Thank you, Chair.
I'm finding this very frustrating. I am one of the veterans in this room. I spent over a year of my life in Afghanistan and left six of my soldiers there, whom this monument is going to commemorate. There were 158 Canadian Armed Forces members who did not come home.
I can't speak for all Afghanistan veterans, but I do know what they want. They want a monument. They want transparency. They want a decision, and they want this to get passed so that we can move on. Right now they don't have a place to commemorate at the national level.
The Liberals have talked about consultation. Ms. Blaney brought up the challenges with the consultation and the data and My VAC. I just spent 20 minutes trying to log in to My VAC Account. I can't get in. I'm a fairly educated person with a background in IT, and I can't even log in to My VAC Account right now without making a phone call and talking to somebody on the other end, and who knows how long that wait is going to be?
I'll tell you what veterans don't want. They don't want political interference in anything. When they were in uniform, they served whatever government was in power. I served proudly. The Liberal government was in power when I first joined the forces in 1993. I served the Conservative government when they were in power for over a decade, and I served under this current Liberal government. There are no issues there. Veterans will serve whatever government is in power. That's their job.
They don't want obstruction. They don't want political interference. They want transparency. One thing that they absolute detest is wasting time. I suggest that you read the body language of the veterans who are in the room, who are finding this very frustrating, in particular because this is an amendment that has been moved that we are debating now, and the Conservatives have already indicated that they are going to vote for it, so why are we talking about it?
It's going to pass. Let's just get to the vote.
Thanks, Chair.