Mr. Speaker, there were a number of other bills that I have had to speak on in this Parliament. I am pleased to rise this evening to speak on this one, but I will speak strongly in opposition to the bill going through as presented.
It is quite clear that Bill C-15 includes some significant reforms that we can support and in fact encourage all members to support. However, on the question from the member for Winnipeg North about why we would not support the bill in principle, I want to be very clear that I am never going to vote for a bill that would treat our military people unfairly.
The second reason for opposing the bill at this stage is the lack of trust that we have in the government to make the necessary amendments to the bill at committee. The Conservatives have clearly shown bad faith regarding Bill C-15. They have shown bad faith regarding our military personnel.
We have heard from everybody who has spoken this evening on the bill in its previous incarnations about recognizing the necessity of having a criminal justice system within the military context that would have to take into account the military discipline system at the same time. There is no dispute about that. Everybody accepts that on all sides of this House. However, if we are going to respect our military personnel and all that they contribute to this country today and all that they have contributed to this country historically, that system has to be one that is administered with firmness but very clearly with fairness.
There are aspects of Bill C-15, the part regarding criminal records in particular, that are grossly unfair to our military personnel. We would be treating them as very distant second-hand citizens with regard to the rights that all the rest of us enjoy and that this bill is prepared to take away from them. Again, our party is not prepared to support the bill as it stands because of that particular section as well.
The other point I want to make, and it has come up in the last few speeches, is that we have gone through incarnations of the bill twice before: once as Bill C-7 in 2007 and once as Bill C-41 in 2008.
Bill C-41 did get to committee in a minority government situation and had a number of amendments applied to it. We have to set that in the context of the report from Mr. Justice Lamer in 2003, the work that was done on Bill C-7 initially and then all of the work that was done and the evidence taken for Bill C-41 in committee.
Amendments were presented. They were accepted. There was a lot of negotiation, and that is not just me speaking on the information that I have of how the defence committee functioned at that time; Mr. Justice LeSage, who did his report in 2011, made similar comments about the amount of work that was done dealing with, in some cases, fairly complex issues.
There were not a lot of amendments—probably 10 or 15, or something in that range, and some of them fairly innocuous—but If we go back and look at all of the amendments that were made, we see that every single one of them has been stripped out in Bill C-15.
One of the changes we made was on the title of the grievance board, which is what it is still called. The committee wanted to be clear about the culture of how we should be dealing with grievances. A recommendation was made, adopted at committee stage and sent back here to the House at report stage.
We changed the title to military grievances external review committee because that more clearly reflected the context in which grievances were being dealt with, the personnel who were dealing with the grievances and the culture in which grievances should be addressed.
The bill came back as Bill C-15 and the title had gone back to grievance board, for no reason whatsoever except the Conservatives are absolutely determined to do it their way and no other way. In spite of the fact that all those negotiations went on in committee when it was Bill C-41, changes were made. With regard to that particular title, Mr. Justice LeSage agreed when he did his report.
Let me spend a couple of more minutes on Mr. Justice LeSage's report. He was appointed by the government to review the military justice system. In his report he said he did not specifically look at Bill C-15 because he was not asked to do that. It was not within his mandate. He did look at Bill C-41. He looked at the history and at Mr. Justice Lamer's recommendations, and he came up with a number of his own recommendations.
That report was presented to the government in December 2011. The bill itself came before the House shortly before that. It had very little debate, one to two hours, and one speech by my colleague. The bill has sat there since that time.
The report also sat in the hands of the government. I am going to suggest that it sat in the hands of the government because there were so many recommendations in that report that copied the amendments we did on Bill C-41.
The government finally tabled the report in the House earlier this month, on June 8. It did that because it did not want somebody with the reputation and stature of Mr. Justice LeSage agreeing with all of the amendments done by the collective parties in the last Parliament on Bill C-41. The government kept it hidden and finally, under pressure from the official opposition, brought it to the House.
I now want to take members to the major concern we have with the bill, and that is with regard to the criminal records. Mr. Justice LeSage, on pages 28 and 29 of his report, goes into some detail, and I want to read part of it:
The Criminal Records Act provides that a person is ineligible to apply for a pardon for ten years for a service offence under the National Defence Act for which the offender received a fine of more than $2,000...
What we will have is that our military personnel who have been fined $2,001 will have to wait 10 years before being able to clear their record. If they were in detention for six months, they will have to wait 10 years. That is not the standard we have set for other people in our society who have committed criminal offences that are much more severe than these. They would not have to wait 10 years.
Similarly, for the very minor ones, with a fine of less than $500, military personnel will have to wait three years before their record is cleared. If they were in the general civilian population, that would not even be a consideration. It would not be a criminal record. It would be quasi-criminal, and they would not have a record under the Criminal Records Act.
Justice LeSage goes on to say that we have to change this. He makes specific recommendations, and he does make reference to Bill C-41. He says that this was looked at, that it was very complex, but specific recommendations and amendments were passed at committee.
Section 75 of the bill provides for section 249.27 of the National Defence Act. The government put in a new section that says a criminal record would not apply. It then said it would not apply to five sections of the National Defence Act. It would not apply for a fine of less than $500, but it would apply for anything over $500.
Bill C-41 came back to the House as amended at report stage, in March 2011, just before the government fell and we had an election.
The Conservatives did have time. If they had called that bill, with everybody who was in support of it at that point, we actually would have had it passed. There was time in late March and early April, before the election was called, for that bill to get through the House. If they were serious about it, we would have had the bill in place. It would be the law of the land at this point.
However, that is not what they did.
Much like this bill, which has sat on the order paper since late last fall, we are only finally getting back to it this week.
The amendment that was passed at that time at committee included a number of sections. I will not do the mathematics right now, but it was roughly 15 to 18 sections. If military personnel committed an offence under these sections they would not have a criminal record. They are small items. It is things like being intoxicated on duty. Again, it is minor stuff, which in civilian life people would not have a criminal record for, at all.
With a lot of work, the committee went through these 15 to 18 sections and said these should not invoke a criminal record.
As I said a few minutes ago, what we see in Bill C-15 is that all of those sections, except five of them, are stripped out. We have all sorts of offences now—and Mr. Justice LeSage again confirms this in his report—that would not be offences in civilian life, that would not invoke a criminal record, that will now have an impact on our military personnel. It is not fair. It is going to produce really negative consequences.
It was interesting to hear a couple of the members saying, “Well, no, you are wrong about this. There really is not a criminal record.” Mr. Justice LeSage, in his report, said he was not surprised the member said that. When he spoke with Canadian Forces members across the country, he was surprised that many people, including lawyers, were unaware of the very real potential to acquire the equivalent of a criminal record if convicted of a minor service offence. Even the lawyers who might be advising military personnel as to whether they should, in a summary trial situation, admit their offence and plead guilty to it, did not know they would acquire a criminal record.
I wonder if my colleague knows that he may in fact have a criminal record under the provision.
That was the level of the lack of knowledge the committee saw under Bill C-41, and that Mr. Justice LeSage identified as he went across the country and took evidence. He made it very clear of the absolute need for all those sections of the National Defence Act to be exempted from attracting a criminal record.
However, the Conservatives stripped it out and reduced it down to five offences that would not acquire a criminal record. Another 10 to 13 offences are going to acquire a criminal record.
We are going to have military personnel, after they leave the service, trying to get employment.
One of the points Mr. Justice LeSage makes in his report is getting across the border. I know, coming from my riding in Windsor, how difficult the Americans are being, how very rigid they are on enforcing denials to Canadians who have any kind of a criminal record. They are going to get caught. They are not going to be able to go into the United States. In effect that would have a major impact on their ability to earn.
There are a lot of people who live on the Canadian side of the border but work on the American side. They will not be able to pursue that employment if they have these kinds of criminal records from their military service.
We need the government to give its head a shake and look back at what they did in Bill C-41. It made sense.
Mr. Justice LeSage is a very well-recognized person. He has strong stature. He understands the military justice system. He is one of the experts in the country. He did not make these recommendations lightly. Neither did the committee make those amendments lightly when it was doing its work on Bill C-41. The committee studied it and said, “This is a much better solution than what the government proposed at that time. This is the way we should go.”
That is where we should go back to now.
I have no particular faith in the government. I see some of the other silly amendments that the Conservatives stripped out, and I mean silly in the sense of their willingness to take out what were fairly minor changes. They were important changes. I do not want to downplay those. But when they have stripped every single one of them out, including the title of the grievance board, we know we cannot trust the government to deal fairly with our military personnel. The Conservatives have to get that message. We will continue to oppose the bill as long as we possibly can, until we get those amendments.
I want to move on to a couple of other areas. One of the recommendations from Mr. Justice LeSage was about disclosure, both with regard to summary trials and court martials.
I want to make a comment. It is very clear that 96% of all military discipline cases are dealt with by summary trial, so the Conservatives are saying it is obvious they are satisfied with the system.
If one can imagine, an individual either has minimal counsel from somebody who is not a lawyer, or none at all. Their commanding officers, who will ultimately be their judge in a summary trial, say they could either have a court martial, which would probably take six months to two years, or a summary trial. It is obvious why individuals end up electing to go the summary trial route 96% of the time.
With regard to the point of disclosure, both with regard to summary trials and with court martial proceedings, we made the recommendation very clearly that we had to have full disclosure. This is not dealt with at all. It was not dealt with in Bill C-7. It was not dealt with in Bill C-41, and it is not dealt with in Bill C-15. In spite of the fact that the government has known of that recommendation for six months, it has not done anything to amend Bill C-15 to include the requirement that full disclosure be given.
The point that Mr. Justice LeSage made when he made that recommendation, and I suppose the advocacy he was putting forward with regard to it, was that especially in a court martial the evidence is not given to the person in advance. When they get the evidence shortly before the trial, or in some cases at the trial, it will end up in a delay, an adjournment. On the other hand, if it is given early, the evidence they have against the individual is quite clear. Oftentimes it ends up in a guilty plea and a quick resolution of the matter.
In terms of the good faith of the government in this regard, it has known about that since December 2011. It has had six months to propose the amendment from the opposition parties to that section of the National Defence Act. It has done nothing about it whatsoever.
I could go on. There are any number of other fairly small amendments. We heard them from other members of my party this evening.
Let me deal with one that would allow the acceptance of the grievance. Rather than have it go over to the Justice department, which is the way it works now, it would stop at the Chief of Defence Staff. This would be financial compensation. An individual might say, “I was on this duty. I am entitled to danger pay. I am in a high-risk situation. I am entitled to an extra $200 for this month of employment”. The person dealing with the grievance says, “Yes, you are”.
Right now after that decision is made, it then goes over to the Justice department. Its lawyers look at it for as long as six months to another year before it is dealt with. It is grossly ineffective. It is inefficient. Again, it is unfair to the military personnel who are entitled to that $200 or $400.
The recommendation is that it stay at the military level, that the Chief of Defence Staff makes the final decision and allows for the compensation. The Conservatives stripped that amendment out too.
We will continue to oppose the bill as long as we possibly can. We are calling on the government to agree to put back those amendments that were in Bill C-41. At that point we can get this over with and get that firmness but fairness that we would apply to our military personnel in good faith.
