Thank you very much.
Mr. Minister, there are so many things I could touch on. You've raised a number of issues today, but one of the issues that was raised, aside from post-traumatic stress, which is a very difficult thing for all of us to handle.... I always call it “invisible wounds”. It's quite easy to identify someone who's lost an arm or a hand from war, but it's quite a different matter to actually judge by looking at someone what's happened to their psyche from being in war. So I'm very pleased with what we're doing to try to make things better for those with post-traumatic stress.
You also gave some statistics that showed we're losing 23,000 World War II veterans a year. That's a very depressing figure. It seems such a shame. But since the subject of remembrance was raised, I wonder if you'd like to make a few comments regarding a few things that have happened in the last couple of weeks and about something that's going to happen in the next month or so.
I was able to participate in a program that was called Valentines for Veterans, which had young schoolchildren creating valentines and giving them to veterans one to one. I watched the faces of the veterans who were receiving the valentines: they broke into grins from ear to ear. And I watched the children, who now had a better understanding of what it was these people sacrificed and what it is that they enjoy today because of those sacrifices. I found that very heartening.
I also had the opportunity to attend a tea with the nursing sisters, which was, again, another real eye-opener. These are ladies--I'm sure they wouldn't mind my saying so--who are in their eighties, incredibly feisty, and excellent examples of the kind of care that veterans have received from back then up to today.
Those are all positives, but what I really would like to talk about is something I don't understand. It's something that has been bothering me for a number of years, and that is that when we make these pilgrimages, as a government, we bring in a number of administrative people--I have no problem with that, but we are not bringing in enough students. I think if you're going to have remembrance and you're going to have an appreciation, students are a very important component of that.
I understand, Mr. Minister, that we're going to be bringing 5,000 students to Vimy this time, and I wonder if you could elaborate on that. I've witnessed a couple of ceremonies in preparation for which students actually had to do research on one of the veterans and then tell their stories. It was probably the most moving thing I've ever seen.
We've now got 5,000 coming. Could you please elaborate?