National Defence committee  Bill C-45 clearly deals with those parts of the Lamer report that were accepted and put forward as legislation. Bill C-60 deals with the provisions that have arisen as a result of the Trépanier decision. There are some overlapping provisions. Two in particular are the requirement

National Defence committee  No, not yet.

National Defence committee  It's been applied for.

National Defence committee  They might order a new trial, for instance. That might be the outcome.

National Defence committee  Yes.

National Defence committee  Yes, we'd have to look at that to see if they'd be tried under the laws at the time. But I'd have to go back, to be honest with you, and look at that in terms of the outcome.

National Defence committee  No, not necessarily. Well, not at all. I don't believe it would have to do that at all. It would look at it and determine the—

National Defence committee  They would look to see whether there was a constitutional issue at all, first of all. And so the answer may be in fact that it is a non-issue. So the trial would continue under the previous provisions. But there are transitional provisions in the legislation that deal with exis

National Defence committee  I'm sorry, could you repeat that?

National Defence committee  It's clear that the Court Martial Appeal Court anticipated the matters going ahead. I'll give you the practical example that it created. Because we have the different powers of punishment that attach to different courts, if an accused is charged with an offence that would attra

National Defence committee  What I deal with is obviously effects of decisions. In particular, it's clear that the judgment said that the provision that allows the convening of courts was of no force and effect, so it struck down that section. The problem it has created is that there's no other section or l

National Defence committee  I'm looking for certainty. My concern with all this is that there's no clear legal authority for DMP, the director of military prosecutions, to offer the choice. My concern is that what we're setting up has a lack of consistency, a lack of clarity. Our courts are struggling with

National Defence committee  The Grant decision was an adverse decision. Leave to appeal to the Supreme Court was sought in that decision, but not granted by the Supreme Court. It wasn't a constitutional issue, however, so it wasn't a matter of the striking down of sections. And in that case, the court noted

National Defence committee  I'm answering a hypothetical; that's one of the problems. On a matter that's put before the Supreme Court, they can look at the existing legislation as well as the previous legislation. But that's for the court, and people argue it before the court in terms of how that—

National Defence committee  On my concern, as superintendent of the military justice system, over the sunset clause, the exact intention of this bill is to allow the system to function with clarity, certainty, and stability. The problem proposed by a sunset clause is that it could put us back in the same si