Thank you for another good question.
I'll just start by making a quick statement about discipline. As I alluded to earlier, it involves not just the military justice piece, which, as I described, is summary trial and courts martial. It involves other tools, administrative tools like removal from command, for example. So the term “discipline”...I just think it's important for people to understand it doesn't just end itself within the military justice system. It applies to all the tools available to the chain of command.
Regarding the specific question, yes, in terms of the system under the code of service discipline, which is a part of the National Defence Act and lays out the process and the offences to be charged under the code of service discipline, it breaks it down as you break it down through the NDA and through the Queen's Regulations and Orders to a number of charges that are only triable by summary trial by the chain of command. Those are often considered to be less serious charges.
Then you have a set of charges that are tried only by court martial. Those often would be considered the more serious charges. Then there are some that may appear to be not so serious in terms of the act itself, but depending on the circumstances, the chain of command may feel that the punishment that might be contemplated might be in the level that's higher. In those cases and for other reasons, they offer an election to the accused to go either to summary trial or to court martial.
So once you're into that zone--and there are a number of charges that fall into that category of electable charges--it's by that choice. We've had recent changes to the NDA from the case I mentioned earlier, R. v. Trépanier, from the Court Martial Appeal Court, that now make it much clearer that the accused makes the choice in certain circumstances in terms of what offence they made. Or the chain of command may simply say that it is going to be too serious a matter. As you know, members of the chain of command are not legally trained as lawyers and judges, so they don't have the competency, for example, to deal with—nor should they and nor do they want to, frankly—charter arguments. That's left for the courts martial.