The murder of a 10-year-old Toronto girl is prompting the city's police chief to demand that Ottawa hasten the implementation of a national sex offender registry.

Toronto police are making use of Ontario's sex offender registry as they hunt for Holly Jones's killer. The province-wide registry was set up in April 2001 -- the first of its kind in Canada. But Toronto Police Chief Julian Fantino says that's not enough.

"We don't have a national sex offender registry. I question why not," he said to reporters Wednesday.

"I don't know that anything would have stopped this crime," Fantino added. "All I can say to you is there is a very important role and a very important value on there being some control on the movement of sex offenders."

Ontario Public Security Minister Bob Runciman pointed out that the provincial registry won't help if Holly's killer came from another province. He lashed out at Ottawa for failing to set up a national registry of sex offenders.

"It frustrates us that the federal registry isn't up and running," Runciman said Wednesday as he headed into a cabinet meeting.

Runciman concedes though that he's not convinced the registry could have prevented Holly's death.

"I'm not sure what you can do about it. I mean, these people have been released into society through parole or completion of their sentence and they have the liberty as a Canadian citizen to move into certain areas."

The federal government's proposed legislation to establish a national registry is moving forward but slowly; it received a second reading on April 8 and has been referred to the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights.

Canadian Alliance MP Deborah Grey told CTV's Canada AM on Thursday that the government should have passed the legislation a long time ago.

"This would not have happened to this poor child or many, many others because this should have been taken care of years ago," Grey said. "It could be passed in a day and there would be lots of people alive today."

Liberal MP Dennis Mills made no apologies why the bill hasn't come into effect yet, simply saying committees get bogged down. "There is absolutely no reason why this hasn't been moved to the House," he told Canada AM. "I can't defend the tardiness."

Solicitor General Wayne Easter said if the legislation introduced in December is passed, and saves even one life, then it will be worth it.

The national registry would require convicted offenders to register within 15 days of being released from jail. They would have to re-register annually and any time they changed addresses.

As well, they would have to inform their local registration centre if they were away from home for more than 15 consecutive days.

Offenders must also provide current information such as telephone numbers, aliases, identifying marks or tattoos. It would be up to local police forces to decide whether to make the details public.

One criticism of the national registry proposal is that it isn't retroactive. That means some of Canada's most notorious sex killers, including Karla Homolka and Paul Bernardo, won't be in the database.

"Some of the most dangerous people who should be in the DNA databank don't qualify to be in the databank nationally," Toronto Staff Insp. Gary Ellis told CTV's Canada AM on Thursday.

"And that creates a serious problem I think for all of us and is something we have to look at."

Runciman says the federal government should also agree to take DNA samples of offenders already in prison and Fantino agreed.

There are more than 200 known sex offenders in the area where Holly disappeared -- a number Runciman called "scary."

For Jim Stephenson, the news about Holly Jones brought back his own nightmare. Fifteen years ago, his son, Christopher, was murdered by a convicted pedophile who was on federal statutory release.

His murder led to what's known as Christopher's Law, which brought about a registry in Ontario that requires sex offenders released from prison to notify police of their address. But two years later, there's still no national registry, a fact Stephenson finds heartbreaking.

"My worst fears have come true, that it was going to take another tragic death of a young child to wake the politicians and legislators up," he told CTV News.

There are more than 5,600 convicted offenders on the Ontario registry. Sixteen offenders have been convicted for failing to comply with the law, 47 cases are before the courts, and there are seven outstanding warrants.

With a report from The Canadian Press