Okay. There are a bunch of moving parts in your question. I'm going to write them down.
The difference between section 31 and section 33 is one step back from active service and then eventually wartime service. I'll bring it all the way back to talk about it further. Section 31 of the National Defence Act is “Active Service” and section 33 of the National Defence Act is “Service”. Ninety-five per cent of a soldier's career, a navy person's career or an air person's career will be spent in service and going home to their mothers, fathers, families and kids, playing on sports teams and working nine to five.
Workplace safety is a factor in service. Someone is given a task and it's dangerous. When you're only performing service, workplace safety kicks in and you can refuse the task. One of the biggest examples I use for a search and rescue technician is that of sitting on a ramp and getting ready to jump out over the Labrador Sea to save a mariner's life from a ship in a storm. That member of the search and rescue team is on service. That person ultimately has the choice to jump out of that plane and save that person's life or to say that it's too dangerous. That person retains choice.
In the context of active service, I have been in situations where you are simply given the four-finger point and you are told that you will do this, and you have no other choice but to go off and do it. You don't bring up safety and you don't bring up risk of death. You don't bring up anything. That is the difference between service and active service. It's one word: choice.
When you're placed on active service, there's a gray area. Does the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedom supersede the National Defence Act's section 31, or does section 31 supersede the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms? That is the question that plays out in the field. When a commander gives you an order, you don't bring up the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms because you don't have any. When a commander orders you to do some of the most difficult tasks that you can imagine, you do them.
That's an explanation of service versus active service.
You asked a question regarding people who don't understand the type of mission they're on. Everybody already understands that they're not on wartime service because the government never gives it without a fight. Clearly, that's why we're here.
The problem with not having a mission classification system means that when you're put on special duty service and you're sent somewhere and it's given a name like “multi-dimensional peacekeeping mission”, it could be lost on the soldier as to exactly what it is they're doing. That happened to me in Rwanda. We were in Rwanda and we didn't know whether we were on a blue beret mission or a green beret mission. We didn't know if we were there to save people's lives or to take people's lives. It was confusing for a solid 30 days. Having no mission classification system is really key.