Peter Julian

[Privilege, December 12th, 2024]

Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order. It is always important in a question of privilege to be factually correct. The former minister would not have referred to the “NDP-Liberal government”. Therefore, I would ask that the member respect the rules around a question of privilege and stick with the facts.

[Committees of the House, December 12th, 2024]

Mr. Speaker, given this important report, to broaden respect and services for veterans, respecting their spouses, we would ask for a recorded vote.

[Committees of the House, December 12th, 2024]

Mr. Speaker, the member for Hamilton Centre always has great clarity on these questions. We could do this now. It could have been done a year ago or at any time, but there is no time better than the present. Let us get it done. The government needs to act.

[Committees of the House, December 12th, 2024]

Mr. Speaker, yes, I agree. Conservatives could have provided support for those veterans funds.

I am even more disturbed by a year ago. Members will recall December 7 and December 8, 2023, a night that will live in infamy in Canadian parliamentary history. Conservative MPs, every single one of them, voted to slash services to veterans. We are not talking about 18 years ago, 15 years ago or even 10 years ago, during the Harper regime, which was the worst period for veterans in Canadian history. We are talking about a year ago, when Conservatives voted to slash all veterans services. They all voted. We were here for 30 hours and they voted proudly. They smiled as they stood up and voted to slash veterans services.

We are not just talking about two nights ago. We are not just talking about a year ago. We are talking about systematically paying lip service to our nation's veterans. The member for Carleton loves to do that, while Conservatives obviously want to slash, cut and burn yet again, as they did when they were in power and the results were catastrophic for our nation's veterans. If they do not apologize for what they did in the past, how can anyone believe they would not act the same way in the future?

[Committees of the House, December 12th, 2024]

Mr. Speaker, the reality is that the Conservatives have a record. They need to acknowledge it. They have been disrespectful to veterans and they need to acknowledge it as a party and as members of Parliament. The Conservative Party has yet to acknowledge the incredible harm it did.

Peter Stoffer, the former Veterans Affairs critic for the NDP, passed that motion in 2006. Conservatives were in power for nine years after that and never fixed this disrespect of our nation's veterans. The Liberals have added another nine years on top of that, yet it is so simple to fix. The reality is that the Conservatives have a record they need to apologize for. The slashing of benefits, the closing of offices and the refusal to provide disability benefits all need to be acknowledged. I hope a Conservative, one Conservative, will have the guts to do that today.

[Committees of the House, December 12th, 2024]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague from Edmonton Strathcona for her very important speech on this day when we are honouring Canada's veterans. We will forever be indebted to our veterans.

I also want to thank my colleague from North Island—Powell River for presenting this report and I want to thank her for working hard to ensure that veterans can enjoy these important rights that should be a given. I think there is consensus on the fact that veterans must get their due. It makes no sense that still today, and after decades, veterans' pensions are not paid to their spouses under the pretext that they marry latter in life.

An NDP government will not hesitate to rectify that immediately. One of our priorities when we form government will certainly be to resolve this issue. This issue is so easy to resolve that the government promised to do so years ago. However, it chose not to do it. The fact is that it is very easy to do.

The Liberals are not the only ones who failed in their duty to enhance veterans' right to respect and a well-deserved retirement. In 2006, with the Harper government newly in power, the NDP got a motion adopted unanimously in Parliament. However, the Harper government never implemented our proposal. I will have more to say about that later.

The fact is, neither the Conservatives nor the Liberals truly respected veterans' rights. I believe that only an NDP government would do so.

I come from a community that is deeply respectful of our nation's veterans. New Westminster and Burnaby, British Columbia, the two cities I am proud to represent in the House of Commons, have a deep and ongoing engagement with our nation's veterans. The Royal Westminster Regiment is based in New Westminster and the armoury is often the site where we pay respect to our nation's veterans. Legion branch 83 in Burnaby and Legion branch 2 in New Westminster are both organizations that provide remarkable service to the community but are also focal points for respecting our nation's veterans.

Before the city hall in downtown New Westminster sits the cenotaph, where we commemorate those who gave their lives for our country. The names of my grandfather and my uncle are on that cenotaph. Everyone in the community pays respect; in fact, on Remembrance Day this year, thousands of people turned out in New Westminster and in Burnaby to pay respect to our nation's veterans.

There is this gold digger clause, even though Parliament passed a motion in 2006, as the Harper Conservative government was just coming into power; the Harper government refused to implement it and did much worse things. I will come back to that in just a moment. Subsequent to that, we had a new government, a Liberal government, and it does the same thing. It ignores the needs of veterans and discriminates against the spouses of veterans. To our mind, in the NDP corner of the House, we believe it is simply profoundly disrespectful to our nation's veterans.

This is something that should be done today. It could be done today, yet the government has delayed for nine years. The previous government delayed for nine years. It shows a remarkable and profound disrespect for our nation's veterans. This can be done, and as my colleague from North Island—Powell River pointed out, these are real people who are impacted. She mentioned, in a supplementary opinion to the report we are debating today, the case of Walt and Norma Pinsent. She mentioned as well the case of Corporal Kevin Sewell and his spouse, Tracy Evanshen, and what it means, in terms of their lives, that the pensions are denied.

Despite their finding love later in life, there is profound discrimination by the federal government toward veterans who have put their lives on the line for their country, some coming back with severe disabilities or a whole range of challenges. Coming from a family whose family members went overseas, I can tell members about the kind of impact being in service can entail. It is profoundly sad to me that we are not immediately moving to honour our nation's veterans.

A number of Conservatives have stood up today, and I want to come back to the Conservative record on veterans. The Liberals have been restoring some of the damage that was committed during the Harper regime, but I was here in the House. As so many veterans have indicated, because of the discrimination by the Harper regime, the former Conservative government has lost any moral authority forever with respect to the stewardship of our nation's veterans. The Conservatives should never, ever again, in the history of our country, be put in charge of Veterans Affairs because what they did was absolutely reprehensible. It is unbelievable to me how that party pretends, as the member for Carleton often does, and pays lip service to honouring our nation's veterans. What they did was profoundly despicable, was disrespectful and should never be forgotten.

I want to take a few minutes to go through the litany of the tragic and horrible things the Harper Conservatives did. The member for Carleton has never apologized for a single one of these things.

It was not just slashing services at Veterans Affairs, cutting about a quarter of the services and staff available to veterans. The Harper Conservatives often forced veterans to travel for days across provinces as they closed offices across the country. In the interior of British Columbia, northern Ontario and western Newfoundland, veterans services were no longer available. It was absolutely reprehensible that they would do this.

They denied funerals. The scale is unbelievable: 20,000 applications for veterans' funerals and burials were rejected under the Harper Conservatives. The reality is that if we, as a country, cannot pay tribute to our nation's veterans at the time of their passing, then how can any member of Parliament stand in the House and say they respect our nation's veterans? This is what the Conservatives did systematically, not over one, two, three or four years, but for more than half a decade. They systematically denied tens of thousands of proper burials and funerals for our nation's veterans.

Not a single Conservative has ever stood in the House to say they were sorry or to apologize to our veterans for the profound disrespect they showed in clawing back a billion dollars, denying services, slashing staff, closing offices and denying the legitimate disability claims that came in from our nation's veterans. Time after time, the Harper Conservatives denied those fundamental benefits. The most disrespectful period of time in our nation's history toward our nation's veterans was under the Harper Conservatives, yet since that abysmal period, not a single Conservative MP has ever apologized for it. The Conservatives have never said they were wrong, that they should not have denied funerals and disability claims, slashed offices and clawed back a billion dollars from veterans who needed those services desperately and given it to billionaires. Not a single Conservative has apologized. I hope they stand in the House today and solemnly apologize to our nation's veterans for all of the devastation they have wreaked upon veterans over those terrible years.

[Committees of the House, December 12th, 2024]

Madam Speaker, I think that today we all agree on the wording of the motion.

It must be said that the federal government has not always treated veterans with respect. I am mostly talking about the Harper years, when the Conservatives ran roughshod over all services for veterans. They even denied them the right to have their disability recognized. They denied 20,000 veterans a funeral. It was appalling. So far, the member for Carleton has never apologized for how shamefully veterans were treated for years.

Does my colleague agree that the Conservatives owe a heartfelt apology to all the veterans they mistreated during the years of the Harper regime?

Otherwise, what should Canadians take away from their refusal to apologize to veterans?

[Committees of the House, December 12th, 2024]

Madam Speaker, this is an important motion and discussion that the NDP has brought forward today, and I would like to thank the member for North Island—Powell River for doing so.

The member referenced Conservatives and veterans, and I wanted to put on the record what the terrible Harper regime did to veterans. It was the most disrespectful period in our nation's history. The Harper Conservatives slashed personnel and eliminated hundreds of positions. They closed district offices, forcing veterans, often with disabilities, to travel across provinces to try to get the services that were systematically being denied by the Harper regime. They denied disability benefits, and perhaps in one of the most cruel examples of disrespect by Conservatives of our nation's veterans, they denied 20,000 funerals for veterans. They were people who had laid their lives on the line for this country, and Conservatives treated them in the most disrespectful, dishonouring way possible.

Will a single Conservative member stand and apologize for the despicable treatment of our nation's veterans—

[Privilege, December 11th, 2024]

Mr. Speaker, that language was utterly inappropriate from my colleague, the official opposition House leader. It borders on misogyny. I would suggest, given the Conservatives' history of being drunk and disorderly in the House of Commons, they should take lessons from your ruling.

[Business of Supply, December 10th, 2024]

Mr. Speaker, then the Conservatives have rejected this common-sense amendment.