Evidence of meeting #24 for Veterans Affairs in the 40th Parliament, 2nd Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was across.
A recording is available from Parliament.
10 a.m.
Conservative
Greg Kerr Conservative West Nova, NS
Thank you very much.
I'd like to turn to my colleague, Colin Mayes, for questioning.
10 a.m.
Conservative
Colin Mayes Conservative Okanagan—Shuswap, BC
Thank you.
Thank you for being here, Mr. Sullivan. I just want to thank you very much for the packages that are sent to my office, which I can use to do my part in remembrance.
One of the things I find to be just great are the posters. I always get a solid back put on the posters and go around to the various legions and hand them out so they can put them up. I don't know whether you contract that out or whether you have somebody on staff who puts these together, but the messaging on these is just great. Looking at this one that you have for this year, there is a young person looking at the picture she has drawn of her remembrance, with a vet standing in the background, and those who are serving today, and the poppies. It is great messaging. My favourite is the one of the young cadet standing in front of a mirror with a veteran standing behind with his hand on the cadet's shoulder. It talks about passing the torch of freedom to the next generation. I want to commend you on the work you do. It is great messaging; it is reaching out to young people, and it is a great message for our veterans.
One thing they do is limit the number of posters. I've been told that I can only get a dozen posters. I have eight or nine legions in my area, so that limits me in also giving them out to the schools.
10:05 a.m.
Director General, Canada Remembers Division, Department of Veterans Affairs
No, you can order as many as you want, absolutely.
10:05 a.m.
Conservative
10:05 a.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative David Sweet
Thank you, Mr. Mayes. That has exhausted your time.
I wanted to say, Mr. Sullivan, that this work is so good that you may want to put a warning on the vignettes that people need to be close to a tissue box. They're that powerful. I think it was the one from the year before last that had all the troops from all the different conflicts that Canada was involved in, and it was very moving. I commend you for that.
We're going to our five-minute round now and back to the Liberal Party.
Madam Foote, for five minutes.
10:05 a.m.
Liberal
Judy Foote Liberal Random—Burin—St. George's, NL
Thank you for being here. Thank you for the presentation in Charlottetown, and congratulations on the incredible package of information and your own commitment to this work. It is obvious. I too want to compliment you on the work that has been done with the promotional and informational material.
You say there isn't a specific list of veterans, but you say there are 750,000 to 800,000 in the country. There are obviously more than that, because we don't have all of them, and you're telling me there's--
10:05 a.m.
Director General, Canada Remembers Division, Department of Veterans Affairs
I'm sorry, that's an estimate of the number that are alive in the country from using various census and other data that we've had over the years, and mortality rates--both traditional and modern-day veterans.
10:05 a.m.
Liberal
Judy Foote Liberal Random—Burin—St. George's, NL
It is too bad that we don't have access to a list, because what I'm finding in my riding is that a lot of my legions are in trouble, and they really don't know who all the veterans are. What we're finding is that a lot of legions are disappearing as the legionnaires that are there, the veterans that are involved, die. Even though we have volunteers who work very hard, the whole concept of having the legion and having veterans is all part of the rationale for existing, so those lists would be invaluable.
10:05 a.m.
Director General, Canada Remembers Division, Department of Veterans Affairs
The Royal Canadian Legion and other veterans organizations are making concerted efforts to reach out to younger veterans and to members of the Canadian Forces who will be veterans in the future, to encourage them to join veterans organizations and support the work of veterans organizations to enable those organizations to support veterans as well.
Actually, this just reminded me of an answer to one of the earlier questions, which was how we promote these in schools. We have a partnership with the Royal Canadian Legion that we began about five or six years ago in which we include in the pack that you have in front of you the material on the poster and essay contests of the Royal Canadian Legion. The quid pro quo is that the volunteers in the 1,400 or 1,500 legion branches across the country go into schools to follow up and ensure that the packages don't get stuck on the secretary's desk or the principal's desk, that they actually get to the teachers.
10:05 a.m.
Liberal
10:05 a.m.
Director General, Canada Remembers Division, Department of Veterans Affairs
They are sent to every legion as well, and they use that as a trigger for them to go into the schools in their communities to ensure that teachers are actually getting to see the package so that they can order the materials. It's in their interest, because they want to make sure the teachers are seeing their materials. And they have a capacity that we could never have: they have boots on the ground in every community in the country. So they can do things we can't. And we can mail out their materials, which saves them a lot of money and doesn't cost us anything extra. It's one of many partnerships that are symbiotic.
10:05 a.m.
Liberal
10:05 a.m.
Director General, Canada Remembers Division, Department of Veterans Affairs
Each piece of legislation has a definition of a veteran for the purpose of the benefits. In terms of commemoration, remembrance, the definition is anyone who has served, has achieved their military occupational certification, and has been honourably discharged.
10:10 a.m.
Director General, Canada Remembers Division, Department of Veterans Affairs
Anybody who has served in the Canadian Forces and has been honourably discharged is a veteran.
10:10 a.m.
Liberal
Judy Foote Liberal Random—Burin—St. George's, NL
Okay.
Going back to the idea of a statutory holiday, I too believe it should be a statutory holiday. I understand the discussion around being in school on November 11 giving you a chance to actually do things to take notice of the day itself and what happened in our wars, but there's a week in which they can do that leading up to November 11.
10:10 a.m.
Director General, Canada Remembers Division, Department of Veterans Affairs
They can do it all year round too.
10:10 a.m.
Liberal
Judy Foote Liberal Random—Burin—St. George's, NL
Exactly.
Do you have any advice on how we could proceed to make this an issue? We have Canada Day, but of course the schools are closed then. We have Christmas and all of the other holidays, and November 11 is a day that I sincerely believe should be a statutory holiday federally.
10:10 a.m.
Director General, Canada Remembers Division, Department of Veterans Affairs
My understanding is that it is provincial jurisdiction, and I'm not an expert on the process for federal statutory holidays. The Department of Canadian Heritage is responsible for the administration of that, so I just don't know how that process works, if there were ever consideration of that.
10:10 a.m.
Conservative
September 17th, 2009 / 10:10 a.m.
Conservative
10:10 a.m.
Conservative
Larry Miller Conservative Bruce—Grey—Owen Sound, ON
It's my pleasure to be here, Mr. Chairman. I have a great interest in veterans and the topic today of remembering them.
Mr. Sullivan, I enjoyed your presentation.
After hearing the comments from Mr. Andrews and Ms. Foote, I want to speak on the issue of a national holiday. When I first heard that we didn't have one, I remember my first reaction was, why not? Then I started thinking about it and talked to my veterans and the legion. The last time I looked--and I urge all MPs to check with their national veterans associations and the Royal Canadian Legion--they were vehemently opposed to it being a national holiday. I'm going to explain the reasons why.
Before I get into that, I'm going to make it clear that I'm not speaking for the government. Here in Ottawa all government employees have Remembrance Day off. I don't think that's right, because Remembrance Day should be about remembering and honouring our veterans, not having a day off work.
What the legion found when they looked into it is that in provinces where kids have the day off, 99% or more of them do not attend Remembrance Day events. When they're in school, a large percentage...and I apologize, I don't have the number with me, but I can tell you in my riding it's increased dramatically in the last five to ten years. It's been through the work of the legion promoting, and what have you. I've attended the Remembrance Day event at Chesley District High School in my riding for the last four or five years, and it is by far the best Remembrance Day event I have ever attended anywhere, whether it was in Ottawa or in my riding.
Mr. Sullivan, what can we do to encourage schools to have Remembrance Day events during Veterans' Week? To go back to Chesley High School, they have specifically stayed away from having their event on Remembrance Day itself, because the veterans want to attend events at the local cenotaph or legion. They are glad to participate if the school has it on another day. I can tell you that on whichever day the school picks, the auditorium is full of all the school children and dozens of veterans from the area. It's great.
That education, getting our young people to realize the importance of it, and getting them to attend--all that is very good. If they're at home they simply won't attend, for the most part. It's not because they don't want to; their parents are probably working, or whatever, or just don't choose to take them.
It's more a comment than a question, but what could we do to help encourage that kind of thing?
10:15 a.m.
Director General, Canada Remembers Division, Department of Veterans Affairs
Well, the biggest thing is to continue to provide information in your householders, and encourage people to do that, including encouraging teachers and principals in any forum or opportunity you have to invite veterans into the schools. We support the Dominion Institute. Actually, it's now the Historica-Dominion Institute; they have merged as of September 1. We provide financial support to the Historica-Dominion Institute for their speakers bureau. They maintain lists of veterans from right across the country who go into schools to speak with students.
When you bring veterans and young people together, you don't have to script it; you just bring them together and watch the magic happen, because they make connections that are very personal to them and tell their own stories. Those are really important opportunities for young people to learn about remembrance from those who experienced the events firsthand.
There have been an increasing number of younger veterans. We've been strongly encouraging the institute to have more and more younger veterans as speakers in their speakers bureau, because it's important that students not just see this as remembering things that happened before they were born, but also pay tribute to what's happening today as part of their own experience, whether it's happening in Afghanistan now, or in the former Yugoslavia in the 1990s, or as part of the many other foreign and domestic activities of the Canadian Forces.
So it's important to encourage these events in as many ways as possible. It's a matter of talking to people through householders and using any opportunity you have.
10:15 a.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative David Sweet
Thank you, Mr. Sullivan.
Thank you, Mr. Miller. Your five minutes have expired.
If the committee doesn't mind, I'd just like to ask for a little bit of expansion. Was everybody aware of the Historica-Dominion Institute merger? No?
Could you give us a little background on that, please? All of us are very familiar with the Dominion Institute. We've had them before our committee a couple of times and were quite impressed with their work.
