Bill C-15 (Historical)

Strengthening Military Justice in the Defence of Canada Act

An Act to amend the National Defence Act and to make consequential amendments to other Acts

This enactment amends provisions of the National Defence Act governing the military justice system. The amendments, among other things,
(a) provide for security of tenure for military judges until their retirement;
(b) permit the appointment of part-time military judges;
(c) specify the purposes, objectives and principles of the sentencing process;
(d) provide for additional sentencing options, including absolute discharges, intermittent sentences and restitution;
(e) modify the composition of a court martial panel according to the rank of the accused person; and
(f) modify the limitation period applicable to summary trials and allow an accused person to waive the limitation periods.
The enactment also sets out the Canadian Forces Provost Marshal’s duties and functions and clarifies his or her responsibilities. It also changes the name of the Canadian Forces Grievance Board to the Military Grievances External Review Committee.
Finally, it makes amendments to the delegation of the Chief of the Defence Staff’s powers as the final authority in the grievance process and makes consequential amendments to other Acts.

Strengthening Military Justice in the Defence of Canada Act

[The Acting Speaker, Conservative, Bruce Stanton]

It is my duty pursuant to Standing Order 38 to inform the House that the questions to be raised tonight at the time of adjournment are as follows: the hon. member for Churchill, Abortion; the hon. member for Thunder Bay—Superior North, The Economy; the hon. member for Winnipeg North, Citizenship and Immigration.

Questions and comments. The hon. member for Edmonton Centre.

[Laurie Hawn, Conservative, Edmonton Centre, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I listened carefully to my colleague's comments and the conclusion I draw is that the New Democrats will never support any bill of any kind going to committee because they do not trust the government in committee. That is pretty obvious.

I will quote former Chief Justice Lamer, who stated:

I have approached the task of writing this report from the perspective of the women and men in the Canadian Forces. These soldiers who risk their lives for our country deserve a military justice system that protects their rights in accordance with our Charter, while maintaining the necessary discipline for achieving successful missions. Further, they deserve a grievance process that addresses their grievances in a fair, transparent and prompt manner. I believe that my recommendations will go far towards achieving these goals.

Bill C-15 implements most of the remaining Lamer recommendations. Would the hon. member opposite not agree, and I suspect I know the answer, that it is time to stop playing politics and agree to move Bill C-15 to committee so that the goals, so clearly and eloquently set out by former Chief Justice Lamer, can be fulfilled for the members of the Canadian Forces?

[Lysane Blanchette-Lamothe, NDP, Pierrefonds—Dollard, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I am very glad that the hon. member asked me that question, with those comments. Perhaps he misunderstood what I wanted to say.

I was not saying that the opposition will oppose all bills from the government. What I said was that several attempts were made before arriving at Bill C-15 and that some amendments had been presented to the government. Those amendments cannot be found anywhere in Bill C-15. With respect to this specific bill, the opposition has good reason to doubt the government's will to work with the opposition on the amendments needed to make Bill C-15 a good bill.

Now, I would like to add that the hon. member said himself that most of Mr. Justice Antonio Lamer's recommendations have been included in Bill C-15. Why is it most and not all of them? The Conservatives cannot answer this question. Often in committee, the experts ask questions or give their opinions, but they are completely ignored by the Conservatives. That is unacceptable and it is not the way the NDP operates.

[Tyrone Benskin, NDP, Jeanne-Le Ber, QC]

Mr. Speaker, first, I have a brief comment. A lot of hay has made about why we are debating this. First, it is our job, and second, the vast majority of us are not on the justice committee. This an opportunity for us to voice our opinions on a bill. It is a shame that the government needs to go to the extreme and say that because we disagree with a certain point, we disagree with everything. My colleague has made it quite clear that there are elements we would like looked at in good faith, which the government has not done.

Would my colleague elaborate on the issue of our serving men and women who find themselves in the military justice system and end up with criminal records for very minor incidents when they leave the military. How does that affect the lives of the men and women who leave the armed forces?

[Lysane Blanchette-Lamothe, NDP, Pierrefonds—Dollard, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague, the hon. member for Jeanne-Le Ber, for his excellent question.

In fact—I am repeating it and I can say it as many times as people want to hear it—the NDP agrees that we should take the time, right now, to improve the military justice system. That is clear. For too long, people have demanded reforms. Still, it cannot be done in a slapdash way. Since it needs doing, let us do it well.

Right now, Bill C-15 does not remove all the flaws. My Conservative colleague said, “Bill C-15 implements most of the remaining Lamer recommendations”. Why not all the judge's recommendations? Why not listen to the experts' opinions?

My colleague from Jeanne-Le Ber said it very well: we have doubts about the government's willingness to work with the opposition. These are serious doubts arising from our experience with other bills like Bill C-15. That is why the NDP is not ready to work, because it does not think the government is ready to work in good faith with the opposition.

[Hélène LeBlanc, NDP, LaSalle—Émard, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I rise in the House to speak to Bill C-15, An Act to amend the National Defence Act and to make consequential amendments to other Acts.

I would like to start by saying a few words about my family. I had a great uncle who was a veteran of the second world war. As hon. members can imagine, he has now passed on. One of my cousins is a member of the Canadian Forces. He went to Afghanistan several times and to other hot spots throughout the world to do his duty as a soldier.

I have also had the opportunity to meet veterans in my riding, particularly at Remembrance Day ceremonies. These ceremonies are always very dignified affairs with a high level of decorum. They show a remarkable level of discipline.

In my riding, there is also a place called the Legion, where veterans go fairly often to socialize and talk to each other. This meeting place is very important for them. I would like to take this opportunity to say hello to these veterans because they have welcomed me very warmly every time I have been there.

There is also another very touching event in my riding. Once a year, the ladies auxiliary—volunteers—go and get veterans with reduced mobility at the Sainte-Anne-de-Bellevue Hospital or other long-term care facilities. They bring them to the Legion and make them dinner so that they can all socialize. These veterans have the opportunity to meet with other veterans, some who may be a bit younger than them, and other people who are there. I would like to take this opportunity to recognize the ladies auxiliary volunteers. No one asked them to do this. They do it because they have such great respect for veterans. They want to take advantage of this day to pay tribute to veterans and to give them an opportunity to enjoy some good moments together.

When we talk about veterans, we often think of people who fought in the Korean War in the 1950s, and the first and second world wars. However, we often forget the people I call our new or recent veterans, those who went to Afghanistan and other places. I cannot imagine the extremely difficult situations that these people experienced throughout the world. The same goes for all our veterans.

Some of these “recent” veterans, if I can call them that, have come to see me in my office. They often have medical problems or mental health concerns, but they are also having difficulty obtaining basic services from their government. They are completely distraught. They are having a really hard time adapting to civilian life and, once again, they cannot seem to get answers to their questions when they need them. When one feels a sense of urgency or is in distress, when one is feeling panicked, one is bound to have questions and expect service.

Those people expect a timely response, one that is reassuring. I had one very troubling case that really struck me.

I would like to talk about myself a little bit, in contrast with the people who enlist in the Canadian Forces. These people are held to the highest disciplinary standards in order to face situations that I could never face. Their world is very strict, with very strong discipline and no room for questioning. They must follow the chain of command and so on.

The bill currently before us talks about a justice system. If you will, there is a separate justice system for the military, the justice system that applies to the rest of us, and then there is the criminal justice system. The purpose of this bill is to ensure fair justice for all, whether or not one is in the military, since military personnel are citizens like the rest of us. Although military personnel are subject to specific disciplinary standards and hierarchies, justice must nevertheless be fair and consistent with that in the civilian world. This bill tries to bring the military justice system more in line with the civilian system, because serious repercussions and abuses could ensue, although we hope not.

Furthermore, this bill, and also others that died on the order paper, as was mentioned earlier, were introduced in response to the existing system. In 2003, the Right Hon. Antonio Lamer, former Chief Justice of the Supreme Court—who is well known—made 88 recommendations, and 28 were included in the bill. I will not go over all the bills introduced. However, this shows that since 2003 there has been a desire to strike a balance so that there are no abuses of power in the military justice system.

With regard to reforming summary trials, these amendments were made because we did not want someone who committed summary offences to have a criminal record and experience its crippling effects. All these amendments will strike a balance.

With respect to the reform of the grievance system, I would like to say that if the Canadian Forces Grievance Board is to be seen as an external, independent civilian body, as it should be, the appointment process needs to be amended to reflect that.

I see that time is passing. In short, this again is to strike a balance and ensure that members of the military have a justice system that is in line with the civilian system.

In conclusion, the NDP believes that members of the Canadian Forces must comply with extremely high standards of discipline, that in return they deserve a justice system subject to standards similar to civilian standards, and that a criminal record has detrimental effects. We must ensure that we respect this.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Speaker, there is some commonality in the sense that we in the Liberal Party and the New Democrats appear to support the fact that there is a need to reform our military justice system. On the surface, it would appear that the government also concurs and that is one of the reasons why it brought Bill C-15 here.

We anticipate that there could be amendments. We are being told by the government that there will be some amendments to the legislation. We in the Liberal Party have indicated that the men and women of our Canadian Forces have waited a great deal of time for this reform to take place. We believe that at the end of the day there are other things that could be done to improve and strengthen the system, but we would ultimately like to see it sent to committee. Therefore, Liberals support the bill in principle and would like to see it sent to committee with the hope that we will see the amendments.

Why does the NDP not support the bill in principle? That is where it seems a bit confusing, because if the NDP does not vote in favour of the bill being sent to committee what it is really saying is that it does not support the principle of the bill.

[Hélène LeBlanc, NDP, LaSalle—Émard, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for his question.

Back in 2003, Mr. Lamer made 88 recommendations, only 23 of which were accepted. I think that this Supreme Court justice deserves a certain amount of trust. He has a huge amount of experience and made 88 recommendations. But accepting 23 of 88 recommendations is not very much.

When this bill was examined, a number of amendments were put forward and rejected. That is unfortunate.

[Libby Davies, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I am very glad that we are having this debate in the House because I think it draws attention and focus to the issue of military justice, which probably most Canadians know very little about.

I feel very disturbed that so many times in the House we hear the government members say the NDP is opposed to the military, the NDP is opposed to everything. However, here we are actually debating a bill where we support the need to have a fulsome, proper, fair and balanced military justice system. It is the government side that is whipping through a bill, as it does so often now, without properly considering amendments that were previously in a bill that the House looked at before.

I wonder if the member could comment on the practice of what is taking place, because it is just getting worse and worse.

[Hélène LeBlanc, NDP, LaSalle—Émard, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for his very astute observation of the system and the debates.

In the parliamentary system, discussions among the different parties and members of Parliament are important, but committee work is also extremely important. That is the source of some of the frustration. We have tried many times—just look at Bill C-45—to propose amendments that could improve a bill and that often reflect the testimony of the various experts who have appeared before the committees.

We are not pulling these amendments out of nowhere. They are often inspired by different parties—not in the partisan sense—from civil society who share their expertise, their good faith and their opinions.

We hope the government's new year's resolutions will include starting to listen to the amendments we propose.

[Malcolm Allen, NDP, Welland, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise to speak to Bill C-15 in spite of my colleagues across the way, who think we should just shuffle it off and not hear from people and not get suggestions, but just send it to committee and somehow, magically, that committee would work differently than all the other ones we sit on.

I have had the pleasure of sitting on a couple of committees, and I will tell the following story, because it was not in camera. I will not tell the other stories, because they were in camera and we are not allowed to talk about what should and could have happened but did not happen in those cases.

I can tell the House about Bill S-11 at the agriculture committee, where the government said, “Here is an important bill on food safety”. The official opposition said the government was absolutely right, that in principle it was a good bill, a good foundation that we could build upon and make it better. My colleagues across the way, who I have heard all day, said that we should the current bill go committee and it will be fixed there.

I can say that my colleague, the member for Guelph, and I offered about 16 amendments in total to Bill S-11 to enhance that food safety bill. They would have strengthened it, by talking about an audit and whistle-blower protection and about when the clock would start to tick on a five-year review. My colleague and friend from Guelph said that we should start the clock when we enacted the bill, and not wait six months. It was a great suggestion.

The government, in its wisdom, debated the first four amendments, argued against them, but realized that its arguments were so full of holes that it stopped. Accordingly, on amendments 5 to 16, the government members listened to us and then said, “No, no”, and on and on it went until they were all done.

Now, what should we do with that? Should we trust them and suggest that we go to committee with our amendments, where somehow a “no” will become “We are thinking about it, maybe it looks like a good idea”? Of course, the end result will be “no”.

That is why we are debating the bill here in the House, because we want folks out there to know that there are good ideas, that there are things that need to be in this bill, because they were in it before. This is not new. This legislation did not just get dropped off the shelf a few months back.

Speaking of dropping off the shelf, I hear my colleagues across the way in the government saying how they need to get these things through. This bill was introduced by them last year. If it is so urgent, why was it not equally urgent last year when the government introduced it? The government waited a year to bring it forward and now complains that we want to debate it. I thought that folks elected us and sent us here to debate legislation. Call me naive if that is not what I was supposed to do when I got here.

Clearly, if I do not sit on that committee, my only opportunity to offer input on this bill is here in the House. That is the only opportunity to say, “Listen, we have some suggestions”.

What I find really ironic about this particular bill is that it is not its first incarnation. It was here before and amended. The other side actually accepted the amendments. Then magically, after an election, the government lost those amendments and forgot about them. Something happened on the way back to Ottawa after the election. All those good amendments fell off the bus somewhere. They are out there somewhere, never to be found.

That is really disappointing, because if they were good amendments then, they are good amendments now. Why not incorporate them? Why go through this charade of, “Come on, you approve it in principle, you want to do this, so let us get it off to committee”, only then not to make any changes, but bring it back and enact the legislation because you have the majority. We accept that fact. That is the will of democracy: You won the last election, you got a majority. That is fair.

Ultimately, do not expect the committee to accept amendments when the proof so far to date has been that you do not.

[The Acting Speaker, Conservative, Barry Devolin]

Order. The hon. member for Welland and others in the chamber, the Chair has been reminding members to address the Chair in their remarks, both physically addressing the Chair as well as addressing the Chair as opposed to their colleagues.

I am not only singling out the member of Welland, as I know many others have done this. That is the appropriate form in this place.

The hon. member for Welland.

[Malcolm Allen, NDP, Welland, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am more than pleased to address you directly, sir. I know that you would never take the opportunity to single me out. You do as you have always done and remind us all to participate in a way that we know we should. I appreciate that reminder.

Clearly, when we look at Bill C-15, we see it is about bringing justice to our brave men and women in the military for whom all in this House have the greatest of admiration and respect. I genuinely believe that. We, as a Parliament, ask them to serve Canada and they come to us voluntarily to serve.

As parliamentarians, we can disagree on what the missions are, but when a decision is ultimately taken in this House, members of the Canadian Forces serve this House and Canadians in general. This legislation should have been about ensuring that their justice system is as robust and as good as we can possibly make it. However, that is where we have let them down.

The reason we are bringing this to the government's attention is that we have such a high regard for the members of the military and hold them in such high esteem because of the service they give to all of us regardless of what role they take on here at home or abroad. We want them to have the most robust system of justice, which we know they deserve, and we should not provide anything less than that.

We have had reports that have been named many times, whether it be the Lamer report, the committee's report or the previous bill, which have been in this House before. We have had all of these things already, not necessarily in this session of the House, but certainly in other sessions. I was here last session of the House, and there was a bill here before that.

We have had all of that information, which has been studied to a certain degree, but where has it disappeared to? What happened to those pieces of legislation that folks agreed were good? Why would we lose those bits and pieces? Why would we not just say, yes, we disagree on certain aspects, but in the end, why would we not look at the pieces that are here?

There are concerns around the complaints commission. For example, a soldier who logs a grievance ends up in front of his or her commanding officer. That is the way the system works in this process. If one does not come out the other side of the process thinking one was treated fairly, then the system does not work.

The issue is not about the decision. Grievers can file grievances and not win, but if they think that the system works, then they just do not like the decision at the end of it, which is fair. Grievers quite often do not like the decision if they do not win. However, if a griever does not think the process is fair, then regardless of what happens in the decision, it is the process that is the annoyance.

I think we need to look at the grievance procedure and ask how we can make it a fair system. How do we make it a system so that those who have to enter it can say to themselves that the system works? They may not like the decision, but they would not complain that the system was unfair. This is much different from thinking that the reason they got a bad decision was that the process does not work, which ends up with two negatives and that just does not work for everyone involved. It does not work for the military as a whole or its sense of what it wants to do in making sure that justice seems fair. It is not a question of justice being done, but about justice seeming fair as well.

Ultimately, that is what we needed Bill C-15 to do, and it started down the path of taking it to a better place. However, the issue for me is: Why did we not go down the path a little farther? There is some suggestion that maybe it will happen later on. Why do we not do it now? If we were starting from scratch, I guess we might think this is a great start, but the problem is that we are not. We have started from other places. We could have built that into the bill, which is what we find disappointing on this side.

[Laurie Hawn, Conservative, Edmonton Centre, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I did not catch my colleague's whole speech, but I caught the last few minutes and there are a couple of things I want to point out.

It is not just this member but others who have said that this side had agreed to some amendments the last time that are not here this time, which is misleading the House. There were two amendments we had agreed to last time. One is in Bill C-15 and on the other one, the criminal records aspect, the minister has already stated very clearly that it will come back to committee. The members need to stop misleading the House on that.

With respect to the grievance external review board and its make-up, we did not agree to that the last time. To suggest that somehow we have changed our minds on that is simply not true.

There was a question put to me previously. Of course, I am here to ask questions and not answer them, but I will answer anyway.

There are 36 of the remaining Lamer recommendations that are in Bill C-15. There are 21 that are in fact still under study because they are extremely complex issues and they do require an awful lot of study. We have accepted 81 of the 88 recommendations, 29 have been implemented, 36 are in Bill C-15 and the other 21 are still under study.

I know it is politics, but I wish the opposition would stop misleading the House.

[Malcolm Allen, NDP, Welland, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am not sure there was a question, but that is okay. I respect my hon. colleague from Edmonton Centre. He served our country for a long time and we are extremely proud of his service and thank him for it. I to want to say it publicly again.

The member is right. What I said previously was that the committee had the amendments. It may not have accepted everything and that is fair. Ultimately it amounts to the fact that there was an acceptance of a certain pace of a go. If the member is telling us that the Conservatives are studying the additional pieces, then why would they rush to bring this? Why not wait until they study the other 36 pieces, recognizing that they are complex and need further study? If it is too long, then they cannot wait.

Clearly now that we know the government is studying some things, what is that timeline? I wonder if the minister could tell us that at some point. Is it 30 of 90 days from now? Is it 3 years from now? If the Conservatives are studying them with the prospect of enhancing the bill with those additional pieces, perhaps they should have helped us with that information and perhaps they could have been in the bill in a month or two, or less.