National Defence committee  According to the way the amendment is drafted, any offence tried at summary trial would not result in the creation of a record under the Criminal Records Act. If any offence you're describing were tried at summary trial, it would not result in the creation of a record.

National Defence committee  Ms. Gallant, what you're describing is a situation known as “concurrent jurisdiction” between the civilian justice system and the military justice system. In many cases such as the one you've described, there will be an exercise of discretion between the civilian police and civil

National Defence committee  I recognize that this is an area of the law that's really confusing. You saw that in the evidence of the witnesses from the Criminal Lawyers' Association. I don't want to be pedantic; I just want to try to clarify for the members of the committee the distinction between a crimina

National Defence committee  I would not want the members of the committee to be under any misapprehension about the current state of the law and what is proposed. Under the current state of the law, any conviction at a summary trial would be, pursuant to the meaning of section 3 of the Criminal Records Act

National Defence committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair. Yes, I would certainly concur with the concern expressed by Colonel Gleeson with respect to a potential chilling effect of such an amendment on the exercise of the right to elect court martials. Court martials exist not only for the very important purpose o

National Defence committee  There's just one further point of important information for the members of the committee to be aware of. The Charter of Rights actually makes an explicit recognition of the distinct nature of the military justice system. But particularly in the context of juries and panels, par

National Defence committee  Mr. Chair, if I may just add one further thought, if members of the committee were to consider this, further to Colonel Gleeson's last point, I'd suggest that perhaps the reason that generally the legislation prescribes a standard or requirement for someone to apply for a positio

National Defence committee  Thank you, Mr. Dryden. There are two further points in response to the concerns raised by Mr. Harris that we would consider the committee should be aware of. In fact in the regulations--the Queen's regulations and orders, which prescribe the regulations with respect to the griev

National Defence committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair. We would consider that the committee should be aware of four significant concerns with this particular amendment as drafted. First of all, there is the issue of purporting to prescribe a hard and fast twelve-month deadline. Clearly that was the goal both of

National Defence committee  Thank you. Justice Lamer identified in his report the utility of having in statute a guaranteed prescribed mechanism for reviewing those provisions of the act. That is obviously meant to ensure that the system keeps pace with changes in the Canadian law generally and continues

National Defence committee  May I add, Mr. Chairman, that I've been a military defence counsel, and one of the lessons I've learned is that as counsel you don't make up your own instructions. The accused has autonomy. It's up to the accused to decide how they want to proceed in that case and to instruct the

National Defence committee  If I may add one point, Mr. Chair, I think it's important for the members of the committee to understand that the Court Martial Appeal Court did not say anything was wrong with the types of courts themselves. If the person is there and they're happy to be tried by, for example, a

National Defence committee  There's just one additional point that I think is important for the members of the committee to understand. Of course, even if all that had transpired, if an accused person were convicted and they were subsequently dissatisfied that they'd been treated fairly, it is still open