Discussion · Government Orders
Simon-Pierre Savard-Tremblay Bloc Québécois
“Victims told our committee they want a choice between military and civilian courts. This bill moves all cases to civilian courts. My party passed a compromise to let a civilian court keep a case in the military system if that works better, but the government is trying to undo it. What does my colleague think about this?”
“Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague, who is doing some excellent work on these issues at the Standing Committee on Veterans Affairs and who is studying a number of topics related to the ones I am studying at the Standing Committee on National Defence. Naturally, we often have overlapping areas of focus, and this is one of them. In committee, many victims came to plead in favour of freedom of choice. It is important to note that one of the major proposals in this bill is that all cases, without exception, be transferred from military courts to civilian courts. We in the Bloc Québécois proposed a compromise that was adopted, but that amendment is now threatened by what the government is trying to do. We were not even asking for complete freedom of choice, but we were saying that in some cases, if the civilian court felt that it would be better to leave a case with the military court, it could stay there. That does not seem like the end of the world to me. What does my colleague think about that?”
Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague, who is doing some excellent work on these issues at the Standing Committee on Veterans Affairs and who is studying a number of topics related to the ones I am studying at the Standing Committee on National Defence. Naturally, we often have overlapping areas of focus, and this is one of them. In committee, many victims came to plead in favour of freedom of choice. It is important to note that one of the major proposals in this bill is that all cases, without exception, be transferred from military courts to civilian courts. We in the Bloc Québécois proposed a compromise that was adopted, but that amendment is now threatened by what the government is trying to do. We were not even asking for complete freedom of choice, but we were saying that in some cases, if the civilian court felt that it would be better to leave a case with the military court, it could stay there. That does not seem like the end of the world to me. What does my colleague think about that?