National Defence Committee on March 9th, 2011

[Laurie Hawn, Conservative, Edmonton Centre, AB]

I'm happy to go away and sit with the JAG folks and Jack to see if there's some way that we can word it differently to alleviate the concerns.

[The Chair, Conservative, Maxime Bernier]

Okay.

Ms. Gallant.

[Cheryl Gallant, Conservative, Renfrew—Nipissing—Pembroke, ON]

I'll speak further to the NDP amendment. In situations where there is not concurrent jurisdiction, we would then be--if the amendment went forward--allowing very serious offences to go without a record, and that remains a concern.

[Col Patrick K. Gleeson]

We would be allowing objectively serious offences that may not be serious enough to refer to court martial, within the specific circumstances, to be tried at summary trial and, if a conviction is entered, that individual would not receive a record.

Consider the brawl or the fight in the mess on a Friday night that results in a number of assault charges. These are serious offences, but none of them took place in serious circumstances. The commanding officer, in the interest of discipline, decides that it's appropriate for him to deal with these. He would try them and, if convictions are entered, then under the amendment there would be no criminal record within the meaning of the Criminal Records Act.

These same types of offences are dealt with downtown in the civilian justice system all the time. If you were to get into a similar type of dust-up in a bar in Ottawa on a Friday night, and you were tried and convicted in summary conviction court in downtown Ottawa, receiving a similar type of punishment, then you would have a criminal record within the meaning of the Criminal Records Act for that. That's the distinction we're talking about here as we go forward.

[The Chair, Conservative, Maxime Bernier]

Thank you.

Mr. LeBlanc, you have the floor. It will then be Mr. Harris' turn.

[Dominic LeBlanc, Liberal, Beauséjour, NB]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I certainly think some of us on this side of the table are sympathetic to Jack's amendment and to what he's trying to achieve. We have a sense, I think, that perhaps the net is cast a little bit wide in the sense that we're removing the possibility of a criminal record from offences such as those Laurie enumerated that clearly jar us as deserving of a record.

But the reverse is also true. Perhaps in the JAG's efforts in drafting this legislation, they didn't restrict it enough, and it's only when people sit down with a list of the offences that we'll all know where it might be appropriate in the context to have a record trigger and where it jars us. Somebody throwing a cigarette in a garbage can and not disposing of it according to Queen's Order 46 in some regulation ashtray probably shouldn't trigger a criminal record.

Somebody has to look at those lists and figure it out. If we can stand this down and Laurie, Jack, the officials, Colonel Gleeson, and others can perhaps come up with a balance that is better, then I think we could move on quickly to adopt the rest of the bill.

[The Chair, Conservative, Maxime Bernier]

Thank you.

Mr. Harris, you have the floor.

[Jack Harris, NDP, St. John's East, NL]

I think that's a wise approach. There may be another way of achieving the same object by talking about the punishments. If you included the punishment that the commanding officer is allowed to give for an offence, and say, okay, anything punished by that, or some version of that, would be considered not subject to a criminal record, whether, I suppose, it's done by court martial or otherwise, and that obviates the other....

I'd be happy to sit down with Mr. Hawn and the JAG, or representatives from the JAG's office, to see if we can craft something that does a better job of figuring out where the threshold should be. That's I guess what we're trying to find out.

[The Chair, Conservative, Maxime Bernier]

Thank you very much.

Monsieur Bachand, you have the floor.

[Jack Harris, NDP, St. John's East, NL]

I welcome anybody from the committee, Mr. Bachand or others, to join in.

[Claude Bachand, Bloc, Saint-Jean, QC]

I was going to say that. You read my mind.

Mr. Chairman, it is a good idea to invite the JAG to the committee, but when politicians sit down with those individuals who must draft laws, things can start slip sliding.

Personally, I would have preferred to see the JAG team do its work. These two individuals who are present here are extremely intelligent and express themselves very well on the matter of military justice. They have a perfect understanding of where we are at. One must not be too stringent, but stringent enough in order for individuals to not be able to slip through the system's net.

I would prefer to have the JAG do its work and come back to the committee, at which time there could be another debate. Otherwise, there is a risk of political interference.

If you retain the suggestion made, then I would ask that there also be a representative of the Bloc québécois.

[The Chair, Conservative, Maxime Bernier]

Fine, thank you.

Do we have a consensus that we're going to stand this, go to clause 76, and come back to clause 75 at our next meeting with maybe another kind of proposal? Okay? We have a consensus on that.

(Clause 75 allowed to stand)

Now we'll do clause 76. We don't have any amendments.

(Clause 76 agreed to)

(On clause 77)

Now we have clause 77, and we have an amendment from the NDP, NDP-9.1 for clause 77.

I will give you the floor, Mr. Harris.

[Jack Harris, NDP, St. John's East, NL]

I'm losing my numbering system here. It's not NDP-9, is it?

[The Chair, Conservative, Maxime Bernier]

It's NDP-9.1, number 4993497.

[Jack Harris, NDP, St. John's East, NL]

Okay. This is an amendment similar to the other one. It may suffer the same fate. It is the MPCC we're talking about here, and we have had a situation.... I'm not sure why the other one was defeated, frankly, but it's a similar situation. This is, again, a matter of administrative law, and we've seen it in other tribunals. I'm familiar with other legislation in other jurisdictions, whereby if a tribunal is seized with a matter, the tribunal as constituted gets to finish the job. That's something that I would want to see available to the MPCC as well, and I therefore have moved that amendment.

I guess I don't have to say much more. It was Justice Lamer's recommendation 70, and we'd like to see it passed.

[The Chair, Conservative, Maxime Bernier]

Thank you, Mr. Harris.

I just want to inform you that I have a decision on that amendment. Your amendment attempts to amend clause 77 to allow for the extension of the terms of appointment of members of that commission. In the opinion of the chair, the introduction of the term “extension” that is beyond the scope of clause 77 and is therefore not receivable.

[Jack Harris, NDP, St. John's East, NL]

How is that different from the other one, Chair?

[The Chair, Conservative, Maxime Bernier]

Sorry?

[Jack Harris, NDP, St. John's East, NL]

We didn't have that ruling on the other amendment. I just wonder how that amendment is different from the other one.

[The Chair, Conservative, Maxime Bernier]

No, you're right. It was a different amendment.

I will give the floor to the legislative clerk for your question, Mr. Harris.

[Lucie Tardif-Carpentier, Procedural Clerk]

Clause 77 seeks to change the French text of the oath, so the scope of the clause is very, very narrow. Therefore, extending the terms of appointment of members of the complaints commission, in our view, is not relevant to that specific clause. Therefore it's outside the....

[Jack Harris, NDP, St. John's East, NL]

Again, that was something...it wasn't ours. It wasn't something that we proposed. It was apparently some anomaly in the French text. It wasn't my problem, but when you're dealing with that, they've opened the door by including amendments to the clause as a whole, and therefore this amendment is changing that clause.

I'm actually trying to find my copy of it in front of me, but I seem to have lost it.

[The Chair, Conservative, Maxime Bernier]

Mr. Harris, do you wish to challenge the chair's decision? No?

[Jack Harris, NDP, St. John's East, NL]

So you're ruling on two, are you? Is that...? That doesn't affect the entire amendment, does it?

[The Chair, Conservative, Maxime Bernier]

The ruling is on your amendment NDP-9.1 on clause 77. I'm saying that it is not receivable because you introduced a new concept that is beyond the scope of the clause.