First, I would say I haven't actually brushed up too much on the military justice system. As you heard, “mentorship” was the response from the recommendation by the military police for charges. I haven't gotten to the trial phase.
In my corporate law practice, we deal with issues of fiduciary duties of directors. There are stockholders who can appoint directors to the board of a company, but the directors, regardless of their affiliation with the stockholders, must act in the best interests of the corporation. The appointment process doesn't necessarily mean that an individual is in a conflict of interest if there is a very strict code of ethics and there is enforcement of that code. A breach of fiduciary duties is a cause of action in a court of law.
A director who breaches those duties can be held personally liable for individual breaches. That means that if they're acting inappropriately, they can be held accountable by other stockholders or they can be held accountable by other actors who have been harmed. The same principle can apply here.
I read with interest an assessment of Bill C-66 by someone in the profession with much more expertise than I have, Rory Fowler, a well-known name, I believe. To his point, I'm not sure that changing the appointment process is truly going to fix issues of independence when you could, in fact, empower someone with either positive reinforcement or the negative reinforcement that comes with clearly laying out ethical issues. In other words, let's say they received pressure from the chief of the defence staff to act inappropriately. If they had a reporting mechanism and an ethical obligation to resist that sort of pressure, they could be supported and there would be no need to change that appointment process.
Again, I will qualify that I have not brushed up too much on that aspect of the military justice system.