Okay.
At present in Canada a soldier is a soldier before being a Canadian citizen. Why? By prosecuting him before a court martial, the military justice system deprives the soldier of his fundamental and precious right to a jury trial. When he appears before a summary trial, he is deprived of a right to counsel as well as a right to have his verdict or sentence reviewed on appeal.
As a proud member of the Canadian society, a society devoted to the promotion of equality of all before the law, I would like to close by reiterating some of the proposals found in the book that I filed with you today. Foremost, I urge this committee to study the international trends towards the civilianization of military tribunals to promote equality of all before the law, which can be achieved only by conducting a fundamental structural and organizational revamping of the National Defence Act in order to enhance its access, consultation, and legibility as well as its structure, internal arrangement, and form; and on a substantive level, to correct the flaws in the National Defence Act resulting from an imperfect duplication of the Criminal Code provisions, by taking into consideration the charter and military needs and by reviewing the provisions that attract constitutional criticism.
We as a society have forgotten, with harsh consequences for the members of the armed forces, that a soldier is before all a Canadian citizen, a Canadian citizen in uniform. So is a police officer; he is a Canadian citizen in uniform, but he’s not deprived of his right to a jury trial. Is that what we mean by “equality of all before the law”? Is not the soldier who risks his life for us entitled to at least the same rights and equality before the law as his fellow citizens when he is facing criminal prosecutions? I make a distinction between “disciplinary proceedings” and “criminal prosecutions”.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.