Mr. Speaker, it is an honour to stand in the House to address this very important issue to Canadians. It is said that if we lose sight of our history, we lose our vision of the future. There is a lot of truth to that concept.
I begin by commenting on the process today. Once again we have an interesting private member's bill or motion. We have the privilege of speaking to it for an hour, at the end of which the motion, being a non-votable item, will be dropped from the order paper. For the umpteenth time I say we ought not to be using the time of the House of Commons debating issues which cannot be drawn to a conclusion. Either we want to do this or we do not. We should vote on it.
It is rather interesting that this non-partisan private member's motion is from a member who belongs to the NDP caucus that has expressed opposition to having every motion and private members' bill votable. Of course the government is in favour of it, but when asked today whether we can vote on it, the government will say that we cannot.
We have an impasse which could be easily solved. When a private member finds an issue that is of enough importance that he or she chooses to bring it forward for debate in the House, it is also important enough to give us the opportunity to stand and to indicate in a tangible fashion whether we are for it or against it.
Let me now spend a little time addressing the motion. The motion is quite narrow, as I read it:
—the government should ensure that the contributions of women veterans are properly recognized and honoured in every provincial capital...by way of monument or statue.
Most of us would recognize, concede or admit that whenever Canada has participated in a military conflict its war efforts have been supported by a much larger group than simply those who enlisted. My understanding of the word veteran is a person who was at one time enlisted in active service. It is a very narrow motion, particularly because I think the greatest contributions of the majority of women who participated in the war efforts in the past were probably in the area of the non-enlisted. They contributed wholeheartedly indeed but they were not in the ranks of those who had actually enlisted. There were many others who were enlisted and in fact offered much great service.
As we were talking, I remembered hearing of a woman who was actively engaged in the ferry service, and I had to wrack my brain to remember her name. At that time aircraft were being produced in North America and in Canada then had to be ferried across the ocean in order to be brought into active service. The name of this woman is Vera Dowling. Those members who know military history may have heard her name. She was one of these people who ferried the aircraft across.
As members may well know, for the most part those people were not subject as much to enemy attack as they were to all of the vagaries of weather. However, during the second world war, Vera was of course subject to the fact that the aircraft was not as reliable in transoceanic flight as it is today.
Therefore, we should certainly award an appropriate accolade active, engaged, enrolled armed forces members like Vera Dowling performing important activities.
By the way, for many years Vera was a flight instructor in Edmonton who taught many young pilots how to fly. I was never able to take the course, but I am told by those who did take her classes said they were very interesting. While giving instruction on what to do under certain circumstances, Vera always had an interesting story or anecdote about something that had happened to her in her career.
It is of great importance for us to recognize the contributions these individuals make to the well-being and protection of our country. As I said earlier, many of the women who served did so in a capacity which did not require that they be enrolled in the armed forces. Mention has already been made of the almost one million women who actively supported the war effort at home by working in the munitions factories producing and turning out the weapons that were needed, as well as in aircraft factories. These women actively participated.
However I do not think we should say that they contributed any more than the mother who was left at home with young ones when her husband, and in some cases sons as well, enrolled and went over to fight in the war. That was a tremendous contribution and should not be in any way minimized.
I mentioned before in this House that my wife and I have had the experience of having a son in an environment where the wearing of a flak jacket was necessary. He was overseas working with a relief agency trying to bring aid to people in a war torn country and was in an area of great danger. He had to where a flak jacket because, as he put it, he never knew when a bullet might go astray, and in fact one did. I do not believe my wife and I suffered undue anxiety about our son when he was overseas, but we did indeed have a proper parental concern.
Hence, as a newly elected member of parliament, I had the opportunity on November 11 to participate in Remembrance Day services at various spots in my riding. Over the years I rotated to different locations. When I did that, I experienced great emotion. I put myself into the lives of those families, moms and dads, and in many cases mothers only because their husbands were also serving, who had their sons overseas not only being subject to a stray bullet as our son was, but also who were actively the targets of the enemy and whose probability of coming back alive in some cases was very low. What anxiety they must have suffered, and what a huge contribution they made in order to support the protection and defence of our country.
I want to say one more thing about these little ceremonies that I have participated in. I usually rotate to the places in my riding where there are active Legions, but last year I accepted the invitation to go to Chipman, a little town in my riding. I do not think that there are more than 150 people living in the town but they have a memorial site. It is a beautiful site which they maintain. It is a community project. They built the statute and even took the time to have a beautiful mural painted on the side of their community centre, which is next to the statute. They commemorate and remember the contributions.
While I believe we should recognize, acknowledge and honour all people, regardless of gender, who supported the war effort, I would greatly support the government encouraging individual municipalities, cities, towns and villages to voluntarily put up monuments at their expense, to women who participated in the war effort, rather than the government funding them, perhaps at the expense of money that is available to present day veterans.