Veterans Affairs committee  I have copies here if you like.

Veterans Affairs committee  You may be interested to know that we have a team of about 12 researchers conducting the stories of the Second World War. These are the people interviewing our veterans, and they're mostly all women, as it happens.

Veterans Affairs committee  Marc may want to answer that, but before that, I would make a general statement. I'm saddened to hear about what you've been seeing, because I taught in a university for eight or nine years and my sense was that awareness among young people was actually growing around Remembrance Day.

Veterans Affairs committee  In an ideal world, I think we would like to commit the same kinds of resources to stories of later conflicts as we have committed to stories about the Second World War. There is our peacekeeping story. We've lost some one hundred peacekeepers. That's not as many as we've lost in Afghanistan, but we'd like to record all of our stories.

Veterans Affairs committee  Something you may want to know, Mr. Stoffer, although we haven't formally come out and said anything yet, is that we feel strongly that November 11 should have a greater stature in the Canadian consciousness. When I was a child, at 11 o'clock on November 11 we stopped. Everything stopped in school.

Veterans Affairs committee  Well, I think we wouldn't exist if we lived in a country in which everybody knew everything there was to know about this country and its past. We would not have a reason for being here. We would not have a raison d'être.

Veterans Affairs committee  Maybe neither...?

Veterans Affairs committee  I keep thinking of Sisyphus, the poor guy in classical Greece who was always pushing the rock up the hill, and it was always rolling back on him. We consider our challenge to be pushing that rock up the hill. We consider it our mission to do what we can to inform and educate Canadians and make them aware of what is a rich and distinctive past.

Veterans Affairs committee  Just in conclusion, as we look to the future, we'll continue to look for ways to run our programs better, for synergies. We'll continue to improve existing programs. We look for new projects. One of our big challenges is using the new tools of social media to reach young people.

Veterans Affairs committee  Thank you very much, Mr. Sweet. We're here together. All of us will make just a few brief opening remarks, and then we'll be in your hands for questions, which we'll be delighted to take. I'm Andrew Cohen. I'm president of the Historica-Dominion Institute. With me is Linda Brunet, who is managing director with Encounters With Canada; Marc Chalifoux, our executive vice-president; and Jeremy Diamond, who runs our national office.