Thank you, Chair.
I'm encouraged.... I don't want to get into arguments with the JAG. Obviously they're here to help us out with factual information. But I want to say that what we're hearing here is the real problem: it's extremely arbitrary. If a member of the forces is charged with an offence and is fined $500, he doesn't get a criminal record. If he's fined $600, he does. It doesn't make sense, frankly.
When we look at the rate of conviction or the rate of charges, we're looking at 2,019-odd people per year in a force of, what, 60,000 regular members or thereabouts? We're talking about a pretty high number of people being exposed to this military justice. That may be necessary for disciplinary reasons--I'm not arguing that issue here, or at this point--but a lot of people are affected by this.
I recognize that there's an attempt here at least to start the process, but I don't think it's adequate at all. It's been suggested that this would be a disincentive for people choosing a court martial. There's already a disincentive; if you go before a commanding officer, there's a limit on detention before a commanding officer that's not there for a court martial. There are all sorts of reasons...and we've heard the reasons why people choose a summary conviction, which have nothing to do with this; they're already choosing it anyway.
The real problem is the arbitrariness. If the sentence--and here I'm picking up on something the Judge Advocate General said--is so minor that....
Let's say you take section 113. There's a minor fire caused by somebody not following the regulation. A fire is caused and he's charged. If it's a minor circumstance, even though it's section 113, then it's very arbitrary to say, well, a minor incident under 113 shouldn't cause any problem, but even a major.... I suppose “absent without leave” could be somebody coming in after curfew, or it could be somebody taking off for two weeks, or it could be somebody not coming back from furlough for an extra week and they have to go looking for him, etc. He hasn't deserted, he just hasn't shown up.
I suppose there are insignificant issues of AWOL and there are some that are probably more serious. Both of them get treated the same--they're both AWOL--but in the case of starting fires, no matter how minor it is, it's treated as something that attracts a criminal record.
I think we really have to do something here that avoids this level of arbitrariness. Either we have to change the list of offences or we have to expand the nature of the punishment involved and make it so that it applies, as Colonel Gleeson said, to both court martials and other offences.
I think we have a serious problem here. I think anybody who has a constituent or relative or child in the forces ought to be concerned that they're being treated without the benefit of proper procedure under the Charter of Rights level of protections; at the same time, we're having a different consequence for them.
The threshold here is, I think, inadequate, and I've proposed that all of the summary conviction trials be...not attract a criminal record. I think that solves the one issue. There may be other ways of doing it, and the other ways might have to do with the sentence itself. But unless somebody has an amendment to that, or proposes a change in that, I will stick with this.