Canadians gathered at cenotaphs and memorials across the country on Wednesday to mark Remembrance Day, and this year ceremonies also mark 25 years since Canadian forces began operations in Afghanistan. Roughly 40,000 members of the Canadian Armed Forces served in the conflict, and 159 were killed, and the national ceremony at the National War Memorial in Ottawa included three Second World War veterans.
Why it matters
Prime Minister Mark Carney, Governor General Louise Arbour and other dignitaries laid wreaths at the national ceremony. In his Veterans Week statement earlier this month, Carney noted that more than 2.3 million Canadians have served since Confederation, including in the Persian Gulf, and he has described the recent fire at Canadian Forces Base Wainwright as one of the worst tragedies for the Armed Forces on Canadian soil during peacetime.
The Wainwright fire hangs over this year remembrance. Four soldiers were killed and 39 injured during a training exercise only weeks ago, and the ceremonies come as the country is still absorbing that loss. Remembrance Day is a paid statutory holiday in several provinces and for federally regulated workers, but not in Ontario, and the crowds at cenotaphs across the country were a reminder that the day still matters.
What happens next
The politics of the day are inseparable from the moment. Carney leaves Ottawa on Wednesday for a nine day tour through Europe and Asia, taking in the European Political Community summit in Dublin, the ASEAN summit in Manila, the Francophonie summit in Cambodia and the APEC gathering in Shenzhen. His government budget last week put billions into defence, security and the CSIS spy agency.
What happens next is the tour, and then the budget debate back home. The remembrance ceremonies end, the ministers fan out across the country to sell the budget, and Parliament, paused for Remembrance Week, returns to a fiscal plan that bets heavily on sovereignty. For the veterans in Ottawa, the day was about the past. For the government, it is about what comes next. The budget debate that follows will test whether the defence and security spending in the plan survives contact with Parliament.
