Sexual misconduct will be removed from military justice system jurisdiction

Defence Minister Bill Blair has introduced new legislation to remove the Canadian military’s jurisdictionto investigate sexual misconduct; something that advocates, survivors and former Supreme Court of Canada justices have all called for.

“The proposed legislation would provide exclusive jurisdiction to civilian authorities to investigate and prosecute such offences committed in Canada,” said Blair in a statement Thursday.

Blair is amending the National Defence Act as part of a push to modernize the military justice system.

The minister says that about 150 military sexual misconduct investigations have been referred to civilian police since Dec. 2021.

“There are real challenges still today in our in our criminal justice system with the way in which sexual assault matters are dealt with,” Blair said.

“We need to make sure that that system is also supportive of our victims and respectful of their rights and at the same time move forward to our courts as expeditiously as possible so that they can produce a just outcome and not be discharged because of delays.”

Blair said he has been in contact with provincial attorney generals to give them advance notice of the coming changes and provide additional resources to try and prevent delays in cases being heard.

NDP defence critic Lindsay Mathyssen says overall she’s happy to see the legislation introduced, but sees a gap in sending more cases to the civilian system and not including additional resources.

“It does seem like a major gap. And I will be pushing on the government to look at that as well,” Mathyssen said.

Blair’s predecessor, Anita Anand, had issued a ministerial directive to transfer sexual misconduct cases not already near completion to civilian courts in one of her first