Paul Dewar

[Strengthening Military Justice in the Defence of Canada Act, November 26th, 2010]

I would, Mr. Speaker, and I would start off with the importance of reflecting in military justice what exists in the regular system under the Criminal Code and civilian justice. When we look at victim impact statements, access to evidence and the ability of the victims or the accused to access resources, those are lacking and they are required.

The statistics that were just cited by my colleague from Winnipeg would indicate that there is an increase. If we are talking about an increase between 2008 and 2009 of the number of summary trials, and this is the database that we have before us, we are looking at over 2,000 between 2007 and 2008. If we go back from that date, it is 506. There is a major proliferation.

Why is that happening and how are we going to deal with it? At committee, we will need to hear how these cases are dealt with, how the structure handles it and, most important, what changes need to be made to modernize it.

If we are using a system and a structure that is antiquated and yet it is being given more and more to deal with, then we have to look at not only the resources available to deal with that, which I know is an issue within the military, but also the structures with which we are having to deal.

Finally, when we have seen changes in law from the government, it often forgets that when we change the law, we also have to ensure we provide the resources on the ground, be it at the provincial level or in this case for the military.

The Conservatives are great on the wedge politics of using justice issues and changing laws, but the resources they are providing to support the changes in law are very scant . That is yet another thing about which we have to be vigilant. The changes, as reflected by my colleague's intervention on the proliferation of cases, will also be commensurate with the resources that are provided for the military to deal with this. That is an issue we will have to deal with at committee as well.

[Strengthening Military Justice in the Defence of Canada Act, November 26th, 2010]

Mr. Speaker, I used the word “balance” a number of times in my comments. If we do not pay attention to strengthening the rights of the accused and access to things like counsel of their choice to ensure they have access to transcripts, some of the most basic fundamentals in justice, and if we do not have that as part of the reforms, then we will have failed.

On the one hand, it is important to note that there needs to be an understanding of the separate nature of the military in terms of its conduct. On the other hand, we need to ensure that we do not discriminate when it comes to the rights afforded all citizens of our country. That is where we have to be very clear on what our intentions are and what the outcomes are when this legislation gets to committee.

[Strengthening Military Justice in the Defence of Canada Act, November 26th, 2010]

Mr. Speaker, I would concur with the notion that we have a system that has tried to be fair and just in its delivery. The problem has been its structure. We have to catch up to the changes within our own Constitution when we look at the charter, for instance.

I think what Chief Justice Lamer was doing at the time is essentially what the parliamentary secretary said. He was acknowledging the spirit of what had been in place, but he was also underlining the fact that we need to catch up with the changes within our own Constitution and to ensure that the rights that are afforded civilians are afforded to our military. As I said in my speech, that is the balance we are trying to strike. I would agree with the parliamentary secretary on that. I would also note that it is important to capture the fact that he believed it was urgent that we modernize our system and ensure we get the balance right.

[Strengthening Military Justice in the Defence of Canada Act, November 26th, 2010]

Mr. Speaker, I rise to continue my comments on Bill C-41, the Strengthening Military Justice in the Defence of Canada Act.

Before question period, I was referencing the need to strike a balance when it comes to military justice. It is absolutely critical.

We have seen a lot of changes in our military. We have seen the merging of the Canadian Forces from three distinct groupings into one umbrella organization. There has been a lot of flux and change within the Canadian Forces, not just in the mandate but in the way in which they have been resourced and how they are organized. One of the things that has not kept up with the changes is military justice, and that is what this bill is about.

As I said before question period, I want to make it known that we support sending this bill to committee after second reading, so the committee can look at the legislation and propose improvements and perhaps amendments. Essentially what we are talking about here is modernizing the military justice system.

It is important to recognize the work that was done back in 2003 by the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, the Hon. Antonio Lamer, who has since passed away. He made a lot of recommendations, not just on modernizing military justice but in other areas as well. He made 88 recommendations, most of which pertain to military justice and the rest to the oversight of certain bodies of the Canadian Forces, such as the Military Police Complaints Commission, which we have discussed quite often both in this House and outside of this place.

We did not get to all of his recommendations in this House. Essentially what we are trying to do with this legislation is to finish the recommendations that he had put forward. Some of the things include providing a greater flexibility in sentencing, including the introduction of intermittent sentences that extend the limitation period for liability claims by Canadian Forces members, and a number of other measures that bring the Canadian military justice system more in line with the civilian justice system.

Summary trials is one aspect of the military justice system. They are held without the ability of the accused to consult counsel. There are no appeals or transcripts of the trial, and the judge is the accused person's commanding officer.

I mentioned the experiences of my father and grandfather when they served in the military. There was an understanding that they had to take orders and follow certain conduct. One of the things they would have wanted to see would be a modernization of the way in which discipline is assessed. Certainly when charges are brought forward against members of the forces, they should be accorded similar supports that they would be afforded in civilian trials under the Criminal Code.

As I mentioned before, there needs to be a balance between members of the military having to abide by certain codes of conduct that are obviously different from those that apply to public servants here in Ottawa, and their being afforded similar rights, if not exactly the same at least in outcome, for any trials they are involved in. If we leave out of the military justice system the same protections that would be afforded to citizens in a similar kind of scenario within our criminal justice system, then we have not struck the right balance.

We have to establish that. Within the military justice system, how do we ensure there is access to counsel and to the same kinds of processes that exist within our civilian system? When we look at the consequences, what will follow members of the Canadian Forces if there is discipline?

Right now, the concern is if discipline is handed out to someone in the Canadian Forces and the person has been found guilty of a certain crime within the code, would that individual have anything on his or her record in the civilian system? Would something languish and affect the individual negatively? That has to be understood.

The grievance procedure has to be overhauled. Right now there is a lack of access for those in the Canadian Forces who have been subject to a military trial. If there is no appeal, it is very difficult to say it is a fair system. It is hoped that a lot of these things will be addressed. Most people would see it as something we can work on in a multi-partisan way in order to modernize the act.

There must be access to justice in all of our institutions. If there are insufficient supports to counsel, then we will have a vastly insufficient system of justice for members of the Canadian Forces when we compare them to those who are under civilian oversight.

Summary justice for military conduct is understood as something one signs on to in terms of the military, but we also know that for people who are subject to military tribunals or justice, there are insufficient processes as it relates to our modern justice system particularly when we look at the charter. If we are to do this well, we need to hear from people who have studied this.

As I mentioned, the work that was done by former Chief Justice Antonio Lamer is important, but we also need to hear from those who have looked at how to modernize other jurisdictions to ensure we get the balance right. If we are able to do that and hear sufficient evidence from witnesses, we will be able to improve the bill by ensuring the aspirational aspects to modernize military justice will be found and strengthen the notion of what it means to have a fair trial within the military.

If we look at the history of the military and how it relates to the conduct of soldiers and how the accountability measures are put in place, it is clear to anyone who has looked at this that we are out of date in terms of what the processes are. When we looked at this in a previous Parliament, there was an attempt to get this moving.

Sadly, there was an election which most Canadians did not see coming. We believed the government was going to abide by its own legislation on fixed date elections, but it did what it has done too often and ignored its own legislation, even though it was a promise made by the Conservatives in an election. The government forced its proposal on us and then took it away because of its actions. That was the case in the 2006 to 2008 period when this legislation was in front of us.

It is important to understand that if this is going to be done, it needs the government's backing, not just by putting a proposal in front of Parliament and saying, “Here it is, this is what we support”, but by the government wanting to work with other members of this place to ensure this legislation gets through. It would be unfortunate if this bill died on the order paper and we were not able to modernize military justice. I do not have to tell members the need for it. We have seen some very sensational cases recently involving members of the military. It is important that there be a balance between ensuring that the military is able to behave and organize itself in a way that it sees fit, but at the same time in a way that falls in line with the justice system of this country.

In conclusion, if it is the intent of the government to modernize military justice, I think it will have a lot of support from members of all parties. However, the government must be open to ensuring that the rights of the accused would be supported, similar to that in a civil situation.

If the government is serious about modernizing the military justice system, we need to ensure that at committee the government is willing to listen to other parties, that the government is willing to support amendments based on sound evidence from witnesses. In that way, we can get the bill back to this place and ensure that the modernization process which started back in 1998 is completed in 2011.

[Strengthening Military Justice in the Defence of Canada Act, November 26th, 2010]

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to speak to Bill C-41, regarding military justice.

First, I have to respond to the comments in the last back and forth between the two members. It should be noted that the parliamentary secretary was trying to attribute the comments of the former Liberal leader to the NDP. My colleague was simply trying to get an actual position from the Liberal Party, which is difficult to do these days. He was raising the point that the former Liberal leader, the new ally or old ally, I do not know anymore, of the Conservative government, was asking why it is that we need to train more troops. It was his supposition, not that of my friend from Winnipeg. We have simply said that NATO is already going to meet its goals by next year and, as the parliamentary secretary knows, so is the Pentagon. Why did it break its promise and abandon the civilian equation?

It is a matter of getting things straight, and I know the parliamentary secretary was challenged at the special committee on Afghanistan on even knowing what the numbers were for his own government. It is interesting that he would now take the assertions of the former Liberal leader that there need not be more training for the Afghans because they beat the Russians. It was the former Liberal leader who said that. I know the member from B.C., his colleague who sits just a couple of desks away from the former Liberal Party leader, would know that as well.

Now that I have cleared that up, which is always difficult when we are dealing with a government that does not even read its own press releases, let us talk about the bill before of us.

When we are looking at strengthening military justice, it is important that we understand the ambit of this. This is an area that is important to look at. The last time we looked at the issue was in 1998. We were considering Bill C-25 at that time, legislation to modernize the defence act. However, the importance of military justice vis-à-vis changes to our Constitution and the Charter of Rights and Freedoms was not looked at.

Let me be very clear with the government that we will be supporting sending this bill to committee. I do not want the government to misquote us or attribute our comments according to what the Liberals might say on any given day, which is always challenging. Let me be crystal clear. We will support sending this bill to committee with a view to looking at strengthening some of its provisions.

With respect to this review, our members have already mentioned that we need to get it right. On the one hand, we need to look at what the responsibilities are of the military in terms of its conduct and allowing the military to discipline its troops in a way that is in line with its mandate. On the other hand, we also have to recognize the rights of members of our military as citizens, and ensure that they do not forgo the rights they have as everyday citizens.

It is a balancing act between recognizing the rights of members of our military as citizens of Canada in line with the charter provisions and understanding the unique role of the military in our society and the way it conducts itself. When we are talking about summary justice, for instance, the military has a special role to play which allows it to use its disciplinary tools.

I remember talking to my grandfather about my father's service in the second world war. As a sergeant, he had to ensure that the troops who were working with him understood that there was a code of conduct. In the case of my grandfather's service in the first world war, he told me about the fear that was invoked by his commanding officers. That was important because the discipline that is needed when in situ and also when being trained must be understood.

There is also a need for justice to be supported when there are allegations of misconduct. That is where we have to get the balance right. Notwithstanding the need for proper discipline, the need for summary justice for military conduct, we also need to ensure that if there are allegations of misconduct and there is a serious charge against a member of our military, that he or she is afforded the same protections the he or she would get if he or she had been charged outside the military under the ambit of the Criminal Code of Canada. That is where we have serious concerns.

If we look at the balance between the support of someone who is coming forward in the military justice framework versus regular court proceedings, we would know there is not an equal support for troops who are under the guise of military justice.

[Business of Supply, November 25th, 2010]

Mr. Speaker, that was a very measured question, indeed.

[W]e will not be undertaking any activities that require any kind of military presence, other than the odd guard guarding an embassy. We will not be undertaking any kind of activity that requires a significant military force protection, so it will become a strictly civilian mission.

Who said that? It was the Prime Minister. I do not think I have to say anything else.

What I will say, though, with regard to that is that we did have $550 million going to Treasury Board for a civilian-only mission. I have been saying for years that we would support that. We would have supported that. The only problem was that the government broke its promise and walked away from that commitment.

As to my attendance at the Afghan committee, I have been there more than the parliamentary secretary has, so I need not take advice from him. I actually pay attention when I am there.

At the last committee meeting, we heard interventions from the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of National Defence. He said that I was wrong, that the government is not cutting down to $100 million a year, aid and development in Afghanistan post-2011, that there is going to be $300 million and it is going to be in Kandahar.

Guess what? The member has already apologized to me, because he did not even have his numbers right and yet he had the audacity to intervene and try to correct me.

Maybe he could talk to his colleague, the parliamentary secretary, and maybe he could get his Coles notes up to date, because clearly they are out of date and so is he.

[Business of Supply, November 25th, 2010]

Mr. Speaker, it underlines what we have seen on this issue before.

I thought we were going to change the channel on this. Until a couple of weeks ago, I thought that the government was going to honour its word. I thought that the government was going to come forward with the plan that I have right here in my hand, a civilian-only mission without military involvement that would have put the emphasis on diplomacy, development, transitional justice, and human rights support.

Instead, what we have is a deal that has been done between those two parties to take that focus off the table, and put the focus on military training when it is not needed. That is a sad, sad, sad day for Canada, but most important, it is unfortunate for the people of Afghanistan.

[Business of Supply, November 25th, 2010]

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to debate the motion before us with regard to the extension of the Afghan mission.

As of Saturday, November 27, 2010, NATO will have been in Afghanistan longer than the Soviet Union had been in its military excursion into Afghanistan. This is a sober reminder of the need to change direction and to change, in effect, what we have been doing in Afghanistan. Sadly, instead of changing the direction of the mission in Afghanistan, the government has decided, along with the support of the opposition Liberals, to continue in the same direction.

We must make no mistake that when we hear from the government that this is honouring the previous motions that we would have withdrawn all of our military by 2011, it in fact is not. Not only is the government breaking its promise to Canadians and Parliament by extending the military mission in Afghanistan, but, instead of changing directions, I believe we are furthering the muck that is the situation in Afghanistan right now. I will explain that.

When I stood to speak to this issue in 2006, in 2008 and in other interventions, I, along with my party, said that it was time to change directions and put a different emphasis on the mission in Afghanistan. We, like others, did not believe that the war in Afghanistan would be solved militarily speaking. We said that time and time again. In 2006, the government, aided and abetted by the Liberal opposition, extended the war but told us not to worry because by 2009 it would be done.

We have heard time and time again from both members of the Liberal Party and the government that this is different because we are training troops. If we look back to the debates and the motions, training of the troops was embedded in both of those debates and in both of those motions. We saw that again in 2008 and in the extension to 2011.

Here we are again debating the extension of the war in Afghanistan, the extension of our government sending our men and women to continue to be in harm's way, and saying to them yet again that this will be the end as of 2014. Why would anyone believe the government or anyone else in this Parliament who said that will be the final date?

It is clear how this decision was made. It was exactly the same situation as in 2005 when we ended up in Kandahar. We all remember what happened there. We did not have a plan to get to Kandahar. We did not have sufficient equipment. We did not have a plan as to what were our goals and we did not have an exit plan. We are there yet again. We know that as of two weeks ago the Prime Minister said to Canadians and to Parliament that was it, that the military mission was done. We would leave a couple of guards in front of the embassy but that was it. He cannot walk away from those words without being held accountable, and that is what we are doing today.

What has happened is very clear. He did not consult government within, which was clear at yesterday's Afghan committee. The officials who were working for two years in an entirely civilian mission, which we supported and which would have had development, diplomacy and transitional justice funded, were cut loose. I do not even think the Minister of National Defence was consulted on this. I have watched very carefully how this has rolled out and the Minister of National Defence was clearly out of the loop. I think he would have wanted to have seen a little more probing into this.

It is clear that Canadians have a government that is simply sleepwalking into yet another conundrum, as we initially saw when we walked into Kandahar back in 2005-06.

That is sad because clearly the war in Afghanistan is a war where things are deteriorating on the ground. We have the insistence of the government to put a focus on military training. Let us go over the numbers. According to the Pentagon and to NATO, we will have trained 171,500 troops as of next spring. We have already surpassed the goals that NATO had to train troops for this year.

I should not have to tell anyone in the House that that has not been the case when we look at other goals. When we look at the focus of ending the war, the focus that should be on diplomacy, where is the regional approach from the government? It talks about border exchanges in Pakistan. This is a war that affects the whole neighbourhood. We need a regional approach, yes with Pakistan but also with all countries in the neighbourhood. That is where Canada should be focused and that is where we should be putting our resources.

Sadly, as of last week, we have a government that walked away from that approach. It should simply look at the numbers that we now have in front of us: initially $550 million for a civilian-only mission.

Mr. Speaker, I should have said at the beginning that I will be splitting my time with the member for Thunder Bay—Rainy River.

We have gone from investing $550 million for a civilian-only mission to $100 million a year for we do not even know what yet. When we ask the government how much it will spend on diplomacy, it cannot give us an answer. We know we are cutting severely. We know the number is $1.6 billion for military, which is after, as I have already mentioned, we have met the goals for the military training.

Why did we decide that we would forgo the civilian mission, which our public servants had been working on for two years to focus on aid, development and transitional justice, particularly important for women and human rights protection? Why did we abandon that in favour a huge investment of $1.6 billion for military training where we have already met our goals?

I will tell the House what many people think is the reason. It is that we decided that it was more important that we satisfy NATO's desires than the Afghan people's desires. It is evidently clear after the Lisbon conference. If we look at the Lisbon document before we went, we had said that while Canada's military mission will end in 2011, Canada will continue to have a development and diplomatic relationship with Afghanistan through the Canadian embassy in Kabul.

Guess what? This document that went to Lisbon was actually a false promise. We knew when we flew to Lisbon that we had no intention of backing that up. The difference is that we forgot to tell Canadians and Parliament that was what we were going to do. For that, Canadians are angry. Even those who might support this mission, they were angry because we had a Prime Minister for the last couple of years who said, of military mission, that all the military would return and we would focus on a civilian mission.

The only assessment we can come up with after that is that we have a government that turned its back. not only on Canadians, on Parliament and on its word, but, at the end of the day, on the Afghan people.

When we look back to this day where we debated what the choices were, let it be clear that the choices that we had in front of us were ignored by the government because the government decided to continue with more of the same at a time when we needed to change directions and support a civilian mission.

I regret that this is the case. I regret that we will not have had a more fulsome debate. I regret that we will not have had a vote that the government would have been bound to. On Tuesday, when we vote, we will not have all members in the House voting their conscience. What we will have are two parties deciding to take an issue and throw it off the table. That is sad indeed.

[Business of Supply, November 25th, 2010]

Mr. Speaker, one of the concerns that many of us have had, notwithstanding the government breaking its promise to have a vote and a debate, is the leap-frogging in this mission. We have gone from 2006, extension 2009, extension 2009 to 2011, extension 2011 now to 2014. Each and every time we have had a debate in the House about an extension of the war, we are told that is it.

Why is it that two weeks ago the Prime Minister was unequivocal when he said that this was the end of the military mission and now we are told, with a snap of the fingers, that we will have it till 2014? Why should Canadians believe the government this time?

[Business of Supply, November 25th, 2010]

Madam Speaker, I thank the Conservative member for his intervention and his work as parliamentary secretary for that matter.

I have a question for the member, because it is hard to get a straight answer from the government on this.

After the first extension of the war, we were told that we wanted to train up 134,000 troops. That goal was met. We were then told we needed to train up 160,000 and, as of now, that is met. As of next year, we are told by the Pentagon and by NATO that 171,500 troops need to be trained and the government is saying that will be met, and that was before we committed to training the troops.

Notwithstanding the hon. member's admirable comments about the mission, does he not think we should be spending more money on a civilian mission, not cutting it and putting our money into training of troops when in fact we are going to meet those goals anyhow?