Thank you very much.
I think the only person who has been on the committee long enough to remember this discussion would be Mr. Stoffer.
I am still bothered by the idea that Beechwood Cemetery and many other cemeteries across the country have what I would term to be unmarked graves. If I go to Beechwood today, I can find patches of grass where a veteran has been buried. I appreciate the fact that the Government of Canada or our funeral and burial program has provided a space for people to inter their loved ones who have served us so well, but not all of them have gravestones, markers, or even plaques to indicate who is buried there. The only way to actually know who is buried would be to ask the people who tend the graves. They have paper copies in their records of all the grave sites, and they therefore know that private so-and-so is buried there, but there's no indication whether in stone or in bronze in the earth for somebody visiting the cemetery to even know a body is there.
We go to great lengths on many levels with regard to newspapers, videos, slide presentations, and this, that, and the other damn thing, but for me, in terms of the “we will remember them” part of the ceremonies that we have every November 11, $1 million would make sense. I remember when Brent St. Denis was a Liberal member here and we actually calculated what it would cost for the couple of hundred dollars per thousands of them. We calculated that we could actually mark all of those graves for about $1 million.
I leave it as something for the committee to consider. We spend lots of money in this place on all types of other things. I think it would be a worthwhile project.