Mr. Speaker, I am really grateful to my colleague for his speech, but also for talking about the importance of supporting veterans. Here we are, all of us MPs, coming back from our ridings where we went and paid respect to those who served in the military and RCMP, put their lives on the line to protect us and served our country. I am glad he talked about the amnesia down the bench on the Conservative side: when theLeader of the Official Opposition was in cabinet, they cut a third of the employees at Veterans Affairs. It led to a backlog of tens of thousands of veterans with disabilities seeking disability benefits and waiting for the support they needed. The Conservatives also closed nine veterans' offices and fought veterans in court.
I will correct my colleague, because the Phoenix pay system was not $2.2 billion; it has now cost Canadian taxpayers over $3 billion. The Conservatives promised that it would save us $78 million a year. That is how the privatization scheme went for the Conservatives and how it has impacted Canadians.
Does my colleague agree that theLeader of the Official Opposition, who was in the Stephen Harper cabinet that caused so much harm to the Canadian military and RCMP veterans, should apologize for the harm and damage he created? The Liberals have failed to fix it, but the institutional damage runs so deep that it still causes harm to veterans today.