Mr. Speaker, when I glance at the other side, I will move my glance past that member and move on to the parliamentary secretary, who is clearly here to do some serious business.
Before the hon. member got up on who knows what point, I was commenting on the level of co-operation, and I was glad for that. It is an important file regardless of whether one is the minister, the parliamentary secretary or a critic for the official opposition, third or fourth party. The fact that we could come together said a lot about the members of Parliament who were on that committee and the intention of all sides.
I was saying that the level of co-operation switched when the Conservatives got a majority government. We had a document that was not perfect in the view of the official opposition. We know the government did not think it was perfect. Everybody put a little water in their wine and compromised a little, so that on the vast areas where we did agree, we could actually bring in a bill and get it passed.
However, because of politics, we are all going to be playing the blame game, pointing to other members and saying they slowed it down, saying they did not do the right thing. The fact remains that our fellow citizens in uniform cannot be too pleased with the way we are treating their legal system.
If I might say, it is one thing to be saluting the troops, acknowledging the troops and thanking them, but there is a whole lot more to it than just sending them off to be in harm's way. There is so much more to what it means for a nation to be supporting its soldiers, rather than just waving, saluting and saying “Yay, way to go.” This is one of those times and one of those areas.
I was looking at the debate last time, and it was interesting because the accusations being hurled from the government members were that we were trying to slow it down, and I think their main reason was that we supposedly did not like defence or we did not like the armed forces, which makes no sense whatsoever. The government side was accusing us of that.
We kept standing up and saying we did not want to delay it but we wanted to get some improvement. We wanted to get it improved to the point where it was as close as possible to the bill we already agreed on. If we could get that far, we were prepared to support it even if it did not contain all the changes we wanted.
However, because of the tenacity of the official opposition in refusing to let go of that issue and in refusing to allow ourselves to be browbeaten into supporting something we did not want to, we were being accused of unfairly holding things up. That argument does not hold a lot of water, given the fact that most of what we were seeking in those previous debates is now here in this bill.
We have an opportunity today to make an even greater improvement, and that is a good thing. What would be even better is if the government would take seriously the review of the entire military justice system and not just do it piecemeal. This is not just us. There are judges—and I will probably get a chance to read the quote in a response. This is coming from our jurors, our judges, saying that we should not do it in a piecemeal way, that we would better serve the defence of Canada and the soldiers who staff it if we did an entire review, wall to wall.
The government did not do it. It did not even bring in all the recommended changes from the first review. It received another review. It was tabled in June 2012, and there was no response to that one. Interestingly it took the government six months to table it.
Then a year later there is still nothing done. It raises the question of how serious the government is. We had to drag it, kicking and screaming, to this point, where we could protect the future of our soldiers through their not having criminal records.
I do not know why the parliamentary secretary is laughing at that. I do not see anything humorous in it. I did not mean it to be humorous. I was pointing out the importance and severity of the issue.
Finally, the official opposition is now at a point where, reluctantly, it will support the bill.
There has been no artificial delay. We said we would not pass the bill because it did not have these components and in particular this one here, the criminal records. We focused on it. We said so over and over, to the point where the government accused us of just deliberately delaying for some unknown reason. The government accused us of that.
However, we did not blink. We said no. The government could use its majority and ram it through; we could not stop it, but make no mistake, at every opportunity we had, we would not fast-track the bill. We would not let it go through any more quickly than necessary. We were going to stand up and keep making these points under the leadership of our defence critic, and that is what we did.
It is always a bit risky. However, at the end of the day, the government came to its senses enough to realize that, by acquiescing, it not only solved a bit of its problem with the party opposite it in the House, but I would like to think it also realized that this is in the best interests of our soldiers. That is who the legal system is there to serve.
Remember, we are a country where one is innocent until proven guilty. We respect so greatly the rights that individuals have. The government accuses us of being soft on crime and all this stuff. This is the same application. All we in the official opposition are saying is that there are ordinary citizens who voluntarily join and offer up, ultimately, their lives to the service of defending this country and its people. They deserve better than a piecemeal approach to reviewing the military justice system; they deserve better than a government just accusing the opposition of not caring enough; and they deserve better than to see it take so long for some justice to actually be brought to our military justice system.