Military Rules of Evidence — 2
2 (1) In these Rules, unless the context otherwise requires, accused means the accused personally or counsel or a defending officer acting on behalf of the accused, but does not include an adviser acting on behalf of the accused; ( accusé ou prévenu ) admissible means admissible in evidence; ( admissible ) burden of persuasion means the burden of convincing the court of the existence or non-existence, or probable existence or non-existence, of any fact; ( fardeau de la persuasion ) business means every kind of business, occupation or calling, and includes the practice of a profession, and the operation of an institute and every kind of institution, whether carried on for profit or not; ( entreprise ) circumstantial evidence means evidence tending to establish the existence or non-existence of a fact that is not one of the elements of the offence charged, where the existence or non-existence of that fact reasonably leads to an inference concerning the existence or non-existence of a fact that is one of the elements of the offence charged; ( preuve par présomption ) confession means a statement made by an accused person, whether made before or after he is accused of an offence, that is completely or partially self-incriminating with respect to the offence of which he is accused; ( aveu ) credibility means the degree of credit the court should give to the testimony of a witness; ( crédibilité ) declarant means the person who originally makes a hearsay statement; ( déclarant ) direct evidence means evidence tending directly to establish the existence or non-existence of an element of the offence charged; ( preuve directe ) evidence means anything that has a significant rational tendency to make something manifest; ( preuve ) examined copy means a copy proved to have been compared with the original and to correspond to it; ( copie conforme ) expert witness means a witness qualified under section 81; ( témoin expert ) extra-judicial statement means in any proceedings of a court martial a hearsay statement that has been made by a declarant, other than in the course of those proceedings or in the course of taking evidence taken on commission for that court martial, and includes (a) words, oral or written, used by him, (b) the adoption, in some way, in whole or in part, of meaningful words uttered by another person as an accurate expression of the declarant’s own observations or experience, and (c) the expression, in an intelligible manner, of the declarant’s observations or experience; ( déclaration extrajudiciaire ) judicial notice means acceptance by a court of the truth of a fact or matter without requiring the introduction of evidence to prove its truth; ( connaissance judiciaire ) opinion means interpretation of, or inference concerning, the significance in some respect of a given fact; ( opinion ) ordinary witness means a witness who testifies to facts observed or experienced by him, but who is not testifying as an expert in the matter concerned; ( témoin ordinaire ) public document includes a documentary statement made for an official purpose by a public officer acting under a duty or authority to make the statement; ( document public ) public officer means a person having a legal duty or authority to make official statements which duty or authority is expressly imposed by or given in a statute, regulation or specific instruction, or implied from the nature of the office because he is an official of the Government of Canada, the government of a Canadian province, a Canadian municipality, or because he is a member of the Canadian Forces; ( fonctionnaire public ) Queen’s Regulations and Orders or QR&O means the Queen’s Regulations and Orders for the Canadian Forces; ( Ordonnances et Règlements royaux ou ORFC ) real evidence means all evidence supplied by material objects when they are offered for direct perception by the court; ( preuve réelle ) rebuttable presumption of law means a presumption authorized by the National Defence