The RCMP Veterans' Association has been honoured to appear before the Standing Committee on Veterans Affairs. At previous Veterans Affairs summits, ministers and senior departmental officials as well as the veterans ombudsman have underlined the fact that all honourably released members of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police have been, are, and continue to be veterans. If you take nothing else away from this presentation, please take this home: the RCMP are veterans too.
We are proud to be recognized as such for our service to Canada since its very beginnings as a nation. Our association is almost as old as the force itself. We are proud of our history, our heritage, and our traditions. We are nearing the Canada 150 celebrations. The mounted police, in many instances, led or prominently figured with Canada on its path to full nationhood since the northwest became part of our great Confederation in the early 1870s, alongside the indispensable and crucial assistance of our first nations, Métis, and Inuit brothers and sisters.