Mr. Speaker, first off, I want to thank Senator Yussuff in the other place for sponsoring this bill and bringing it forward in the House. I want to thank the Persian Gulf War veterans, in particular Mike McGlennon and Harold Davis for their incredible leadership, persistence and unrelenting push for Canada's Parliament to recognize the incredible service of so many Canadian Forces members and police officers who have served here in Canada. I want to thank all my colleagues across all the parties as well for the collaboration. There are many joint seconders of this bill from every single party, I believe, represented here in the House of Commons.
This is something that is important. As I said, I was talking about the Persian Gulf War veterans. Going back to 2022, even the late Right Honourable Brian Mulroney was pushing the government to recognize the incredible contributions of the Gulf War veterans. He was our prime minister at the time during that war.
The angle I am going to go with on this is that I am just going to tell a story. Let us picture it is early May, just after dawn. There is a Canadian combat team made up of a couple of hundred Canadian soldiers, infantry, armoured soldiers in tanks with mine rollers, engineers, sappers in support and an artillery troop ready to provide close, direct fire support. We have intelligence assessments. We have close air and fast air on standby in the air. Everybody is ready to go. There is even embedded national media travelling with this Canadian formation. They cross the line of departure. Within literally minutes, the enemy combatants open fire and there is a full-fledged fire-on-fire contact going on between the Canadians and the enemy combatants. Intelligence reports indicate that this operation is likely going to result in full combat. Mines are blocking the routes. For many of these soldiers, it is their first time in combat. They have never experienced this yet on deployment to an overseas country. Needless to say, there is chaos. There are snipers. There are rocket-propelled grenades. It does not take long for the Canadian formation to have attack helicopters and support coming in. This goes on for the next three to four hours.
What war am I talking about? Am I talking about the Second World War? Am I talking about Vietnam? No, I am talking about Afghanistan, which according to our Canadian regulations and government was just a special duty area. I do not think so. That conflict, that battle on May 7, 2007, went on for many hours that day. The next morning, on May 8, we were back at it again. It did not take long to come in with different tactics, approach the objective area, but on the way in, let us guess what happened. Another improvised explosive device disabled a tank. Luckily, there were no friendly casualties. As we were dismounted, moving into position to hit this objective area, again, the enemy, the Taliban, open fired.
The Taliban is back in control in Afghanistan. That is something I am not going to talk about at length, but needless to say, they were not the brightest at the time. Our position, our combat team was in what I would call a perfect right flanking position. After about an hour and a half, the Taliban was on the losing end of that conflict. Luckily, no Canadian soldiers were killed that day, but there were incredible examples of heroicism that morning, especially on that second day.
I can remember the squadron's second-in-command having to shoot his tank to take out an enemy RPG position right over the heads of Canadian-friendly soldiers in order to save their lives. I believe what we did in Afghanistan was absolute war, and I do not know why we do not recognize it as such.
There are bigger aspects to this, too. Afghanistan is just one example. I again thank the member for Ottawa West—Nepean for her leadership in sponsoring this bill in the House. We just had a press conference. We heard from the Persian Gulf War veterans. We heard from the Afghan war veterans. We heard from women veterans, indigenous veterans, families and, in particular, a Silver Cross daughter who lost her father when I believe she was only six months old. The sacrifices that families make in combat are incredible.
In Afghanistan, 158 Canadian Forces members lost their lives, but, in reality, that number is not even close. We have lost hundreds and, arguably, 1,000 due to post-traumatic stress, suicide, unfortunately, and other factors that make it so difficult for our veterans who serve in these conflicts to carry on and get up every morning. We owe them. As a Parliament and a country, we need to make sure they are recognized for what they did.
One other aspect came to my mind within the last hour at the press conference when the retired assistant commissioner from the RCMP spoke, and that is police. I have served in Bosnia, Afghanistan and Iraq. Who was on every one of those deployments? It was Canadian police. I am not just talking about the RCMP. I am talking about the Toronto Police Service, the OPP, the Sûreté du Québec and many other community police forces. The importance of this bill alone, once this framework is established, is that these individuals would be formally recognized as veterans. Right now, the way Veterans Affairs Canada is set up, it is only members of the Canadian Armed Forces and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police who have that recognition. We need to fix that.
As the member for Ottawa West—Nepean highlighted, this is about setting up that framework into the future as well. Right now, I do not know the exact numbers off the top of my head, but I think approximately 3,000 Canadian Armed Forces members and, I guarantee, police and other aspects of the Canadian government are in Operation Reassurance, on the front lines in Latvia, in an ongoing mission. I will use that word now. It has the potential to be triggered into an all-out war with Russia at the snap of fingers. We need to make sure we have a framework established to recognize our men and women, when they put on a uniform, for the service they do. I believe Bill S-246 is a step in the right direction.
In closing, I want to take this opportunity to remember six fallen heroes from my deployment in 2007: Sergeant Donnie Lucas, Corporal Aaron Williams, Corporal Brent Poland, Corporal Christopher Stannix, Private David Greenslade and Private Kevin Kennedy. They made the ultimate sacrifice that day in Kandahar province. I again want to pay tribute to the four fallen Canadian Armed Forces members from the tragedy in Wainwright that just happened a few weeks ago.
God bless. Pro patria. Lest we forget.