Familial DNA searches come with risks, rewards in solving MMIWG cold cases

Some advocates say a tool touted by Manitoba RCMP for helping identify a suspect in the cold case of an Indigenous woman's murder should be expanded to help solve more cases like it.

Others fear it could do more harm than good.

Last week, police arrested Kevin Charles Queau, 42, accused of killing 24-year-old Crystal Saunders in 2007, thanks to advancements in DNA technology in 2014 that helped the Canadian DNA databank link him to a DNA sample found on the woman's body.

Arthur Schafer, an ethics professor at the University of Manitoba, says Queau's arrest shows the national DNA databank can be "really useful in a number of cases," but warns "without rules or regulations, there could also be serious harm."

The RCMP stewards the databank, established in 2000, which holds just over 650,000 DNA samples from crime scenes, as well as profiles of people convicted of certain designated offences, victims of crime, unidentified human remains, volunteers and missing persons and their family members from across Canada.

The national databank has been under scrutiny in recent years, as a Conservative senator's proposed bill sought to allow police to search it for familial matches of a DNA sample for perpetrators of some serious crimes when an exact one cannot be found — an idea that senators quashed in December.

But questions remain about whether police use of the databank should be allowed to go further than it has, with some asking whether more police power could solve more cold cases of missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls.

Since Indigenous people are more likely to end up in the justice system, and therefore the DNA databank, Schafer says "that leaves us with the quandary: Will the benefits of familial DNA searches to Indigenous communities — and particularly Indigenous women and girls — outweigh the harms?"

Before familial DNA searches were voted down in December, Renée Dupuis, an independent senator now retired, described the practice as "unacceptable discrimination," as it could result in heavier surveillance of Indigenous and other racialized communities.

However, the president of the Native Women's Association of Canada told the Senate in November that she would be in favour of granting police that power, saying it could identify more killers of Indigenous women and girls as well as exonerate the wrongfully convicted.

"We think that there's more benefits [than harm], especially with what's going on with our missing and murdered Indigenous women," Carol McBride told CBC News.

"I don't think that the pain will ever end, but at least the questions will be gone."

The conversation poses a question long asked by legislators and privacy experts alike: Could the use of the Canadian DNA databank be more powerful, or is it already too harmful?

Since 2000, Canada's DNA databank "has provided 80,875 investigative leads through matches to offenders, as well as 9,007 matches between crime scenes between police jurisdictions for all designated offences," RCMP spokesperson Robin Percival told CBC News on Friday.