Bill C-25 was brought about due to the findings of the Somalia Inquiry.
The Inquiry heard damning testimony about the inability of the CFSIU in being able to lay charges for the command failures that lead to the beating death of Somali teenager Shidane Arone who was lured into the Canadian peace keeping compound by members of the Canadian Airborne Regiment.
Basically what was happening is commanding officers were making it impossible for their subordinates to be interviewed, and when charges were being laid the commanding officers were dismissing the charges.
This is why only lowly non-commissioned junior rank members were being held responsible to Arone’s death.
But it wasn’t just Arone’s death that lead to these sweeping changes. It was the inquiry hearing testimony that this had been standard operating procedure in the CAF for a very long time and that it was very evident that only junior ranks ever had any type of significant discipline while the commissioned class were often treated with kid gloves.
The government of the day ended the inquiry as soon as it became apparent that the inquiry had set its eyes on the entire military justice system.
Bill C-25 made the following changes to the National Defence Act.
- Removed the 3-year-time-bar that had prevented the laying of charges more than three years after the date of the alleged offence. This applied to service offences, however service offences included all criminal code offences.
- Removed the ability of the commanding officer to dismiss charges that had been brought against their subordinate. Due to double-jeopardy laws in Canada, when a commanding officer dismissed charges that had been brought against their subordinate this prevented the same or similar charges being brought against the accused at a later date by a military or civilian tribunal.
- Removed the intelligence branch from the CFSIU, the result was the creation of the CFNIS.
- Created the position of Provost Marshall and placed the entire military police and CFNIS under the control of the Provost Marshal instead of the local chain of command.
- Created the Director of Military Prosecutions. With the commanding officer no longer approving or dismissing charges, the Canadian Forces now required a way to approve or dismiss charges.
All of these changes as best documented in Legislative Summary LS-311E(1998) which was authored by government lawyer David Goetz.
This is Bill C-25(1998)