Thank you very much for that question.
Again, as I've said, it's part of my mandate for the next four years to try to assist everybody within and outside the Canadian Forces in better understanding military law and military justice.
The military justice system is a stand-alone system of justice, separate from the civilian system. It's recognized constitutionally, like any justice system. You'll note that the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms highlights that jury trials don't apply to the military justice system. The real heart of it, at the end of the day is about discipline. The CF is different from the civilian population because of that important aspect. Without discipline, you don't really have a functioning, efficient, and agile operational force.
In order to give the tools to the chain of command to maintain discipline, there are many tools, and one of them is a separate system of military justice. Within that military justice system, as has been recognized by the Supreme Court of Canada in a case called R. v. Généreux, discipline is the heart of the system.
Therefore, the reason, the rationale, for having a separate system in which you have players who are also members of the military is extremely important. It helps to bring a context to people so they understand the proper context. Not that civilian judges don't understand the law, of course, but do they really understand the context?
As members of this panel who have gone to Afghanistan recently, I'm sure you perhaps saw a different context from your understanding of it just sitting here in Ottawa... It's the same with military justice. You have to understand the rules, the regulations, and the context in which soldiers, sailors, and air-persons operate to bring that difference to it.
So when you focus on it and you want to look at it, really, the heart of it is discipline. That separates us from the civilian justice system.