TORONTO _ Sex offenders across the country are falling through the cracks because of loopholes in Canada's national sex offender registry, Ontario's police commissioner said Thursday as he urged the federal government to automatically tag anyone convicted of anything from possessing child pornography to sexual assault.

Testifying before a provincial legislative committee Thursday, Julian Fantino said only half of the sex offenders on Ontario's registry are on the national list, making it more difficult to track offenders when they move around the country.

``This is an issue that has to be looked at because of the transient nature of many of these offenders,'' Fantino said. ``In this world, there are no boundaries or jurisdictions. We need to be better able to track the movement of these individuals.''

Ontario is the only province with its own sex offender registry, while every other province relies on the flawed national list, Fantino said. There is no formal process to track the movements of offenders between provinces, and the onus is on offenders to register themselves in Ontario once they enter in the province, he said.

The national sex offender registry should take a cue from Ontario and automatically place offenders on the provincial registry when they are convicted of a sex crime, he said.

At the moment, the Crown requires a judge's order to place someone on the national registry. Sex offenders can sometimes make deals with the Crown, agreeing to plead guilty to a crime to avoid being put on the national list, he said.

``It presents a problem,'' said Deputy Commissioner Vince Hawkes. ``It is very frustrating for law enforcement. But it's something that goes beyond our control. Unfortunately, it's out of our hands.''

John Brent, spokesman for federal Public Safety Minister Stockwell Day, said the government is ``working to correct a failed Liberal system that enables sexual predators to be released into the public without proper safeguards.''

Day has asked a parliamentary committee to review the registry, but Brent said ``our government will not wait'' for the co-operation of opposition members. In the meantime, Brent said Day has requested his officials bring forward suggestions on how to strengthen the current registry.

``Our government is aware that both the provinces and police have raised issues of concern with respect to the sex offender registry,'' Brent said in an e-mail. ``We will act to ensure that these concerns are addressed.''

But Craig Jones, executive director of the John Howard Society of Canada, said those who advocate for a mandatory national sex offender registry are ignoring the evidence. Such registries don't work since most sex crimes are committed by family members or friends and go unreported, he said.

``Putting someone on a registry ... is the surest way to guarantee that they will reoffend,'' Jones said. ``You treat them like a pariah, stigmatize them in the community, hound them from address to address, you increase the level of stress on them and you increase the likelihood that they will reoffend. The best deterrent is treatment.''

Jim Stephenson, whose 11-year-old son Christopher was killed by a convicted sexual predator in 1988, said sex offender registries are a good way of tracking dangerous convicts, but the federal government has a lot of work to do.

Stephenson said people are mistaken if they think Canada's sex offender registry is a true and effective list of all dangerous sexual convicts.

``It isn't,'' he said. ``It doesn't have adequate funding to do the job it's intended to do. It's a terrible omission _ a very serious omission _ that it's left to the discretion of judges to determine whether or not a conviction will result in the requirement to register as a sex offender.

``Ontario's model has got it right.''

Ontario's registry, which contains about 7,400 names, was created in 2001 following a coroner's inquest into the death of Christopher Stephenson.

But Ontario's sex offender registry has also come under serious criticism from the province's auditor general.

In his last report, Jim McCarter said hundreds of convicted sex offenders in Ontario are not listed on the registry, and there's little evidence to show the registry reduces sex crimes or helps investigators solve them.

He further pointed out that money was being diverted from the registry's $4-million budget _ a practice Fantino said has completely stopped.

The ministry says it has accepted all of McCarter's recommendations, while the Liberals have introduced amendments to the current registry to close some of the loopholes highlighted by McCarter.

© 2007 The Canadian Press