Mr. Speaker, our troops are serving this country remarkably well, both in Afghanistan and around the world. The United States recognizes this and wants to award medals to our service personnel. We have heard nothing from this government on that yet.
If we take a look at history, this government's unwillingness to honour our soldiers for being soldiers is predictable. Our soldiers performed admirably in the battle of the Medak pocket, but instead of proudly announcing the victory to the Canadian people our government chose to hide it.
In 1991 in Kuwait, members of the combat engineer regiment gave immeasurable assistance to American soldiers after an explosion of a munitions dump which wounded nearly 300 Americans. This government decided not to tell Canadians about the bravery of their soldiers to avoid embarrassing the Americans.
While serving in the former Yugoslavia, Lieutenant Colonel Pat Stogran, currently leading our troops in Afghanistan, acted with courage and professionalism. Once again Canadians were not told about his bravery and he was not recommended for a medal by the Canadian government until this government learned over an American network that acknowledged what he had done. It was 12 days before the program aired before this government did anything.