Mr. Speaker, my colleague from South Surrey—White Rock—Langley is absolutely right. We could do a lot more when it comes to the federal government's position as I spoke about to try to instill some pride, to try to engage Canadians in getting involved with our military. The member is absolutely right that there needs to be some effort made by the government especially in targeting certain parts of the population.
I remember that while growing up, aside from learning in school about our military history, there was not really an effort made at the school level to recruit young people into the reserve forces or even into the armed forces. That has started to be done relatively recently. We could do a lot more of that, especially in Edmonton where a base is located. I have spoken to a lot of the young men and women who are serving there. They have said that is something they would like to see happen, to have more government effort made to raise the ranks of younger people getting involved in the military, to some extent in serving our nation.
We saw a sharp rise in that after the attacks of 9/11. More people were wanting to get involved to learn more about our military history and to prepare themselves in case there were any potential attacks even here in Canada. People would be more equipped to deal with certain unfortunate situations that would arise from an attack.
Clearly the interest is there among Canadians. We need to encourage it from the federal government level. We need to target certain groups in schools and in other areas to consider getting involved even on a voluntary basis with the military. That is something the government could focus on to bring that pride and tradition back to our military.