Before I can describe the impact, if I could, I would question the utility or sagacity of even having a sunset clause in Bill C-60. I have to ask myself the question, why we would want to do that? This bill is not a transitory provision; it's not something that we're going to try for a while and see if it works. It's a result of a constitutional challenge before a court, where the court has spoken unanimously that it has to be done.
So I would certainly not include a sunset clause in Bill C-60, which is fairly small in scope, but very important if you happen to be an accused, and very important if you going to be going through a court martial. Those changes were already proposed by Chief Justice Lamer and ought to have come forward through Bill C-45.
So the last thing I would want to do is to suggest a sunset clause. Instead of a sunset clause in Bill C-60, I would suggest that whenever you go through Bill C-45, the National Defence Act have in it a mechanism whereby there is a delayed schedule of some sort, so that it has to be reviewed from stern to whatever. And we're really talking here about the Code of Service Discipline within the National Defence Act. It's not everything, but it's the bulk of it. And it has to be in light of changes in the criminal law system and lessons that we learn, as we are in operations for the first time since World War II, or on that scale. Surely there are lessons that we are learning from applying our Code of Service Discipline in an operational setting abroad. So will there not be change resulting from it?
That mechanism ought to be enshrined in the act. Whether it's for every three years or every five years, whether there is an independent body from outside of DND, it should be looked at it and changes be proposed to Parliament, and we should not tinker with the act--for instance, a requirement to have a permanent court. Could that be set? Maybe, and certainly through Bill C-45, because I am familiar with some of it....
Allow me maybe to end on this comment, that we take into account the changes that are being made by all allies to their military justice systems. For instance, in military summary trials, as we heard recently, one doesn't have a right to representation; one doesn't have a right to records; one doesn't have a right to appeal. Yet you could be sent to detention for a long period, and the Trépanier decision told you how uneasy and uncomfortable detention can be. In other countries, some of them very allied to us, like Britain, they have introduced into their codes a review mechanism for those decisions, and administrative tribunals may be....
I think that with this mechanism in our act, we will be able to take a comprehensive and beneficial review of the act and propose not only what the military wants, but also what we as a society, and you as legislators, ought to have in order to keep it in sync—not behind, but in sync—with the civilian criminal law system and with society, because at the moment I think we're catching up.