Legion, MPs urge Ottawa to difficulty jubilee medal for pandemic volunteers – Nationwide

With lower than a month to go till the start of Queen Elizabeth II’s Platinum Jubilee 12 months, the Trudeau authorities has but to resolve if it should do what the Harper authorities did for the Diamond Jubilee in 2012 and award commemorative medals to Canadians who enriched their communities and nation by way of service.

In 2012, the federal authorities of the day issued 60,000 Diamond Jubilee medals – medals awarded to a variety of Canadians resembling firefighters, law enforcement officials, neighborhood volunteers and Indigenous leaders. Canadian celebrities like Justin Bieber and Gordon Lightfoot obtained a Diamond Jubilee medal. So did the Canadian 2012 summer time Olympic group throughout a particular ceremony in Centre Block on Parliament Hill.

“The athletes had been all introduced as much as the [House of] Commons to go onto the carpet and meet an entire bunch of MPs. And it was a really particular second for lots of us,” Adam van Koeverden stated in an interview earlier this week. Van Koeverden, who gained 4 Olympic medals in kayaking, together with gold, was a member of that 2012 group and can also be a Diamond Jubilee medal recipient. Van Koeverden is now the Liberal MP for the Ontario driving of Milton.

A lot of the MPs van Koeverden met within the Home of Commons that day in September additionally obtained a Diamond Jubilee medal, for his or her service as parliamentarians, together with the MP for the driving of Papineau, Justin Trudeau.

However, in 2021, the federal government now led by the member for Papineau seems ambivalent about continuing with an analogous jubilee medal program in 2022.

The Royal Canadian Legion requested the Trudeau authorities two years in the past if it might proceed with a medal program and has obtained no reply both means. The Legion’s nationwide management, which helps the concept of a particular jubilee medal to acknowledge service, is now fearful there can be no medal program.

“Are we going to lose one thing by not having a … jubilee medal? We’ll reside, however we’ll reside extra poorly due to it,” stated Steven Clark, the Legion’s nationwide government director. “A Platinum Jubilee medal actually serves two functions. First, it acknowledges an unprecedented and vital milestone: 70 years of Her Majesty’s reign. However equally essential, it’s a strategy to acknowledge service locally of these people, whether or not they’re navy RCMP, first responders, lecturers, long-term care employees, individuals who have made their communities and due to this fact the nation higher.”

Certainly, the advocates for a platinum medal argue that there’s a significantly particular alternative to acknowledge front-line employees that assisted within the pandemic in addition to those that have helped reply to current pure disasters and excessive climate in British Columbia, Atlantic Canada and elsewhere.

“Now we have many volunteers who’ve by no means been honored and by no means requested for any recognition who’ve been honored up to now,” stated Cheryl Gallant, a Conservative MP from Ontario. “And we’ve an entire new crop of people that have been donating their time, not simply throughout the pandemic, however [in my riding] we had floods in 2017, 2019. So what we’re seeing down east, within the West and in B.C. is de facto bringing again a number of recollections and people individuals we need to cherish as properly.”

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Within the final Parliament, Gallant sponsored a petition to the Home of Commons that gathered greater than 1,800 signatures in help of a Platinum Jubilee program. The identical e-petition has been re-submitted within the present Parliament and stays open for signature.

“We’re so blessed to have the Queen with us after 70 years of her service and we missed the Sapphire Jubilee 5 years in the past,” Gallant stated. “So that is all of the extra essential to the individuals who we need to honor.”

Gallant’s caucus colleague, Pierre Paul-Hus was a military Lieutenant-Colonel within the Régiment de la Chaudière, based mostly in Lévis, Que. The Queen is the honourary Colonel-in-Chief of that regiment and, due to that, Paul-Hus was as soon as invited to Buckingham Palace to be obtained by Her Royal Highness on behalf of the regiment. Paul-Hus, too, desires the federal government to proceed with a Jubilee medal program.

He was so pissed off with the Trudeau authorities’s inaction on the file, he made a direct attraction to Buckingham Palace, writing a letter that made reference to his and the Queen’s frequent curiosity — the “Chaudieres.”

“It’s why I really feel that at the moment as an MP, I really feel that I can relay this to Her Majesty, to ask if she will be able to do one thing for us,” stated Paul-Hus, who represents a Quebec Metropolis-area driving. “With the pandemic, we’ve a number of tales of individuals being concerned to assist Canadians, and I don’t perceive why Justin Trudeau and his authorities don’t need the medals.”

“I would like you to inform me why you aren’t going to difficulty that medal. And that’s what we’d like to listen to,” stated the Legion’s Clark on Tuesday. “In the event you’re going to difficulty the medal – nice. In the event you’re not, inform us why.”

On his means into the Home of Commons Wednesday, Heritage Minister Pablo Rodriguez stated the matter was nonetheless into consideration.

“We’re trying on the completely different choices at this second to see what’s higher to have a good time this occasion so we’ll have extra info later,” he stated.

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The 2012 program value the federal authorities about $8 million, a value which, on the time, drew some criticism from teams just like the Canadian Taxpayers’ Federation and even some Conservative MPs.

The Harper authorities was typically captivated with celebrating Canada’s ties to the monarchy and to Queen Elizabeth particularly however, a decade later, there could also be a sense that attitudes within the nation towards the monarchy might have shifted away from that establishment, significantly amongst Quebecers and Indigenous Peoples.

Nonetheless, advocates of a Jubilee Medal program argue that its worth to Canadians is much less Canada’s colonial and imperial previous and extra concerning the contributions of particular Canadians to the current and future lifetime of the nation.

“I do know there’s a number of conversations across the monarchy and their relevance in 2021,” Van Koeverden stated. “But when it’s a possibility to thank front-line employees, health-care employees and volunteers over the past two years that we’ve had, I feel it’s value it.”