On that particular issue, sure, there's a short-term prejudice that could arise in terms of issues with employment by going through the court martial process. If I were to look at it from the perspective of a criminal lawyer, if somebody were coming into my office saying, “What should I do here? Which process should I elect?”, I would say that in the short term, in terms of the court martial process, you're going to have potential prejudice in terms of having to take time off work that maybe you will or won't be able to get adequately compensated for.
However, I would certainly be urging a client to take more of a long-term view of the situation, in that a criminal record at the end of the process is a much greater consequence than the potential short-term gains you get by going through a process that may not prejudice you with your employer.
I would say if you can take the short-term pain of employment-related issues, then you want to put yourself in a situation where you have the most procedural protections available to you in terms of being able to avoid that criminal record at the end of the day, because it's really going to have implications in all aspects of your life. Whether it's potentially travel, losing employment and then needing to get another job, potential employment opportunities down the road, or getting involved in a regulated profession such as law, there's simply no end of possible implications that can arise from a criminal record or from information being entered on the CPIC system as a result of involvement in the criminal justice system.
Certainly I would be urging that if you can absorb whatever short-term prejudice there may be in putting yourself through a system like the court martial system, essentially the ends justify the means.