing, and “getting tough” for another decade, but none of it matters if the justice system can’t do the one thing that turns suspicion into proof: process forensic evidence on time. That is why the RCMP’s forensic-lab crisis should be treated as a public-safety emergency, not a technical embarrassment.In its reporting on internal findings, Western Standard described chronic failures in biology casework, the kind of delays that left only about half of surveyed police clients satisfied, and the growing reality that investigators are turning to private testing despite higher costs simply to keep cases from stalling. That isn’t a lab problem. It is a legitimacy problem.The uncomfortable truth is that forensic delay is never neutral. It quietly changes outcomes: which suspects get charged, which files get stayed or bargained down, which victims lose faith and disengage, and which communities conclude that “public safety” is mostly political branding.When biology casework is late, the system doesn’t merely move slowly; it starts making decisions under pressure that have little to do with truth and everything to do with time. Evidence degrades, witnesses disappear, memories fade, and prosecutors and police triage files based on what is ready rather than what is right.That is what makes this moment so corrosive for Ottawa’s broader public-safety messaging. Western Standard has covered federal promises to “restore confidence” through bail and sentencing reform, including the claim that tougher rules will better contain repeat violent offenders.But even a perfect bail bill cannot compensate for a broken evidentiary pipeline. If the lab can’t deliver results in time, the system doesn’t get tougher; it gets weaker, because the strongest legal tools still require solid, timely proof to survive court. The contradiction is now unavoidable: Canada is marketing firmness while the machinery that produces courtroom-ready evidence is choking..The RCMP’s own evaluation language reinforces the severity of the problem. In a summary posted on its website, the RCMP explains that National Forensic Laboratory Services operates a single public laboratory system across Surrey, Edmonton, and Ottawa, and acknowledges that service standards are not consistently met and sustainability risks remain.More strikingly, the evaluation notes that performance measurement is not yet strong enough to fully explain capacity, and it recommends modernization, forward-looking workforce planning, and improved measurement. That is bureaucratic phrasing for a simple warning Canadians should take seriously: the institution cannot yet describe its bottlenecks with the clarity you would expect from a core justice function. You can read the RCMP’s own framing in its Summary of the Evaluation of the RCMP’s Biology Casework Analysis Services.This is also why the “private testing” workaround is more than a pragmatic footnote. Outsourcing can be a legitimate surge tool when a public system is overwhelmed. But when private testing becomes the routine escape route because the public pipeline cannot cope, Canada risks sliding into two-tier justice: speed for those who can secure it, delay for everyone else. That isn’t just inequitable; it is strategically dangerous.The more evidence flows through external lanes, the more the system must defend questions about standardization, validation, disclosure practices, and consistency of reporting. Those questions will not stay in procurement paperwork. They will show up in court, under cross-examination, in competing expert opinions, and in appeals that can unravel prosecutions long after the headlines fade.Western Canadians, in particular, have reason to be angry. When federal systems slow down, provinces and communities absorb the operational damage. A homicide file in rural Alberta doesn’t become less urgent because Ottawa’s lab pipeline is clogged.Delay is paid for locally: investigative momentum lost, public fear sustained, families left in limbo, and police resources wasted on “keeping a case alive” while waiting for science to catch up. And if local agencies feel compelled to pay extra for private testing to prevent a file from dying, they are effectively paying a surcharge to compensate for federal failure — while being told, simultaneously, that public safety is being strengthened through headline reforms..There is a second contradiction here that Canada rarely confronts honestly: governments often announce investments in “DNA capacity” as if money automatically becomes throughput. Ottawa does fund biology casework analysis in certain arrangements, including a contribution program intended to support forensic DNA analysis and reduce backlogs.But the existence of funding streams does not guarantee operational performance if staffing, measurement, and modernized infrastructure can’t keep pace with demand. Public Safety Canada’s own framing of the biology casework contribution approach, and the goal of reducing turnaround times and backlogs, is summarized in its parliamentary materials on the Biology Casework Analysis Contribution Program. The key issue now is not whether Ottawa can announce spending; it is whether Canada can measure outcomes and enforce accountability inside the evidence pipeline.The larger point is this: a justice system cannot be “tough” if it cannot be timely. Delay does not just inconvenience police and prosecutors; it degrades the public’s willingness to cooperate, report, testify, and trust. It also fuels exactly the political anger that lawmakers claim they are addressing.When victims watch years pass for a result that should have arrived in weeks, they don’t merely lose patience. They begin to doubt the basic promise that the state can establish truth before time erases it.A serious response cannot be another vague pledge to “improve service.” It must treat forensic throughput as a measurable public-safety obligation, not an internal performance issue..The first test of seriousness is transparency: publish clear, regular reporting on turnaround times, backlogs, case categories, and regional impacts. The RCMP evaluation itself acknowledges measurement gaps; the remedy is to put measurement in the open, on a schedule, with benchmarks that can’t be massaged away by simply redefining what “on time” means.The second test is resilience: the system needs surge capacity that can drain backlogs instead of normalizing them. That means staffing strategies that recognize forensic expertise as a scarce labour market, retention measures that prevent the public system from bleeding talent into private providers, and modernization that improves processing flow rather than simply promising it. Private labs may still have a role, but only as an integrated and governed extension of the justice function — not as a market patch that quietly produces different speeds for different communities.Ottawa keeps telling Canadians that confidence in the justice system must be restored. That is true — but confidence won’t return through slogans, press conferences, or even well-crafted legislation if the evidence pipeline remains fragile.Canadians don’t experience “public safety” as a bill number in Parliament. They experience it as consequences that arrive before the next offence. If the RCMP’s labs cannot deliver timely, defensible forensic results, every other promise in the public-safety debate becomes a gamble. And a justice system that asks the public to gamble on truth will eventually lose the public’s consent.Daniel Robson is a Canadian independent journalist specializing in digital extremism, national security, and counterterrorism.about.me/danielrobsonOn X: @Daniel_Robson_
