Thank you.
I'll finish off my comments, first of all, by thanking you for being here and being able to bring these concerns.
Thank you, MP Fancy, for recognizing rural parts of Nova Scotia and all of Canada.
Our veterans do deserve better. They do deserve support for housing, as well as the supports that our veteran here today, Justin McKay, has talked about. That's who we need to talk to. Those are the people.
I will add a comment on one of your questions from earlier. There was a group of veterans who met every week in our armouries for coffee and provided support to one another. It was already being used a little bit, and that was taken away from them. A lot of them have since reconvened at the Legion.
I also want to mention two more points, if I may. One is with regard to MP Fancy's comment about rural areas.
One of the reasons our people were so upset in 2017 by DND's decision to remove the ability for our Canadian military to train and to divest our armoury is that at the exact same time, they made a decision to invest $130 million into restoring an armoury in Halifax. That's gone over budget by $30 million, so they're up to $160 million. Meanwhile, they shut down or tore down—whatever—our armoury in rural Canada.
The men and women from our area who serve our country are just as valuable as anyone from urban parts of the country who serve. Four hundred and eighty-six men who trained at our armouries lost their lives—North Novies. Those 486 men should mean something. We just want the same treatment. We just want to be treated equally to those from other areas across the country.
I hope that we can do more for our veterans, for people like Justin, who have served this country. We can build housing and we can provide those supports, but we can do it without tearing down and removing the ability to train reservists in our armoury.
Thank you, Mr. Chair.