Mr. Speaker, with regard to the bill, I was talking of how over the years we had moved in the civil criminal justice system to expanding the role at the lower levels of the courts. In effect, we are now seeing that mimicked in the military criminal justice system.
The number of cases coming before the summary trial procedure has increased by two and a half times since around 2000. There is a number of reasons for that, including one we heard from the parliamentary secretary, which is probably accurate. After the problems we ran into with our military in Somalia, our commanding officers are much more diligent in dealing with discipline problems at an early stage as a mechanism to forestall those from become more serious at a later stage. Because a number of troops in Afghanistan come from the reserves, which do not have the same amount of training or experience in a disciplinary mode as our regular troops, there are probably additional problems.
Whatever the reason, the reality is the summary courts are now much busier. If people are convicted under those summary trials, while in the military but also upon returning to private life, they end up with a criminal record. Therefore, we have to be very careful that we build in protection. The commanding officers responsible for conducting the summary trials generally do not have legal training and do not have training in due process to the same degree a lawyer or judge in the civil criminal justice system would have.
There are a couple points at which we are looking. In case there is abuse, in the sense of there being a great deal of discretion within the system even with these amendments we are proposing, is there some way of building in a relatively simple appeal process? That is one thing we are looking at when this gets to committee. The other possibility is to look at the individual charges and say that only those of a more serious nature will have a criminal record applied to them. We believe that may be another mechanism to reduce the potential unfairness that might arise in individual cases.
We are hoping, when this gets to committee, that we will hear evidence in this regard and that the government will be open to maximizing the system both in terms of its fairness and of its ability to control misbehaviour within the military.