To change it to civilian court jurisdiction, amend section 70 of the act by adding just one line where they don't have jurisdiction. It can be done in three minutes. It's simple.
The moment it's done, victims would be able to call 411. If she were to be the subject of an assault and reported the crime, we'd let the civil authorities at the federal, provincial or municipal level investigate and the courts would take care of that. It's not black magic. Up until 1999, the forces did not have jurisdiction over sexual assault. Overnight, as a result of and in the wake of the Somalia inquiry, in the act that was enacted in 1998 and put into force in 1999, DND accepted the responsibility for sexual assault.
At that time, when they did, the military police were not trained at all in this sense. The judges had never received any training. The prosecution staff had never argued any cases of sexual assault. It was a type of learning episode they went through over a number of years. In the process, victims lost confidence in the independence and skill of the military police and the prosecution staff.
I think time has shown—and Justice Fish and Justice Arbour have been quite eloquent on it—that it has to be transferred, and the sooner the better.