I have to turn to our allies in Ireland and Australia. They made it a point in law that a conviction by summary trial does not lead to a record, thank you. In the U.K., Australia, and New Zealand, there is now an appeal process for conviction and sentences in summary trials. Why did this happen in the U.K. to begin with? Because when a challenge was made before the European Court of Human Rights, the summary trial system was found not to be in accord with the convention on human rights in Europe. There is a movement in our common law jurisdiction in all the countries I've named that says we have to change our ways. We have to provide more procedural fairness.
One last example is that in the RCMP you can be convicted of a service offence, and you don't end up with a criminal record either. It's a disciplinary process. It's the same if you are in the public service. Why is it that because it's military in 2011 you have to have a stigma attached to it? We can enforce discipline without having detention, custodial power. That's exactly what Ireland just did. They removed from the commanding officer holding a summary trial the capacity to send someone to detention. That way you don't have to have legal representation, appeal processes, and so on. There's a way to make it more akin to what you would find in civilian labour or a civilian organization of some sort.
