Thank you, Chair.
Like the NDP, the Liberal Party will support this bill and encourage its passage at all stages as quickly as possible.
My questions are a bit broader in scope than the bill itself. They have to do with, if you will, the origin of the bill, which is the LeBlanc case. Essentially, the LeBlanc case is a conflict between the chain of command and the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. If LeBlanc had not happened, in this case something similar would have happened, because any defence counsel is going to try to pick up the discrepancies between the two systems.
In the United Kingdom, they have gone about civilizing or demilitarizing the process so as to minimize the conflict between the chain of command and the requirements of justice in the military. As I understand it, the Judge Advocate General is stripped of his legal advisory and prosecutorial functions. The JAG position was civilized and moved to the Ministry of Justice, the prosecution function was civilized and moved to the Ministry of the Attorney General, and a number of other complementary changes were made.
The greater the differentiation between the military system of justice and the non-military system of justice—the more it looks different—the more you set up situations in which you have LeBlancs or “sons of LeBlanc”, or things of that nature. The question I have for you as an experienced military officer who has been on the inside for a long time is, what is the rationale for not taking this opportunity to make the military system look as much as possible like a civilian system in compliance with the Charter of Rights and Freedoms?