Mr. Speaker, today we pay tribute to our veterans.
As a former member of the armed forces, I know that serving our country requires courage, but it also requires sacrifices for the whole family. Canada will always be grateful to our veterans and their families. Their service and sacrifices will never be forgotten.
We will remember them: the Canadians who have served and continue to serve our country. It is a tradition of service that men and women, and in fact those who we would say are boys and girls, have engaged in selflessly for as long as we have been a country and before we became one.
We will remember them: those in the First World War and the Second World War, and those who answered the calls to Korea and Afghanistan. We honour those who served in the Persian Gulf and those who kept the peace in Cyprus and the Balkans.
We must recognize the men and women who continue to serve today, including those deployed at this moment in Latvia with our NATO partners and allies in defence of freedom and security.
We remember those who serve at home in disasters, emergencies and training. This point hits home especially hard this year as we reflect on the tragedy that recently took place at CFB Wainwright. Private Shaun Farrell, Private Aidan Goulding, Private Hayden Lykkemark and Sergeant Morgan Wong fell in service to our country on our own soil, while training to mitigate risk while abroad but knowing that their service here at home carried risk as well. Thirty-nine of their brothers and sisters were also injured, including more than two dozen who are still in hospital. Their families are preparing for a life of, in the case of the four who perished, grief and loss, and for the families of those injured, a life of finding ways to support them.
I would also like to note the veterans and members of the Canadian Armed Forces whom we have lost to suicide. Their deaths do not diminish their service. They do not diminish their sacrifice. We need to look on those members with dignity and compassion and to thank them for their service.
As the rolls of the fallen continue to grow, in this very building we have the Books of Remembrance. I encourage anyone who has the privilege to join us here for a tour of this great place, and all my colleagues who serve here, to take a moment to visit the Room of Remembrance to see the names of our fallen, the men and women, some of whom were just boys and girls, who signed up to serve our country selflessly.
The act of remembrance is so important. It is wonderful to look across the House and see everyone wearing a poppy, and to see that in our streets. I encourage everyone to buy a poppy and to wear it proudly, to visit a cenotaph service on Remembrance Day, to visit the grave of a veteran, to thank a serving member and to thank a former member of our Canadian Armed Forces.
Members who have served know how important a buddy check is, to check in to ask how someone is doing. They do not have to give us any details or a response beyond an acknowledgement, but checking in on them counts, as does thanking them for their service. It is not something anyone joins to receive bouquets of roses thrown to them. They do it selflessly, so please thank them.
The number of names continues to grow, of those we lose every year, those who have served, but we are blessed to live in a country where men and women continue to sign up to serve, protect and defend what we are so blessed to enjoy here.
Our gratitude cannot be measured simply by our words of remembrance but must also be measured by our deeds. We collectively need to do better every single day in delivering on our obligations to the men and women who have served Canada. They serve us with unlimited liability. We need to repay that by making sure we take care of them when their service concludes. It is something we all need to put our shoulder to the wheel to do for them, just as they did for us.
We will remember them.