Well, the public policy issue we were addressing here was the fact that people who are not under the civilian system, but rather under the military system, and who don't have the protections of the Charter of Rights application to the procedure, are ending up with a criminal record, whereas in the civilian side, it doesn't happen. One of the conversations we had the last time we discussed this here at the committee was about the possibility of leaving it up to the military if they felt something was serious enough to require there to be, from a public policy perspective, a criminal record--that it's something that could then be prosecuted in the criminal courts and the civilian courts.
Now, it was raised that this may be an issue if you're overseas and don't have access to the civilian courts in Canada. That being the case, maybe that's too bad. I don't think the public policy can be applied that surgically, if you want to say it that way. If the interest, particularly in overseas operations, is operational reasons--good order and discipline--then maybe the criminal record part is not so important.
I would be happy to let this thing go if we remove the list of offences and say that if the offender is sentenced to any of these that are here.... It's not the same list that I have in my original amendment, but if we could remove that--I don't know if there's agreement to that around the table to move this thing forward--we could perhaps continue on. If that's not going to happen, well...we're out of time, I think.