Mr. Speaker, I want to thank all my colleagues for giving me the privilege of taking part in the debate on veterans.
Today, we are keenly aware of the sacrifices they made.
We are aware now of all those lives lost, and we think of those lives lost. I do not want to reflect in generalities, but I want to pay regard to one of the singular privileges of being a member of Parliament, namely how I have come to know so many veterans within my own riding, men like Commander Peter Chance, who commanded 13 different vessels over his long and distinguished career. He was a member of the Royal Canadian Navy and volunteered from a very young age. He still serves his community and is on every volunteer board imaginable.
Major Charles “Chic” Goodman is one of my dear friends. I hope that the Minister of Finance will at long last get rid of something called the “gold-digger clause”, so that spousal benefits to veterans like Chic can go to his wife. I want to mention that because Chic would want me to. Major Chic Goodman was one of the Canadians who liberated the horrible Nazi death camps in the Netherlands.
Ken Curry is one of the men in my riding who joined the forces before he was of age, needed a note from his mother to go overseas and fought at Dieppe.
These are spectacular stories, but the tears come to their eyes very quickly when they think of the young men who were on those battlefields and the ones who did not come home. They remember them as if it were yesterday. They remember their experiences in war as if it were yesterday.
Just outside my riding in Nanaimo is Trevor Greene. Everyone in this place will know his story. My friend from Nanaimo—Ladysmith is nodding because he lives in her riding. Trevor Greene was the young Canadian soldier in Afghanistan who, in showing respect to the elders he was meeting in a hut in Afghanistan, took off his helmet and was attacked from behind by a man with an axe. He is so heroic. Heroism runs through the veins of the veterans we are speaking about today, but Trevor Greene is still trying every day to get up and get out of his wheelchair. Of everything he might be committed to, Trevor Greene is committed to climate action. He is one of the most spectacular, brave human beings, as are his wife and kids, to be taking every step in courage, every day, to be able to again walk fully and participate.
Every one of the people I mentioned was not drafted. Every one of them stepped up to serve. The survivors of the First World War and the Second World War are dwindling. However, with our recent military of Afghanistan, Syria, and ongoing conflicts and increasing peacekeeping missions, we know there will continue to be veterans who come home shattered and need our help.
In that, I want to pay special tribute to the people from whom we buy poppies. It is important that they fall off and we have to buy them again, because the work of the Royal Canadian Legion is so important. It provides help for veterans who have PTSD. We need more service dogs trained for the veterans with PTSD. We need more services. All of us together in this place today, without a trace of partisanship, know we owe our lives and our democracy to the sacrifices of millions of Canadians who went before us, those who came home and those who never came home.
Lest we forget.