What we are doing is seeking to improve the legislation by amendment. Having heard what you had to say, it leads me to think you're not prepared to consider improvements to legislation, which is what amendments and subamendments are all about.
The idea of using section 139 of the National Defence Act to determine what is a more severe punishment than the other.... According to the act itself, which is the will of Parliament, a reprimand or reduction in rank, detention, etc., all of these things are more serious than a fine. That's spelled out here in another section of the act itself.
In another subsection of the act, subsection 139(2)(2), it states the following:
Where a punishment for an offence is specified by the Code of Service Discipline and it is further provided in the alternative that on conviction the offender is liable to less punishment, the expression “less punishment” means any one or more of the punishments lower in the scale of punishments than the specified punishment.
I'm not suggesting a severe or large fine is not a punitive consequence or a penal consequence, or as Colonel Gibson says, “true penal consequence”. We're not disputing that at all. What we are suggesting and disputing is that if a reprimand, and a severe reprimand, are, by law, more serious consequences, then the fact of the matter is that the section we're talking about is not appropriate.
I'd be surprised, frankly, if there is a huge fine imposed on someone that would be significantly greater than a month's pay, for example, that's not combined with something more severe than what we're talking about here, whether it's forfeiture of seniority or reduction in rank, or something that's deserving of such a significant penal consequence as being suggested by a huge fine. There might not be other consequences.
Any fine, I would submit, is by law lesser than a reprimand, lesser than a severe reprimand, and therefore, by definition, ought to be included in the category that doesn't attract a criminal record.