Randall Garrison

[Enhancing Royal Canadian Mounted Police Accountability Act, September 17th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, there are two further concerns in the area of sexual harassment. One of them is that the RCMP commissioner has launched a gender audit within the RCMP to determine what kinds of problems he is going to need to address. We are going ahead with the legislation in the absence of the results from that audit. Therefore, I am hoping that when we go to committee we will be able to get at least some interim advice from the commissioner on what he has found in those areas. This could help guide the government in providing real leadership in ending sexual harassment within the RCMP and sending a signal to the broader Canadian society and young women who might want to join the RCMP about the confidence they can have. I do feel that we will have a crisis in recruiting women in the force if we do not address this.

The second concern is that the public complaints commission has launched an investigation into sexual harassment within the RCMP and we are now replacing that commission with a new body. One of the questions that New Democrats will be asking in committee is what are the succession plans to allow the commission to complete its work on sexual harassment. Again, we are hoping to have some interim indications to help guide us in committee.

[Enhancing Royal Canadian Mounted Police Accountability Act, September 17th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to speak today to Bill C-42. I could not agree more with the minister when he said that we should have had this legislation in the House much sooner. There is an urgency for the public in terms of confidence in the RCMP. There is an issue for the RCMP rank and file members who are working in a workplace climate that is often not supportive of the difficult and dangerous work they do. It is also important to the RCMP leadership that is charged with the task of making those necessary changes.

We on this side find much to agree with in this bill and the reasons for undertaking reform of the RCMP Act. In the preamble it talks about many things which we can agree with. First and foremost is the necessity to restore the confidence of Canadians in our international police force.

The RCMP has long provided excellent service to Canadians from coast to coast to coast but over the previous years, dating back to the Liberal government, we have had increasing questions about incidents involving use of force where public confidence has waned in the RCMP. That is a problem not just for the public but for the serving members in the RCMP.

The bill's second purpose as stated is to promote transparency and public accountability in law enforcement. Again, we could not agree more that this is essential if we are going to meet that first objective which is to restore public confidence in the RCMP. The only way to do that is through enhanced transparency and public accountability.

The third reason for reforming the RCMP Act, which is stated in the bill's preamble, deals with the relationship with provincial, regional and municipal governments that hold contracts with the RCMP. They have entered into those contracts in good faith but often feel that they do not have adequate input into the policing in their jurisdictions or adequate accountability measures for the RCMP when they have questions about what has happened in those jurisdictions.

A fourth measure, as stated in the preamble of the bill, is to promote the highest levels of conduct within the RCMP. This, of course, is a goal that is shared by governments, RCMP members and the public at large. We know that day in and day out virtually all RCMP members strive to meet those levels of conduct. However, we need clear statements of what happens when those levels of conducts are not met with clear consequences and procedures that would also protect the rights of RCMP members who have dedicated themselves to the service of Canadians so that they do not find themselves subject to arbitrary procedures as part of discipline.

Finally, the bill's preamble states that we need to reform this legislation to create a framework for ongoing reform so that we do not find ourselves in this situation again 25 years later where government after government, Liberal and Conservative, have failed to address these questions and failed to provide leadership on these issues.

We in the official opposition can agree on the goals expressed in this legislation and I believe we can go further. We can even agree on the key areas for action identified in the summary of the bill. Although, the bill's summary counts the areas of action as only two vital areas, I would count them as three.

We on this side agree that there needs to be action to strengthen the RCMP review and complaints body. The RCMP Public Complaints Commission has provided a valuable service but we have concerns about its full independence and its ability to oversee independent investigations.

Second, we believe there needs to be a framework to handle investigation of serious incidents involving members, incidents that involve death or serious injury, which will help enhance transparency. In this day and age, the public has said very clearly that it does not accept that the police investigate themselves in these very serious incidents. We believe that independent investigation not only benefits public confidence but it also benefits those who serve in the RCMP by guaranteeing that the public will understand the outcome of those investigations and where their names are cleared they will be cleared once and for all.

Finally, there needs to be action in the area of modernizing discipline, grievance and human resource management processes. The minister has cited anecdotal evidence of things that take way too long and we all know that is true. However, what is lacking is clear guidance for RCMP members of what those standards are and how failure of those standards will be dealt with in a judicious and fair manner. In addition, when RCMP members have grievances they need to have the understanding that their concerns can be brought forward in a timely manner and that those grievances can be resolved and not drag on for years and years.

We do agree on the areas in which we need to make reforms to the RCMP Act. In particular, we believe it is crucial to allow the RCMP commissioner reforms in the area of discipline to deal with the climate of sexual harassment that exists in the RCMP. We would like to see leadership from the government in mandating the commissioner to bring in a clear anti-harassment policy and a clear process that contains specific standards of behaviour with regard to sexual harassment and specific criteria for evaluating the performance of all employees in this very important area.

However, having said how much we agree with the objectives of this legislation and that we agree with the areas that need to be reformed, I have not risen in the House today simply to present bouquets to the minister. We in the opposition have our concerns, both about government inaction by the Liberals and the Conservatives and government inaction in particular in the area of transparency and accountability.

The present government has been in power since 2006 and, yes, it inherited a record of inaction from the previous Liberal government. However, it has been six years, three ministers and two RCMP commissioners and we are just now embarking on the process to reform this legislation so we can get measures that make a real difference in the performance and work lives of RCMP members now in 2012. In the meantime, we have had more than 200 women members of the RCMP join lawsuits alleging sexual harassment within the RCMP. We also have had an ongoing series of problems with loss of public confidence in the RCMP in investigations of serious incidents like the death of Robert Dziekanski.

We have wasted valuable time and we have had numerous studies that presented solutions to these problems. We had the task force, which was appointed by the government, and I give it credit for doing so, that reported back in 2007, nearly five years ago, with important proposals for reforming the culture of the RCMP, discipline of the RCMP and important recommendations on the Public Complaints Commission. We had an internal review, completed in 2008, of the process of using independent observers in police investigations of themselves. We had the recommendations from Mr. Justice O'Connor in the Maher Arar inquiry with regard to the national security activities of the RCMP in 2006. Most recently, we had recommendations from the former Public Complaints commissioner, Paul Kennedy, both on investigations of serious incidents, which were tabled in 2009, and when he appeared before the justice committee in January of last year to give recommendations on increasing the independence of the job that he used to hold. So there is no shortage of advice available.

However, in a question that I asked earlier to the minister, it is unclear why the government chose to pick only certain recommendations and certain pieces of all these reports. It is hard to see the overall theme that guides this legislation.

We have said that leadership from the government is required but that means more than just legislation. Therefore, I cannot let this opportunity go by without pointing out some of the things that the government has done in the area of the RCMP and the Public Complaints Commission. Just the past week, the government issued lay-off notices to two staff members at the RCMP Public Complaints Commission. When we are in the midst of reforming this and when that commission is in the midst of a massive study of the sexual harassment complaints that have taken place in the RCMP, why has the government chosen to lay off two staff members at the Public Complaints Commission in the midst of this crisis over sexual harassment that the commission was attempting to address?

Also in the last week we saw lay-off notices given to 149 support staff members of the RCMP across the country, including 42 support staff in British Columbia alone. These people provide important services in helping the RCMP do its job on a daily basis. These are not uniformed members who received the lay-off notices but people who work everywhere from the forensic labs to personnel, recruiting and in all the other very important functions that support the basic police duties of the RCMP.

When it comes to the Public Complaints Commission and the RCMP, the government has been following a peculiar practice. When Mr. Kennedy produced his strong recommendations on investigations, the response of the government was to fail to reappoint him to the job. Having appointed him in 2005 and giving him annual reappointments every year, when his very strong recommendations came out, suddenly he was no longer its first choice for the job as the Public Complaints commissioner.

The new interim commissioner, Ian McPhail, was initially given a one-year term as interim chair and now has been appointed again for another year. I am emphasizing the single year because we are talking about someone who should have independence from the government in doing the job of providing civilian oversight of the RCMP. How can someone do that with any confidence when at the end of every year he or she could lose their job? While I am encouraged that the new legislation talks about a term of up to five years for the new chair of the civilian review agency, I am concerned that the government will continue its practice of making only annual appointments, which gives it far too much power over what should be an independent commissioner.

While we believe that Bill C-42 does deal with issues of urgent public concern about the RCMP, we on this side of the House will be supporting the bill at second reading in order to move the bill to committee. I was very pleased to hear the minister say in his opening remarks that he was open to amendments to the bill at committee. We look forward to seeing all kinds of witnesses come forward at committee, witnesses who have previously provided advice to the minister, although he was unable to name any of them specifically today. We hope to see them called as witnesses at committee so we can hear from them about whether the ways the government has chosen to address these issues are the right measures.

While we agree with Commissioner Paulson that legislation alone is not enough, we do need to produce the optimum legislation at this time. That will require extensive amendments to the bill at committee. We believe a positive aspect is that of giving the commissioner power to create one process to deal with the issue of sexual harassment. We understand there are competing RCMP and Treasury Board guidelines, which have created a great deal of confusion within the force. It is a positive measure, but we have some serious concerns about the independence of a new civilian review agency. There are restrictions on its ability to undertake independent investigations. I have already raised the issue of the length of the term for the chair of that commission.

As I mentioned briefly, we also have a concern that the disciplinary reforms needed in the RCMP because of the lengthy and complicated process involved should not err too much on the other side. The RCMP operates in a non-union environment. Many of the rank and file members of the RCMP we talked to over the summer expressed a concern that where they do not have an organization to advocate on their behalf as individuals, there needs to be balance in the disciplinary process so they are not subject to arbitrary dismissal when they have devoted their lives to helping and serving all Canadians.

Therefore, we will be talking at committee on how to ensure there is a balance in the disciplinary process. We agree that it needs to be streamlined and improved, but the government's solution seems to be to concentrate more and more arbitrary power in the hands of the minister. We remain concerned that we get a chance to explore fully at committee what those disciplinary processes would look like and how people's rights as employees would be protected in a non-union environment.

I find the minister's excuse for the most recent delays in introducing the bill, namely waiting for a court decision on whether the RCMP has the right to unionize, a bit weak. It was obviously possible to bring the bill forward with a previous section of Bill C-38 omitted. However, I hope we will have some discussion of the issue of whether or not having a union in the RCMP might be a good way to address some of these outstanding issues, particularly in the area of sexual harassment where people often need an advocate in the workplace to approach management, especially if management is part of the problem. People need someone to approach management and advocate on their behalf. We might not be in the situation we are in today with more than 200 women filing lawsuits against the RCMP if we had a more conducive work environment and a better way of making sure that individual members had advocates on their behalf in the RCMP.

I want to touch on some of the reports that have been issued and what we believe should be addressed at committee. The 2006 report of the Justice O'Connor inquiry into the actions of Canadian officials in relation to Maher Arar called for Parliament to create an RCMP watchdog along the lines of the Security Intelligence Review Committee. It already monitors CSIS but would also have the right to audit RCMP files and activities and have the power to subpoena related documents and compel testimony. The present complaints commission does not have enough powers over the RCMP's national security activities.

Thus, while we are glad to see provisions in the bill that would increase those powers, given the causes behind the creation of CSIS, we have a question about the RCMP recreating an arm that would undertake national security activities that would appear to operate without adequate parliamentary oversight. That is a question that we will be addressing in committee.

The report filed in 2007 by the Task Force on Governance and Cultural Change in the RCMP proposed reforms to establish the RCMP as a separate entity from government, with separate employer status. That was a very interesting proposal that appears nowhere in this bill. I would like to know why the government, having appointed this commission of eminent persons with expertise to suggest solutions to the problems in the RCMP, including a former commissioner of the RCMP, a vice-admiral of the Canadian Navy, a very prominent Canadian corporate lawyer, and a member of the Alberta Law Enforcement Review Board, set aside a major recommendation of theirs. That is a question for which I would like to hear the government's answer.

In addition to the idea of having separate employer status for the RCMP, many groups in the past have suggested that there needs to be some kind of civilian input mechanism for the RCMP, perhaps only at the national level, but maybe also at the regional level.

While municipalities have boards that provide civilian guidance and control over their police forces and that provide insulation from the local politicians, we have nothing like that in the RCMP. Accordingly, we have had proposals that we create an independent management board, which again came from the 2007 report, which would give Canadians the confidence that the government cannot interfere directly in the activities of the RCMP and cannot give so-called advice to the commissioner, who has to report directly to the minister.

We are depending here upon the integrity of the minister and the integrity of the RCMP commissioner to protect the independence of policing, and reports have often recommended that it would be better to create a structural impediment to that kind of interference than simply depending on the integrity and goodwill of the people occupying those positions.

I am not questioning either the integrity of the minister or of the RCMP commissioner, but the public has to have confidence that independence is there. When those relations go on in private and they are direct reporting relationship, it is difficult for the public to have that confidence in the independence of the RCMP.

Many provisions in Bill C-42 are similar to those in Bill C-38. I would just like to mention a brief comment by Paul Kennedy, the former RCMP public complaints commissioner, that Bill C-38 was so riddled with loopholes that it did not meet the standards necessary to guarantee independence of policing.

Again, here is someone appointed by the Conservatives to the position of public complaints commissioner who presented reports to them on the kinds of reforms that needed to be brought forward. He had serious concerns about what was happening in Bill C-38 and would, I am sure, have those same concerns when it comes to Bill C-42 given that many of the sections remain the same.

With the very limited amount of time I have to conclude my remarks, I would like to say that we do understand the urgency for action here. It is not our goal in this debate to delay these reforms to RCMP accountability and transparency, but it is important that we get them right. We must get them right in terms of public confidence; we must get them right in terms of the careers of individual RCMP members; and we must get them right to give Commissioner Paulson the powers and the abilities he needs to take care of some very serious problems in the workplace climate involving sexual harassment inside the RCMP.

We have one chance to get this right. I am hoping to work co-operatively with the government. Again, as I said, the minister said he would welcome discussion of amendments in the committee, and so we will be putting forward those kinds of amendments.

Finally, I would stress the importance of both the independence of the RCMP from government and the independence of investigations into RCMP conduct from the government and the RCMP, and also the independence of the commissioner, who really ought to be the chair of this new civilian agency and report to Parliament rather than to the minister of the day.

These are the kinds of concerns that New Democrats will be raising at committee.

[Enhancing Royal Canadian Mounted Police Accountability Act, September 17th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, I will have a chance in just a few minutes to state our own position on the legislation.

There have been many reports suggesting reforms to accountability in the RCMP over the past six or seven years. This proposed bill does not appear to align specifically with any of those or include the full recommendations of some of those reports.

How did the minister arrive at this particular package as being the solution to accountability for the RCMP?

[Strengthening Military Justice in the Defence of Canada Act, June 19th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, I wonder if the member has more to say about the new-found respect for processes and procedures that the Conservatives are professing on the other side.

I notice that they made reference to the speech by the member for Burnaby—New Westminster on the budget where the time was limited. What it illustrates to me is that the Conservatives did not listen to anything he said. The member used his time to invite Canadians to send their input through emails and Twitter. He used that time to express Canadians' concerns in the House of Commons.

It is very obvious that the Conservatives did not listen to what the member was saying during that 12-hour period because they are not very interested in process or listening.

I would just like the hon. member to comment on both legislation by exhaustion and the lack of listening skills on the other side.

[Strengthening Military Justice in the Defence of Canada Act, June 19th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, that is a very interesting question, because I think my colleague is onto something.

The government came up with a bill to label some prisoners as vexatious and problematic and to not accept complaints on the same basis. Maybe there is something about the idea that somehow complaints are a problem and are not about fixing problems. Perhaps there is that common attitude that would explain why a government that would support a private member's bill in the corrections area, a bill that would limit the right to complain, might also leave these things out of the bill.

As one of my colleagues said, it is probably an attitude of shooting the messenger who raises the problems rather than dealing with the problems themselves. I thank the hon. member for drawing that very interesting parallel.

[Strengthening Military Justice in the Defence of Canada Act, June 19th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, I thank the hon. member for his question, because it is the same thing I was musing about in my speech. It is hard to understand why some things are in the bill and some things are not, and what standard was used to make decisions about what should have been retained or not, in particular those things on which compromise had been reached in the previous Parliament. If the government is looking for support from the opposition parties for this bill to move forward quickly, why would it not include the things that had been in the previous bill?

When it comes to the grievance system, which I emphasized a lot in my speech, it is really important to both discipline and to morale within the military to have this well-functioning grievance system operating. I am at a loss to explain why the government would omit that from this bill, and it is one of the reasons that I am not supporting it at second reading.

[Strengthening Military Justice in the Defence of Canada Act, June 19th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, it is obviously late in the evening and late in the debate. I always like the first part of the question better than the last part, because I am not sure I can remember the last part of questions as they come to me. Perhaps it is important to make notes.

I always said, in my previous life as a city councillor, that when the government shifted from Liberal to Conservative, one of the things that I thought would change was the way the police and the military were treated by the Canadian government. One of the great disappointments, for me, when the Conservatives became the government was to find that they have the same bureaucratic bean-counting approach to members of the Canadian Forces that was used by the Liberals.

At the beginning, yes, there was a little increase in some salaries and some improvements in conditions, but what we have seen most recently in the budget is a very large cut to DND, which means that a lot of civilian contractors in my riding will probably actually lose their jobs.

The other thing we have seen is this attack on veterans' benefits. When people who are veterans' advocates raise complaints about that, we see a consistent pattern of violation of privacy rights and use of military and military medical records against them as advocates for members of the Canadian Forces.

As I said, I really did expect that the military and the police would be treated better by the Conservatives than they had been by the Liberals. It is sad to see that the same kind of treatment has continued.

[Strengthening Military Justice in the Defence of Canada Act, June 19th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, I am not sure I thank my colleague for that question, because I have already expanded about as much as I can.

I would like to go back to what he said at the very beginning. It has been my tendency not to take the bait from the other side when they say we do not support the military. Can they actually demonstrate that?

One of the things I would bring to the Conservatives' attention is that if we look at the ridings across the country that have large military populations and check which parties won in the last election in those ridings, we can see that most of the major military ridings across the country are represented by New Democrats.

The members on the other side can claim that we do not support the military, but I think the members of the Canadian Forces and their families know that we have been there when it counts. They know we can be counted on for the issues that are important to them and their families. They voted accordingly.

[Strengthening Military Justice in the Defence of Canada Act, June 19th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, there is a colleague of his on the other side who likes to start his responses by saying, “Utter nonsense”. I would like to quote that hon. member.

I gave the example of the bill last fall dealing with the independence of military judges. In that instance we worked together on all sides of the House and passed it through the House in record time in order to meet the deadline that was set in the court martial appeal court decision of R. v. Leblanc . We were able to do that.

With good will, as we have already demonstrated, we can co-operate on certain aspects of military justice to get things through the House of Commons.

[Strengthening Military Justice in the Defence of Canada Act, June 19th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, I am happy to speak tonight to this important bill, Bill C-15, more commonly referred to as the military justice act. It is a bill that should have been dealt with Parliament long ago, but was delayed numerous times by the vagaries of the Canadian electoral system.

Unfortunately, as the bill stands now, I will not be speaking in favour at second reading. Despite still agreeing that the bill does represent a step in the right direction, this version omits key recommendations from the mandatory review process and it also omits recommendations that had already been accepted by all parties in the previous Parliament during debate on its predecessor, Bill C-41.

Certainly both sides of the House recognize the importance of the major reforms to our military justice system that took place in 1998. One of those important progressive provisions was the requirement that there be a mandatory five-year review of the impact of those changes in our military justice system.

The first review was completed by the very distinguished former Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Canada, Mr. Justice Lamer, in September 2003. His conclusion was that our military justice system was generally working well, but it was not without room for improvement. Therefore, he then submitted 88 recommendations for improvements to that justice system.

Since that time, by most counts, only about 28 of those recommendations have been dealt with, either in legislation or in administrative changes. That still leaves 60 recommendations outstanding.

Mr. Justice Lamer made recommendations in three main areas. The first of those was action to increase the protection for the independence of military judges. The second area was for actions to improve the current grievance process. The third area was actions to address efficiencies in the overall military justice framework.

Tonight I want to talk largely about how well Bill C-15 does in terms of implementing those outstanding recommendations made by Mr. Justice Lamer. When we look at Bill C-15, what we find is a very mixed record.

The recommendations in the first area of independence of military justice were dealt with last fall with all party support. They were separated out into Bill C-16, due to the deadline Parliament had been given by a decision of the Military Court Martial Appeal Court in the case of Regina v. Leblanc, and that deadline was met with royal assent last November.

I mention this specifically because it demonstrates that with goodwill on both sides of the House, we can get reforms that are needed through the House of Commons in a timely fashion. What I see missing in this draft of the bill is that goodwill to respect opinions on all sides of the House.

The second area that Mr. Justice Lamer made recommendations in was the area of improvements to the current grievance system. Lamer judged the current process unsatisfactory, largely due to its failure to deal with grievances in a timely manner and then the resulting backlog of grievances that came about as a result of that untimely dealing with problems.

His conclusion was that the basic principles of the grievance system were sound, but that its operation was not sound. At the time of his report, there were over 800 grievances outstanding and he pointed out the fact that grievances were often stuck at the office of the Chief of Defence Staff for more than two years.

Lamer suggested a 12 month limit be placed on grievances, that they would have to be dealt with within that time period. However, he also suggested some ways that deadline could be met, but it required several things to happen.

If the Chief of Defence Staff were able to delegate responsibility for some grievances to subordinate officers, that would speed up the process. That provision is in Bill C-15 and has been in all the previous bills.

The other two things are not actually legislative action and unfortunately they have not taken place.

The second of his recommendation on grievances was that adequate resources needed to be made available so that grievances could proceed in a timely fashion. The main reason for the delay was not enough people and not enough resources to deal with those grievances.

His third recommendation was providing additional training to those members of the Canadian Forces who were actually dealing with grievances, so they became more skilled in getting resolution of the grievances at a low level and were able to therefore move on to deal with more serious grievances.

As I said, only the first of these is in the bill. The other two would be very difficult to manage now, in view of the large cuts to the DND budget this year. They require more resources for the grievance system and they require more resources for training. I have my doubts about whether those would be available, given the large cuts in this year's budget.

The other reform not included in this bill to do with grievances was one which was adopted as an NDP amendment to Bill C-41, the previous version of this bill. That was an amendment to add critical balance to the representation on grievance committees. Therefore, I am at a loss as to why the government would not have included this amendment, which was already accepted in the previous Parliament, and which would go a long way to helping restore credibility to the grievance committee system by having a good representation of difference kinds of members of the Canadian Forces on those committees.

In his third area of recommendations we probably have the most important recommendations for redressing the balance within the military justice framework as a whole. In talking about these, Justice Lamer set out four principles to guide that system. I want to take a moment to talk about those principles because I think it is important to keep them in mind as we are talking about this bill.

The first of those, and I shall quote Mr. Lamer, was to recognize that “maintaining discipline by the chain of command is essential to a competent and reliable military organization”.

What he is pointing out there is that discipline depends on a well-functioning grievance and justice system. Therefore, it is not a challenge to that system to have a good grievance system; it is a support to that discipline system. It is not a challenge to have a good justice system; it is a support to discipline within the military.

The second principle he raised is that it was necessary to recognize the particular context of the military justice system. I will quote him at length here because what he said was that we:

...need to have a system that will properly operate under those special conditions that our men and women are placed in, often abroad, under conditions from peacekeeping to peace-making, in what is often a hostile environment, and indeed sometimes outright war.

Mr. Justice Lamer did not say there should not be a system for summary convictions or expedited justice. He recognized that sometimes these things are necessary. However, he also recognized that we can do these things within the framework of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms and within a system that is just and fair to all the members of the Canadian Forces.

The third point or principle underlying these reforms to the framework that he mentioned was that those “who risk their lives for our country deserve a military justice system that protects their rights in accordance with our Charter” of Rights and Freedoms.

What he is saying there is that, like all other Canadian systems, but in particular because members of the Canadian Forces risk their lives in the service of their country, they deserve the protection of the rights that are in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms because that is what we are asking them to defend as members of the Canadian Forces.

His fourth principle said that it was necessary to recognize that any doubts about the military justice system and any lack of confidence in the military justice system would have negative impacts not just on discipline but also on morale within the Canadian Forces. Therefore, it becomes very important to deal with concerns about injustice in a timely fashion in order that the esprit de corps and the sense of common purpose can be maintained in the Canadian Forces.

By laying out those four principles, what he was saying is that the context that the military justice operates in makes it particularly important that we operate a model system.

Bill C-15 does make progress in two areas. I am prepared to acknowledge that.

One is in placing limits on the power of arrest without warrant under the existing sections 155 and 156 of the National Defence Act. Two court cases had already brought these wide powers of arrest without warrant into question, and Bill C-15 addresses this problem by incorporating Mr. Justice Lamer's recommendations.

The second area in which it makes progress is in providing for more flexible sentencing. Again, as recommended by Lamer, this would bring military justice in line with civilian justice in Canada by adding new sentencing options, including absolute discharges, intermittent sentences and restitution orders.

Those are two areas of progress I am prepared to acknowledge. Unfortunately, some of the most significant recommendations from Mr. Justice Lamer's report are missing from Bill C-15. That is why I am unable to support the bill at second reading.

One in particular I would like to highlight from Mr. Lamer's report deals with section 129 of the National Defence Act. That section establishes a general prohibition against conduct to the prejudice of good order and discipline. That is something no one could disagree with, given the context the military operates in. Unfortunately, as Mr. Justice Lamer noted, there is a lack of clarity in that section as to what the requisite elements of an offence are under this section or, in common language, what it is one has to do to violate this section is not clear. We might ask why Justice Lamer would focus on such a technical matter involving a single section of the defence act.

What he pointed out was that in the last year before his report, 44% of all charges in the military justice system were under this single section, where exactly what one has to do to be in contravention is unclear, and that this section also generated a large proportion of the appeals in the military justice system. This is what I would call a very major problem in terms of acceptance of the justice system, in terms of discipline and in terms of morale, and resulting from this lack of clarity it is not dealt with in Bill C-15, and it is a major omission.

It is so major, in fact, that it raises the general question of why most of the other 60 recommendations have not been included in Bill C-15. What was the standard by which the government sorted through and decided some of these deserve to stay and some of them have to go?

The second major omission that many of my colleagues have spoken about is the failure to reform the summary trial system. Again, the summary trial system, according to Mr. Lamer, in normal times accounts for about 96% of all cases in the military justice system. The major concern we have noted here is the possibility of summary trial convictions leading to criminal records, something that has a great impact on the future prospects of those convicted, both their prospects within the military and their prospects should they choose to leave the Canadian Forces. Again, in its last incarnation as Bill C-41, NDP amendments were adopted to expand the number of offences considered minor from 5 to 27, and this would reduce significantly the number of convictions that could result in a criminal record.

A further failure of Bill C-15 is its failure to address the need to strengthen the role of the Military Police Complaints Commission so that it can act as an effective oversight body with full investigative powers and the unfettered right to report to Parliament.

There is one other concern that Lamer had, which is perhaps not surprising, but is not addressed in this bill. He did acknowledge that all the solutions are not legislative in nature. This concern was the general under-resourcing of the military justice system. Lamer pointed in particular to the under-resourcing of the defence counsel services, where the number of defence lawyers in the Canadian military was equal to the number of judges and that number was four. So not having enough people to provide defence counsel contributed to these lengthy delays in the actual justice system in getting cases through the court.

A further particular concern with resourcing came about at CFB Esquimalt in my riding. That is the cuts that have been made to alternative dispute resolution programs. These cuts that have been made in this budget would result in the phasing out of the alternative dispute resolution program at CFB Esquimalt by March 2014.

Now why am I talking about this as part of Bill C-15? I would say we have had a proven success rate in reducing the number of grievances and the number of behaviours that result in discipline by having an effective alternative dispute resolution program operating on the base. We can look at the number of cases that were dealt with in alternative dispute resolution and we can look at the number of grievances and see that the number of grievances has gone down. We can look at the number of cases dealt with in alternative dispute resolution and see that the number of discipline cases has gone down. Why on earth would the government want to cut the funding to alternative dispute resolution at the base? What the Conservatives say is that there is no explicit mandate for alternative dispute resolution services anywhere in the National Defence Act.

However, as I said, it flies in the face of the proven results of the alternative dispute resolution program in having a significant impact on reducing recourse to formal grievance procedures and in reducing the incidence of behaviours that would result in formal discipline proceedings. It is a great shame to see this program being phased out at the base.

I conclude my remarks about this bill by saying, once again, that I believe Bill C-16 last fall demonstrated the ability of all parties to co-operate to get important reforms adopted quickly in the House of Commons. Once again, I am perplexed as to why this bill ignores previously agreed upon amendments and ignores key recommendations from Mr. Justice Lamer. For that reason, I cannot support this bill at second reading.

Let me restate the importance of improvements to our military justice system. As I said, it is extremely important to one of those fundamental principles, and that is maintaining discipline in a chain of command.

It is extremely important to maintaining morale within the Canadian Forces, but it is also a right of those who serve. Therefore, we owe nothing less to the members of the Canadian Forces than to give them the same rights and the same protections, albeit in a special context, that are given to all other Canadians.

Members of the Canadian Forces are held to a high standard of discipline. They are asked to risk their lives, and therefore our judicial system should reflect those sacrifices they make on behalf of all of us. Those who risk their lives for our country should not be denied their charter rights when facing things like summary trials.

Other countries have recognized this issue and have changed their summary trial process. I heard my colleagues previously listing countries like Australia, Britain and Ireland. It is time for Canada to catch up in this area.

Ensuring that our military justice system ranks as a model system and a system of which all Canadians, both members of the Canadian Forces and the public at large, can justifiably be proud of should be the goal of Bill C-15. Once again, I have to question the government's motives in putting forward a bill that rejects those previously agreed upon compromises that help us accomplish that goal.

My final remarks go back to the important innovation we had in 1998, a five-year review. We had that review from Mr. Justice Lamer. We had a more recent review completed. We know what needs to be done here in the military justice system, and it is left now to us to find a way to come together in Parliament to get that done. We on this side of the House have said we will not support the bill at second reading. We would urge the government to take another run at this, one that recognizes the things that had already been agreed upon.

I want to go back to talk a bit more about the grievance system. It would be an easy thing for the Chief of the Defence Staff to adopt a 12-month limit for dealing with grievances, if we had that provision that allowed him to delegate some of that responsibility to his subordinates. It would not be so easy for him to do so in the context of cutbacks to the DND budget for this year. Therefore, those adequate resources for dealing with grievances will not be available, I am certain, and adequate resources for training those who deal with grievance procedures will not be available, likely, because of these large budget cutbacks.

I wonder where the consistency is in the government's commitment to the military and the commitment to improving the military justice system, when it is proceeding with such large cutbacks on an annual basis. I just cannot square that circle. Once again, if they are concerned about efficiency, I would go back to programs like the alternative dispute resolution program at CFB Esquimalt in my riding and ask why that program, instead of being cut, is not being piloted at all the bases across the country as a way of trying to get the problem solved at the lowest level without resorting to the formal processes that take so long and consume so many resources and without leaving Canadian Forces members so unhappy that they often engage in behaviours that provoke discipline and then invoke the military justice system.

We have some good alternatives here. We have some good ideas. We know where we need to go in reforming the military justice system. Again, I just cannot understand the lack of goodwill of the government in introducing Bill C-15 in this form when we have had so much experience in previous Parliaments and we know what it takes to get all of us on to the same page and improving the military justice system for the benefit of all the members who serve in the Canadian Forces.