Veterans Affairs Committee on Nov. 3rd, 2011

[The Chair, Conservative, Greg Kerr]

I understand you're going to share your last minute with Ms. Adams. We just have over a minute left.

[Eve Adams, Conservative, Mississauga—Brampton South, ON]

Thanks very much.

Thank you very much for your presentation and for your great work. Our graves, as Mr. Stoffer mentions, really are impressive. We get wonderful feedback from anyone who's visiting overseas.

Could you expand a little bit upon the charitable status that Britain extends to your organization?

[Bradley Hall]

I am not an expert on that by any means, but the term our lawyers use is “tax relief”. So they get some kind of tax relief in the U.K. when contributing money to the commission.

We're often approached by Canadians who might want to do the same thing, and we don't have the same status here in Canada, nor have we sought it. I think we might have checked into it many years ago, but the basic answer, as I recall, was that because we're funded by the federal government, you can't really get a tax relief for funding an institution of the federal government.

[Eve Adams, Conservative, Mississauga—Brampton South, ON]

Well, we fund a number of charities, and we'll provide different grants to charitable organizations, and yet they can also still go out and solicit private donations.

Do you have any idea how much money Britain is taking in?

[Bradley Hall]

No, I don't.

[Eve Adams, Conservative, Mississauga—Brampton South, ON]

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Conservative, Greg Kerr]

Thank you very much, Mr. Hall. That does conclude our time presented. As I said to our previous witness, if there are some follow-up questions I hope you wouldn't mind sending them along if we send them from the committee to you.

[Bradley Hall]

Sure. I left a bunch of business cards there, so there you go.

[The Chair, Conservative, Greg Kerr]

We appreciate all you do. It's a great service you provide.

Thank you.

[Some hon. members]

Hear, hear!

[The Chair, Conservative, Greg Kerr]

I want to remind the committee members that we are on a pretty tight schedule. We know the vote is pending. There's a suggestion there could be a vote coming, so I use the word pending with caution.

We're going to keep to the tight timetable on the question and answer. Of course, when that's done we will move into the business section.

We're very pleased to have with us today Mr. Terence Whitty, executive director of the Army Cadet League of Canada. He does a great service for Canada.

We appreciate you being here today. I think you know the routine. We're giving you approximately ten minutes to do an opening and then'll we go to the committee for questions.

Welcome.

[Terence Whitty, Executive Director, Army Cadet League of Canada]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, distinguished ladies and gentlemen.

I thank you for the opportunity to brief you on remembrance by cadets in Canada, and specifically the army cadets. I'll do all that in ten minutes by speaking really quickly.

On a note of introduction, I am and always have been more civilian than military. I had two years' service with the regular army in the 1960s and another 30 with reserves and cadets. Mostly, though, I was the owner and operator of businesses in both Montreal and Ottawa until about 2001, when I retired for the third time and took this job. We'll talk about that later.

The army cadet movement in 2011 is national in scope, alongside the other two elements, sea and air cadets. The army has about 18,000 kids in the program, the navy 8,200, and the air 24,300, for a total of about 50,600 Canadian teenagers in the program and 1,123 cadet corps across the country.

Army cadets has a presence in almost 300 Canadian communities. It traces a history from about 1861. In many communities in Canada, the cadet corps represents the only visible footprint of the Canadian Forces.

For a variety of complicated reasons, the cadet program represents to many teenagers their only available positive social activity, especially in disadvantaged regions of Canada. There's no cost to join or to participate.

It's important to be aware that although the cadet movement is organized on a military model and provides a structure to kids, it is definitely not a military organization. It's not the army.

The leagues--the Navy League, the Army Cadet League, which I represent, and the Air Cadet League--form the civilian oversight and the support of cadet programs, mainly with additional funding. We go out and raise money. This is mostly spent on accommodation--that is, a training area and offices for the cadet corps--and funding for some optional or complementary cadet activities.

The leagues are represented at every level--municipal, provincial, territorial, and national--and there's a vast array of almost 15,000 volunteers across the country serving at all these levels.

If I can talk about the cadet approach to remembrance, my understanding today is that this committee is studying the challenge and the means going forward into the 21st century in preserving the memory of the past events that formed our country. This is in sync with the stated goals of the Army Cadet League. We do the same thing.

Army cadets assist the Royal Canadian Legion in the annual poppy campaign in aid of veterans, old and new. As a matter of fact, cadets figured prominently at Rideau Hall last Wednesday, October 26, when the Governor General kicked off the 2011 campaign. Every year cadets actively take part in Remembrance Day ceremonies at their schools and in support of Legion branches all across Canada.

A good example of our remembrance activities was the successful establishment in 2010 of a national commemoration of the Battle of Vimy Ridge. Canada's success at Vimy and the horrendous costs faced by ordinary Canadians going up that ridge still resonate today as a defining moment for Canada and Canadianism. In his book Leadership, General Rick Hillier made mention of this as the “Vimy effect”. Vimy still remains a symbol to Canadians even after almost a century. This translates into national pride and a powerful example to many teenagers. There's a reference in the handbook that I provided here today.

Each cadet corps in Canada forms an affiliation or an alignment with a regular or reserve army unit or regiment. The cadets wear the uniform, the accoutrements--the cap badge, the shoulder titles, etc.--of that unit, and they pretty well adopt the unit. As a result, they relate closely with the men and women who serve in these regimental families. The cadets then become very interested in their family history. Since virtually every Canadian army unit was present at Vimy Ridge, they become very interested in what happened there.

The kickoff of the commemoration of Vimy Ridge in Ottawa in April 2010 was not without its challenges, I can assure you. We had tapped into the community engagement partnership fund. However, in the final analysis, the major contributor to the success of the ceremony and the national events that followed and the cadet vigil at the National War Memorial was the partnership we formed with Veterans Affairs Canada, and particularly Suzanne Tining, Peter Mills, and Ian Burgess

If I may throw compliments today, I cannot say enough about the positive attitude and the common sense solutions these fine public servants brought to the Vimy commemoration in Ottawa. I sincerely mean that.

This emphasized that success in remembrance is dominated by the commitment and participation of individual Canadians. This approach was validated by Minister Blaney's appearance here in Ottawa at the Maple Ridge elementary school with Master Corporal Bernard Tessier, as well as the “I Am A Veteran” TV commercials. That's exactly the way to go.

The audience for remembrance is the youth of Canada. If we want our message to reach them, we have to package it so they will listen to it. The 21st century belongs to our youth, and that approach is critical. Old guys like me already know the history--and if we don't, we should.

When we embark on remembrance, we need to be aware that many of today's youth may probably have missed the background message. Remembrance has to be presented in a way that ensures young people get the point. The Army Cadet League has found that the best way to do that is to highlight individual Canadians within the framework of larger events they helped form.

In other words, we paint a picture around an ordinary Canadian who rose to meet terrific challenges, some of whom paid with their lives, and some of whom silently faded back into the background of home and family. It is these people we need to remember, and it is people who teenagers most readily relate to, not events. Events are boring; people are interesting.

In the movie Passchendaele, for instance, one of the main characters remarks, “We're going to attack. It seems that the Canadians are the only ones who can get anything done around here.” Well, it was only a movie, but that one little remark struck a chord with a lot of people.

Another example is that at the army cadets summer training centre in Vernon, British Columbia, there's a Japanese artillery piece at the main gate right now. Traditionally, the piece was vandalized every summer as a rite of passage. The master warrant officer from combat engineers took it upon himself to inform the cadets out there about how the gun was seized by Canadian engineers during World War Two at Sitka, why there was a Canadian presence up there, and how the engineers transported the gun back to Vernon camp as a memento.

The cadets had simply never realized this. They hadn't known.

Today the cadets clean this gun every summer and maintain a shine on its brass all summer long. It has an honoured place at the main gate in memory of those engineers.

The kids had just not been told about the gun before that history lecture. Before that, it was just an enemy gun that was traditionally vandalized.

In the same vein, there are two brothers from Buckingham, Quebec, just down the road here, just downriver, named Olivier and Wilfred Chenier. Brad might have spoken about Cabaret-Rouge cemetery, where they are right now. I mentioned them in the power-point presentation I dropped off to you.

Olivier and Wilfred Chenier joined the Royal Canadian Regiment together. Their regimental numbers end in 813 and 814. They fought together, they died together at Vimy Ridge, and now they lie together in Cabaret-Rouge British cemetery, north of Arras, France, on Highway D937, just outside of Souchez. I mention that because they don't get many visitors. They deserve to be remembered.

I'd like to comment on Don Meredith's and Mrs. Davidson's comments in the evidence record of October 4, 2011, regarding the attitudes of members of the Canadian Forces, and how it translates into our Canadian kids.

It's very true that the only thing that members of the Canadian Forces care about is whether their comrades will stand beside them in a tough situation. That's the only way they judge them. They measure a comrade not by race, not religion, not anything else, for that matter. This attitude cascades down into the cadet movement in a very healthy manner. The old prejudices are generally of no consequence to teenagers today as they relate to their friends and peers. I suppose we could look on this social development as one of the successes of our own generation, but today's teens simply do not see these things in the same way we did, nor do they carry the baggage that people of my age carry around.

This was brought home to me when we celebrated the 125th anniversary of army cadets in Canada. The Army Cadet League formed a choir here in Ottawa of local army cadets. We sang the history of the army cadets in Canada in song. We chose one of the songs from each hit parade of a certain year, about 12 different songs, from 1961 to 2010.

One of those was Hymn to Freedom, written by Oscar Peterson. He wrote it in the 1960s, and I got the impression at rehearsals that the cadets' hearts were really not into it, they were just mouthing the words, and we realized that they had no understanding of the struggles that led to Oscar Peterson writing this piece.

At a later rehearsal, we ran a CBC documentary where Mr. Peterson explained the mood of the time and why he wrote the piece. The film was interspersed—this part of it anyway—with images of the Birmingham riots, police dogs chasing and attacking blacks, fire hoses aimed and used on the crowd, and general mayhem.

The cadets, who were, I might add, an ethnically diverse group, if I can use that term, were almost in a state of shock. They had no idea of these events. However, after they got the picture, they sang that song with a lot more gusto. I think they even remember it to this day.

Remembrance in the 21st century: it's an interesting challenge. But I can assure you that the Canadian cadet movement, all three elements, are prepared to engage in it, particularly the army cadets.

For clarification, remembrance is not part of the mandate of our partners in the Canadian Forces in their delivery of the mandatory part of the program. Remembrance is the turf of the three leagues and their volunteers. The leagues have the desire, the commitment, and the energy to engage, and we're uniquely positioned to do so. We don't have to follow some of the regulations that the Canadian Forces are burdened with.

The future is being formed today, even as we talk here. The twelve-ish awkward preteen in middle school is the adult who will call the shots for the first half of this century, and their children and grandchildren will wrap it up in the latter half. In my mind, what we give to the present-day teens will affect 21st century Canada in ways we cannot even imagine. They will continue the ideals of our nation if we can get the message of history to them.

In 2050, the average Afghanistan veteran will be almost 65 years old and hopefully looking to retirement. Today's 12-year-olds will be 51 and running the country--whether they want to or not. It's never too early to start the work, and I think we're all making good progress.

Thank you for listening to me. The cadet program is a big world with many different levels to it, and not easily understood in ten minutes, I can assure you. I've been working at this for ten years, and I still don't understand most of it. So I could only scratch the surface here, but I do hope that I have done justice to the potential of growing remembrance in Canada among our youth, and the enthusiasm cadets have for the subject.

Thank you again.

[The Chair, Conservative, Greg Kerr]

Thank you very much, Mr. Whitty. We would not have cut you off, because that was way too interesting. We hope you'll learn right along with us today.

We'll go to Mr. Stoffer for about four minutes.

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

I don't really have a question for you, sir. I just want to say that I had the honour and privilege of speaking at a cadet mess dinner at the Juno Tower the other day in Halifax, and all the members there were so proud of the work they do with the cadets.

When I look at the Musquodoboit Harbour cadet group, the Sackville cadet group in my riding, and see the pride in the parents when they see their kids doing stuff they never thought they could do, I want to congratulate your organization for what you do. There are 50,000 kids and their families out there who are benefiting from your wisdom and the wisdom of all the people who are part of that. It is truly a remarkable program for young people, and I just want to thank you for that.

[Terence Whitty]

Thank you, sir. I'll pass that on.

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

Irene, go ahead.

[Irene Mathyssen, NDP, London—Fanshawe, ON]

Actually, I was just thinking about some of the cadet groups in London. We have a naval cadet group who makes a point of inviting MPs and allowing us to participate in their program. I must say that one of the things I hear most often, in terms of the parents, is how beneficial the program is and how it has helped kids who were shy, or who didn't do well at school, to find a sense of themselves and abilities they had no idea they possessed.

So I would like to echo Mr. Stoffer and say thank you for the work you do. London has a significant and wonderful group of young people who are ready to serve their country in many ways that I think are yet to be discovered.

[Terence Whitty]

The movement doesn't appeal to all teenagers, but for some it can be a life-changing experience. Not that many kids go into the armed forces. They go into business and the professions. It's a good mix.

[Irene Mathyssen, NDP, London—Fanshawe, ON]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Greg Kerr]

Thank you very much.

You have a question?

[Annick Papillon, NDP, Québec, QC]

I just want to know how the cadets help the Legion.

[Terence Whitty]

My French is quite poor.

In Canada, every cadet corps is in a community that has a branch of the Legion.

There's a local connection. Sometimes the Legion will sponsor a cadet corps and provide money to them, or the cadets will take part in some of the ceremonial events of remembrance that a Canadian Legion is connected to. We're a local community-based organization.

[Annick Papillon, NDP, Québec, QC]

For example, for the commemorative ceremonies that take place on Remembrance Day, that is on November 11th , will Cadets always work hand in hand with the local population?

[Terence Whitty]

Yes, all across Canada; cadets from all three elements will be participating in events all across the country with Legion branches.

[Annick Papillon, NDP, Québec, QC]

Do you have examples of the type of collaboration between them on that day?