Mr. Speaker, December 7, 1941, is a day that most North Americans remember very well. However most Canadians forget that 1941 was also a very tragic year. That was the year that the Japanese attacked the Canadian contingent at Hong Kong.
Almost 2,000 Canadian soldiers and officers from the Royal Rifles of Canada and the Winnipeg Grenadiers were assigned to defend Hong Kong. Some 290 Canadians were killed, 493 wounded, and in all, after they had been interned in terrible conditions in prison camps, 550 did not return to Canada.
It took nearly 50 years for our government to compensate the Hong Kong vets. That was 10 years after the Canadian government compensated the Japanese, and their descendants, who were interned in Canada.
Because our federal government neglected to pay tribute to these forgotten veterans last week, it falls on the official opposition to express our thanks to those heroes.