Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you for that question. It's another very good one for me to talk about the military justice system, which I believe is an outstanding and reputable system. One of my goals will be to educate the public much more, because there is not a lot of common knowledge in the Canadian public about the Canadian military justice system, and it is an extremely sound and competent one.
Mr. Chair, in a word, it is certainly a challenge as a superintendent, because you are playing with independent actors. The Office of the Chief Military Judge is a separate independent unit within the Canadian Forces, and it's led essentially by the chief military judge. Similarly, the director of military prosecutions and the director of defence counsel services are independent actors and their offices are independent actors.
I manage it by trying to have open lines of communication. We have informal and formal meetings. As for my staff, for example, I have a deputy judge advocate general in charge of military justice and administrative law, and they have staff, and regularly, when they're developing policies, when they're looking for ways to improve the system, they do so in consultation with those various independent actors. But at no point are we imposing our will or our desires to have them act in a certain way other than in accordance with the rule of law in a general sense.
It's a two-way consultative process. If they have issues or difficulties, particularly on process, they'll bring it to my folks and we'll address it.