Veterans Affairs Committee on Oct. 22nd, 2009

[Roger Gaudet, Bloc, Montcalm, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

You may find my question to be boring, but I will ask it nonetheless. How many people is the Historica-Dominion Institute able to reach out to? How many people do you believe are aware of your existence?

I will be frank with you. Before your presentation before the Standing Committee on Veterans Affairs, I was not at all familiar with your organization. You're going to have to find a way to make sure people know about you. Veterans don't really use the Internet. They never have and they never will. How do we reach out to young people? This causes a problem for me. I'm not saying that your program isn't good, it is most certainly a good program. But it can't be considered a good program only by employees of the institute and the Memory Project. It must be a program for all Canadians.

[Marc Chalifoux]

First and foremost, we are a public education organization. If we are unsuccessful in reaching out to a larger audience, we would be failing our mandate. So you're entirely right.

Our organization is only six weeks old, but our merging organizations and programs are 12 years old. Our programs are better known than our organizations. It speaks to the very nature of what we do. Every week, approximately 130 young people participate in Encounters Canada. Since 1982, 80,000 young people have taken part in the program. More than 3,000 youths participate each year. The Memory Project reaches out to approximately 175,000 students in their classrooms each year. This year, we will be breaking the one million mark, and will have reached out to over a million young people. Since 2001, one million young people have been visited, in their classroom, by a veteran. Without the program, those visits would never have taken place. The Heritage Minutes were broadcast for more than 10 years, and reached out to millions and millions of Canadians. The work that we carry out on public opinion research is published in newspapers, broadcast on television, and reaches out to several million television viewers and readers.

Do we get the recognition in return? That's our challenge. Nonetheless, the array of our programs reaches out to thousands of Canadians; some of them reach out to millions of Canadians throughout the country, in each province and territory. Therefore, you are right; but our work does reach out to a broad audience.

[Roger Gaudet, Bloc, Montcalm, QC]

I understand, but I don't want to see this project collapse. Personally, I think it is a good thing, but people must be aware of its existence. I don't know if you have forgotten about the legions. There are legions in almost all of the ridings; sometimes there are even two or three in each riding. Perhaps it would be a good thing for legion members to lead or teach these programs.

[Marc Chalifoux]

Our contacts with the legions, be it at the national, provincial or community levels, are excellent. They comprise an essential tool that allows us to carry out our work. Encounters Canada works in close collaboration with the Royal Canadian Legion, as well as with the Memory Project. The history project on the Second World War would not allow us to reach out to the thousands of veterans were it not for the network of legions. They are an essential partner, and an essential institution.

Another sector of the public that I did not talk about, that plays an extremely significant role in the work that we do is that of history professors, social science and humanities teachers. It's a very difficult segment of the public to measure. We work with thousands of teachers every year. It is through them that our educational programs are given. If we reach out to one teacher, we reach out to five or six classrooms, which translates into hundreds of students. That is another approach in our work.

[Roger Gaudet, Bloc, Montcalm, QC]

I agree with you.

I would like to know if you have a vision. There is the First World War, the Second World War, the Korean War and the Gulf War. Right now, we are in Afghanistan. Is that included in your program? If we wait 40 years before talking about the Gulf War, everyone will have forgotten.

I thank the veterans, because I've had many opportunities to attend Remembrance ceremonies in France and in Belgium. Those people know their history. We can see that they are attached to it. Here, we talk about the First World War, the Second World War and the Korean War for a period of one week on the French CBC's information network, RDI; but after the 11^th of November, everything is over, and forgotten for at least a year, there isn't any follow-up.

[Marc Chalifoux]

No. The very essence of our work is to transmit the flame of remembrance, to keep alive the memory of the sacrifice made by veterans, and not just for one day or one week out of the year. The Veterans' Appreciation Day program does exactly that. We dedicate an additional day, at another time during the year, to recognize and celebrate the contribution of our veterans.

I think we can do a better job, as a country. A huge portion of our work serves to reinforce exactly what you were talking about.

With respect to other conflicts, the memory project relies upon speakers who are veterans of the Second World War, as well as soldiers who have just returned from Afghanistan only a few weeks ago.

[Roger Gaudet, Bloc, Montcalm, QC]

Even our peace missions are part of our heritage.

[Marc Chalifoux]

Absolutely. It is a huge part of our military history in Canada, and a huge part of Canada's role in the world. We are always seeking out educational tools to facilitate this teaching. We have noted over the years that the tools on the Korean War were underused by teachers. Often, we only talk about the First and Second World Wars. There is some brief talk on the Cold War, but as far as the Korean War is concerned, it gets maybe half a lesson. This is exactly why we have developed a newspaper that we have distributed to you. It is one way to help teachers in their teaching of the Korean War and to help make those explanations more accessible.

[Roger Gaudet, Bloc, Montcalm, QC]

Thank you.

My colleague has a brief question to ask you.

[Guy André, Bloc, Berthier—Maskinongé, QC]

With respect to the educational tools that you have developed, are schools relatively open to material on military history? How have schools reacted?

[Marc Chalifoux]

Our trademark, our name, carries a certain level of credibility, and legitimacy. Therefore, we are specifically recognized for issues related to military history, and as an organization that provides reliable and quality products.

We do not deal with provincial departments of education nor with school boards. We work directly with teachers or with schools. Upon development of educational tools to help deliver the Memory Project, as an example, the number of e-mails received in our inbox requesting these tools kept on growing. It is therefore a sign that our tools are being used in classrooms. Everything is developed so as to be easily reproduced, reprinted, and photocopied by teachers. Things must be developed in the most straightforward way possible, and follow the curriculum to the furthest extent possible. Teachers have a lot of material to teach students. Therefore, what is given to them must be directly related to what they are teaching, or at least provide a parallel track to their curriculum.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Sweet]

Thank you, gentlemen.

Now we'll go on to Mr. Stoffer.

[Peter Stoffer, NDP, Sackville—Eastern Shore, NS]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you all very much for coming here today. I wish you good luck on your amalgamation.

First, I want to thank you personally for the great job you did in honouring the Speaker last night. I thought that was a wonderful thing to do. It was a great reception, and Mr. Milliken, regardless of the political affiliation he's attached to, is a great Speaker. It's really wonderful that you recognized his longevity and his duration in that very difficult job. Congratulations on that.

Also, I see my friend, Norman Crew, in your picture. I really appreciate that. That's the Battle of the Atlantic ceremony. He's a merchant mariner. I appreciate this and I'll let him know it's there.

As well, in your encounters with the children you do a great job, because they contact us every month looking for money to get up here. I'm sure that all of you get this as well.

My next comment is more of an observation than a criticism. I mentioned this to Veterans Affairs as well. In your documentation here, I don't see anything on the Boer War and the South African conflict. It is not on purpose, but it just seems that we've forgotten all about that one. This was the war that gave us the direction and the ability to fight World War I, because of all the lessons learned from it. Unfortunately, we seem to just forget about it. I don't mean that as a criticism. It is something you might wish to look at in the future.

The other one, of course, as you know with regard to the Dominion Institute, is that a few years ago a motion was passed in the House to recognize the passing of the last person from World War I. Mr. Babcock is 109 now, but hopefully he'll live for many years from now. But if and when he passes away, the government has indicated that a significant commemoration--not necessarily a ceremony--will take place. The Dominion Institute of that time was part of this.

With the two of you joining now, can you please elaborate to the committee on what your plans are to work with the government in terms of commemorating not just Mr. Babcock, but all those men and women who served on the home front and overseas during that terrific battle of that time?

[Marc Chalifoux]

That was a 2006 campaign of the Dominion Institute. That would probably be a perfect example of the kind of advocacy work that we take on. We developed an online petition and a media campaign asking the government to offer a state funeral to the last World War I veteran when he passes away.

We had the opportunity, Jeremy and I, to meet Mr. Babcock last January. He's an amazing man. Over 90,000 people signed the petition in five days and then the House of Commons adopted its motion.

We will be front and centre whenever that sad day comes. It will be an event of national significance, I think, not particularly for Mr. Babcock but for what he represents for the thousands of Canadian soldiers who passed away before him, and for the importance and the impact that the First World War had on Canada and how it really shaped Canada. I think there will be what you would call a teachable moment there, in a sense, and an opportunity, and I hope that we will as a country take the moment to reflect, to commemorate, and to remember, whenever that sad day comes, what Canada's role in the First World War was.

The stories of the Second World War project that we're doing at the moment, which is a project to record the oral history of Second World War veterans, is part of the lessons learned from the First World War. As a country, we waited too long to record the stories, to capture the memories, and to create a legacy of the First World War, and now that moment has passed us by.

We can't let that happen again. This is something that the Historica-Dominion Institute feels very strongly about. There is an opportunity now. Our veterans of the Second World War are 87 years old, on average, and the time to do it is now. Otherwise, we will find in 15 or 20 years that it is largely too late.

[Andrew Cohen]

Something you may want to know, Mr. Stoffer, although we haven't formally come out and said anything yet, is that we feel strongly that November 11 should have a greater stature in the Canadian consciousness. When I was a child, at 11 o'clock on November 11 we stopped. Everything stopped in school. Growing up in Montreal, I remember that even in supermarkets a siren went off. Everything stopped in Canada, the way it does in the State of Israel today on their memorial day.

We have thought about pushing the idea that we return to that and that at 11 a.m on that day we stop for one minute. We are hoping to push that out in the next month. I think it will have the support of many Canadians and, we hope, your support.

[Peter Stoffer, NDP, Sackville—Eastern Shore, NS]

My last question for you is on Canada's recent history, on our Mac-Paps who served in the Spanish Civil War, on the nine men who were killed in August 1974 in Syria in the plane crash, and also on the Medak Pocket guys in Bosnia.

I was speaking to the modern-day veterans and they're very pleased that the Second World War and Korea are getting all this recognition, but our modern-day veterans, because the history is not that old, seem sometimes in the shadows a bit, not necessarily left out, but in the shadows. Are there any thoughts to moving them forward, to bringing up that modern-day history? As you know, our youngest veteran now is 20 years old. Can we bring their stories to light as well?

Last but not least, Veterans Affairs Canada is here. I think they're doing a really cool thing with school groups for the younger students in regard to the animals that served in the war. There was some talk about.... I remember that at the recent ceremony we were at there were stamps revealed this year by Canada Post. Some of the veterans were suggesting a monument showing the humble beasts that served and died, which is similar to what's in the Memorial Chamber. I'd like your thoughts on that if at all possible.

[Jeremy Diamond]

Remembering the post-Korean war veteran is a really important point. With Veterans Affairs Canada and the contribution agreement that we're in the middle of right now, in our second year of a three-year agreement, the focus over that three years is to engage more post-Korean war veterans to become speakers in the speakers' bureau and to at the same time encourage teachers to request those same veterans to come into their classrooms. So it's kind of to take a metric with maybe 70% or 80% Second World War veterans--and after three years it would be down to about 50%--but to take post-Korean war veterans up from 10% or 20% to about 40%.

It's an important thing. I go to peacekeeping ceremonies each year. We have a great relationship with the Canadian Association of Veterans in UN Peacekeeping. I get more and more teachers requesting personnel who are currently serving to come in and speak about their experiences.

I think one of the great points that teachers have made to us over and over again is that it would be useful to be able to compare the generations, to compare the conflicts, by having a 30-year-old veteran come in and have a 90-year-old veteran come in and talk a little bit about the similarities and differences in that experience and what young people can learn about that. There are more similarities than differences, a lot of kids find, so that is a real goal of ours, we feel, to reach out to that group of veterans. They're really important to the project.

[Andrew Cohen]

In an ideal world, I think we would like to commit the same kinds of resources to stories of later conflicts as we have committed to stories about the Second World War. There is our peacekeeping story. We've lost some one hundred peacekeepers. That's not as many as we've lost in Afghanistan, but we'd like to record all of our stories. It's something for the future. It would ultimately include Afghanistan as well.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Sweet]

Thank you.

I believe it was a Buffalo aircraft that was shot down over Syria, and there's a replica now. This past summer, we had a big ceremony at the Canadian Warplane Heritage Museum, where we dedicated this Buffalo to the lives of those who were killed. You can add to your knowledge that the Warplane Heritage Museum is available for ceremonies of this kind.

Mr. Kerr.

[Greg Kerr, Conservative, West Nova, NS]

Welcome. The appreciation you're hearing for what you're doing goes right around the table.

I'd like to go back rather than forward for a moment, because there is a lot of interest in these matters. There's a new energized feeling among young people and students and a lot of it can be attributed to what you're doing.

I had the fortune--or misfortune--of starting my career as a history teacher and I want to talk about it for a moment because I think it's relevant. It's the word “relevant” that I want to concentrate on. We did a great job in the past of making sure we didn't understand any more than we had to about how Canada was built. I'm criticizing my profession as much as anything else.

I raise this because the difference that I always saw between the United States and Canada was that they are extremely dramatic and have a huge film industry, and whether it's accurate or not, they still use it. We wanted to hide from all the horror stories that developed our country and I was always puzzled by that. But I love 1812 because it's one opportunity to remind them that they didn't win every battle and every war that ever took place.

Because it is pre-Confederation, I wanted to go back further for a moment. One of your biggest challenges, and one of ours, is that one of the downsides of our wonderful Confederation is that we have a federal-provincial system. Education is absolutely provincial. You were not mandated as a young person to learn about the history of your province and your country as part of your task in life. You did not have to ask how you got here or what you became. We've tended to gloss over that.

In my neck of the woods, down in Annapolis Valley, Nova Scotia, I know that a lot of our history is built on the great conflicts between the French and the English. It's almost like you're embarrassed to talk about people fighting, dying, and leaving a legacy that was essential to developing our country. I think this is extremely important.

I could go on about that, but what I'm driving at is that we sometimes want to focus on the peaceful and ignore the violent. That's nice, but it's not honest or accurate. There has been a lot of violence in every society that ever developed and I think young people should understand that. People don't like war or want war. But guess what? The most successful thing mankind has ever done is to make war on one another.

If you read our history books, you will see that they are very generic. They're not challenging. They don't get at the root of the thing. They don't come out and ask young people, “If you were in a position to make a decision, what would you have done and how would it have affected your life?”

I think we'd all agree that we have to honour what's going on. But I think there's a gap back there that we have to look at. How did we become a nation, before we became a nation? What makes up this huge and great country we have? We're missing the point that sometimes it wasn't always nice and friendly. There was some very serious stuff.

If you could go back as king and control the education process, how do you think you'd drive it so that the ones that count the most, the young people, would start off by recognizing that they have an obligation to learn how our country was developed? And by the way, the military was a huge part of how the country was developed, just as it is today in our international role.

We talked about international relations, about building alliances. How do we build alliances with the provinces as we look at this historical challenge?

[Marc Chalifoux]

One body that could be useful would be the Council of Ministers of Education, where there is cooperation between the departments of education and the provinces.

Is there room for federal leadership? Yes, there are possibilities. I think the ideal situation would be one where the school system in every province in Canada is focused not just on training young people to become the workers and consumers of tomorrow, but also on training them to be the citizens of tomorrow. That piece often gets lost.

Learning about science and technology is extremely important. Learning literacy and numeracy skills is all very important, but learning about Canada's history, where we come from as a country, how our institutions developed, and how we developed and evolved as a country, that is extremely important. Otherwise, how can young people make sense of the big questions facing us as a country?

Without understanding what Canada's role in the world once was, how do young people engage in a debate about what our position should be in Afghanistan? How do you deal with questions of parliamentary reform or democratic reform if you have no sense of Canada's parliamentary tradition or how our parliamentary institutions evolved?

I'd say that as a baseline, as part of our Canadian history report card, we ask that every province in Canada mandate two courses in Canadian history at the high-school level. At the moment, only one province in Canada does that, and it's Quebec. It recently redeveloped its history program in grades 9 and 10 and it is an excellent course. It is one that could be taught across the country and it would be held in very high regard. British Columbia has a social studies course over a few years, which is excellent and is largely history.

Those are provinces to whose level I think we could aspire. They are provinces that take Canadian history seriously. I think part of taking that seriously is teaching it at the high-school level. A lot of excellent history education takes place in elementary school, in junior high school, and in middle school, but there's something about the high-school level, just before young people graduate from the last level of mandatory education, just before they reach voting age. It shows what we take seriously as a country or as an education system.

I'd like to see more provincial departments of education taking Canadian history seriously at the high-school level, history that starts at pre-Confederation, goes to the present day, and touches all sorts of aspects, from military history to social history to economic history and gender relations. There's so much. It's a rich history.

The story of Canada is a proud story and it's one that we should be proud to pass on in the classroom and on the big screen and the small screen. That's it. There's a role for the federal government there as well. There's a role for organizations like our own. There's a role for the provinces. It's a large field.

[The Chair, Conservative, David Sweet]

That was a complex question, it required a complex answer, and it exhausted the entire time, Mr. Kerr.

[A voice]

[Inaudible--Editor]

[The Chair, Conservative, David Sweet]

No, not at all, sir. I take it that Mr. Andrews will be back for his questions.

Madam Sgro.

[Judy Sgro, Liberal, York West, ON]

Thank you very much.

Every time you speak to us, I am just so impressed with the fabulous work you're doing. I thank you on behalf of all Canadians.

Following up on Mr. Kerr's issues, which are so important, there's just not enough. Remembrance Day is coming up and I am making every attempt to engage the schools in my riding. I can tell you that there is almost a resistance, and there are excuses that they are a very multicultural schools and so on and so forth. People are going to find all kinds of excuses like, well, we may offend somebody.... You know what I mean. I could just.... Well, I won't say what I would like to do, but it's just infuriating that this is Canada and we have people who don't want to talk about the war and don't want to talk about the past.

Going on to what Mr. Kerr said, how much work are you doing with the provinces to make scholastic changes so that we are teaching more in our schools? If you don't know your history, it will repeat itself. A lot of our kids think war is glamorous. They think it's all just super stuff. They have to understand about the loss of life and just how violent and awful the war was. If we can't get that taught to them in our schools, never mind recognizing Remembrance Day. It's a real problem.

What are you doing with the provinces and how forcefully are you pursuing changes in some of the education systems?