Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to rise, first to thank the member for Palliser for moving this motion and second to lend our support to it.
The member made some comments about the hard work of the minister. Question mark? He mentioned some of the listening to the veterans community that the minister is doing. Question mark? We need to make sure that our soldiers and their sacrifices are recognized.
For my family, this year has been moving. The Silver Cross Mother chosen this year by the Legion was Niki Psiharis. She was the mother of Sergeant Christos Karigiannis, who was killed in Afghanistan in 2007.
We need to move beyond just recognizing our veterans from Afghanistan to recognizing our veterans from other wars. This was brought up in committee today. I hope that as we move forward, we, as the House of Commons, start recognizing, not only the 158 men and women who sacrificed themselves in Afghanistan, but also the sacrifices of our men and women in uniform in other areas, whether that be in Cyprus, the Middle East, the former Republic of Yugoslavia, Croatia or Hercegovina. We need to make sure that we recognize them.
There are other facts and figures that we need to recognize, besides putting up a monument and saying, “Here we are. Here is a great monument and we recognize your sacrifice”. We need to make sure that the government is accountable to the veterans for the centres that it is closing. It is closing nine centres across Canada. It is closing centres that look after our veterans. They are Veterans Affairs centres where veterans can go, whether they are 60, 80 or 90 years old, to ask for help. In Windsor, for example, the centre is closed and a veteran will now have to go to London. The Thunder Bay centre has been closed. The Sydney centre in Nova Scotia has been closed and the veteran will have to go to Halifax.
I had the fortune, or whatever we want to call it, to take the drive from Halifax to Sydney in Nova Scotia to attend the rally of 3,500 to 4,000 veterans who were marching and asking the government not to close the centre. This was a couple of weeks ago. I have to tell the House that going over Kelly's Mountain was treacherous. Now, the Conservative government will force our veterans to drive down to Halifax if they are looking for help. The government is saying it is not going to do this, but it is going to send doctors or nurses and case officers to their homes. However, 27,688 veterans will be affected by the closure of these 9 centres.
It raises the question on the one side of saying that we are going to erect a monument, while on the other side the Conservative government wants to stick it to the vets.
I congratulate my colleague for bringing the motion forward. I ask him as we go forward that he speak to the minister and encourage him to take the veterans to heart. The new veterans charter is something we are going to be looking into at committee very soon. That has to be addressed and it has to reflect what the veterans really want.
Erecting a monument or bringing a monument back from Kandahar where we have lost 158 men and women is one thing; we need to do that in order to honour their memory. However, to truly look after them and say we care about them is outside of that window of opportunity between November 4 and November 11 when we have Veterans' Week and the minister and the Legion bring the veterans here for a meeting where they say “thank you” and give them a pat on the back and take pictures that the minister posts on his website. “That is a great job, minister”.
The veterans are looking for more. Unfortunately, the Conservative government is failing to give them more.
The government makes vitriolic attacks on people who bring forward real issues, such as the issue of 27,381 boxes of medical records that the Department of Veterans Affairs ordered destroyed. That is the vitriolic attack of the minister on people who bring forward an issue.
Not only that, there are people like Sean Bruyea, Harold Leduc, and others, whose medical files have been breached. On one side, we talk about erecting monuments, and on the other side, they stick it to the vets. I hope that the government gets itself together, and as we move forward, we support our vets. We support our vets, because there is nothing less we have to do for them.
Do not remember them only from November 4 to November 11. Remember them 24/7, 365 days a year. When we see veterans, go up and thank them for their service to our country. If it were not for those vets, the 158 men and women and five civilians who died in Afghanistan whom we put in harm's way, we Canadians would not have democracy. We would not be able to stand in the House of Commons to debate, to speak, and to exchange ideas. Every one of us owes our position in the House to the sacrifices men and women made in order for us to have our democracy.
As we move forward, we on the Liberal side will be supporting this. I caution the government that the veteran community is looking, the 1.4 million veteran family is going to hold the government accountable and is going to hold its feet to the fire. We can dance and sing and say that we are going to do things, but we owe our veterans more.
We owe veterans, such as Mike Pehlavian, who is homeless at this very moment, in Vancouver, B.C. He is 36 years old. He came back from Afghanistan. The only thing holding the top of his body to the bottom of his body are two pins on his side and one pin on his back. He is suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. He is homeless. We owe him not just the lump sum we are going to give him. We owe it to him to make sure that we are there to follow up with him.
It is one thing to say that we are going to honour the men and women who have died, but we have to honour the men and women who have suffered, who have been hurt and are coming back from Afghanistan. Over 1,500 soldiers are coming back hurt, and they need to know that we stand beside them. We owe them the courtesy to say that we as a country that put them in harm's way, that we parliamentarians who asked them to engage, are not going to forget them.
It is a moral obligation we have to these men and women. It is nice to have the song and dance of erecting a monument, which we support. However, the moral obligation is that the government deliver to men and women who are now returning as veterans and are suffering, men and women like Medric Cousineau, who are out there living in woodsheds. He lived in a woodshed for 25 years, because he was suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. We owe him and what he has given to this country the dignity to look him in the eye and say that we respect what he did. We treasure what he did and are never going to forget what he did for this country.
I hope that my colleagues across the way will join me as we call upon the government to give veterans the respect they deserve. Lest we forget.