Wartime Service Recognition Bill

Honourable senators, I rise to speak to Bill S-246, An Act respecting the recognition of wartime service.

I would like to begin by acknowledging the initiative of the sponsor of this bill, Senator Yussuff. He invites us to reflect upon a fundamental question: How does our country recognize those who have agreed to serve it, sometimes at the cost of their own lives?

At the heart of this debate, honourable colleagues, are our soldiers and veterans, the women and men who wore Canada’s uniform in circumstances most of us will never fully understand. They left their families, and they wore Canada’s uniform abroad. They served in the Gulf, in the Balkans, in Afghanistan and in other missions where service meant moving forward despite the threat and the constant weight of possible sacrifice.

Some came home marked on their bodies. Others came home with wounds we cannot see but that remain with them to this day. For some, coming home was simply not possible. To them, to their families and to all those who served, we say simply: We do not forget you.

Honourable senators, we owe them far more than ceremonies. We owe them more than just words spoken once a year. We owe them our eternal gratitude. For Conservatives, this responsibility is fundamental. We will always stand alongside those who have served Canada, those who have worn its uniform, those who have agreed to defend our interests, our allies and our values in our history’s most difficult moments. This bill therefore compels us to ask a very simple question: When Canadians have served in wartime conditions, is their country prepared to acknowledge this reality with the right words?

That question is all the more important because war itself has changed. The conflicts in which our military members are called to serve no longer always match the traditional images we associate with war. Contemporary military operations do not always take the form of wars declared in the classic sense. They are often multinational, limited in time or scope and governed by specific mandates.

That does not, in any way, diminish their intensity or the risks to which our military members are exposed. On battlefields in places such as the Gulf or Afghanistan, Canadian military personnel were deployed in environments marked by intense combat, loss of life and lasting consequences. As a matter of fact, these conditions correspond to what we generally associate with a situation of war.

The difficulty arises when we compare that reality with Canada’s legislative framework.

Historically, statutes such as the War Measures Act allowed the government to proclaim a state of war without precisely defining its contours. Since its replacement by the Emergencies Act, the legal notion of “war” has been framed in a much more restrictive way. Under that regime, an armed conflict can be considered a “war” in law only if it reaches the threshold of a national emergency; that is, if it seriously endangers the security, sovereignty or territorial integrity of Canada.

That creates a significant gap. A conflict may have all the characteristics of a war for the military personnel taking part in it, because of its intensity and the risks involved, without meeting the legal criteria that would allow Canada to officially recognize it as such.

The example of the Gulf War illustrates this situation well. For the State of Kuwait, it was clearly a war. For the military personnel deployed there, the experience was a wartime reality. However, under Canada’s legal framework, that conflict did not meet the criteria for being characterized as such, since it did not directly threaten Canada’s territory or security.

The result is a dissociation between two realities: the reality lived on the ground and the reality recognized in law. It is precisely this tension that explains, in part, the recognition issues that Bill S-246 seeks to address.

This tension was raised directly by veterans and documented in recent work by the House of Commons. A report entitled The Persian Gulf War Was a War, published in December 2024 by the House of Commons Standing Committee on Veterans Affairs, dealt specifically with the demands of Gulf War veterans, who were seeking greater recognition of their service, both in terms of commemoration and benefits. It helps explain the confusion that has developed over the years between the notions of “special duty service” and “wartime service.”

To understand this confusion, we must recall the origin and function of the special duty service regime.

After the Korean War, Canada had to adapt its system to new forms of military operations, including international and peacekeeping missions, that could involve significant risks without being declared wars under Canada’s legal framework. It was in that context that the designation of “special duty service” was adopted in 1964, with retroactive effect for operations carried out since 1949. Its purpose was concrete: to allow military members deployed in high-risk operations to be covered for injuries arising from that service under a logic comparable to that applicable to wartime service. When an injury occurs during a special duty operation, the link to service is presumed, which spares the veteran from having to prove that link in detail.

That is why the government maintains that veterans of the Gulf, the Balkans or Afghanistan are not excluded from the benefits regime. Their service is taken into account for injuries sustained in the context of a special duty operation. However, this is precisely where the unease arises. For many veterans, that designation does not fully reflect the reality of operations on the ground that involve wartime conditions.

In other words, the debate goes beyond the question of access to benefits. For many veterans, the designation used by the government carries moral and symbolic weight. Being classified as having been in a “special duty area” does not mean the same thing, in their eyes, as being recognized as having served in wartime.

A petition presented in the House of Commons in 2023 by my colleague Member of Parliament John Brassard called for the Persian Gulf War and the liberation of Kuwait to be reclassified from being a “special duty area” to “wartime service.” The petitioners argued that Canadian military personnel were exposed to ballistic missiles, chemical warfare, combat-related duties, being made prisoners of war, combat air patrols and numerous naval interventions.

The House of Commons Standing Committee on Veterans Affairs, nevertheless, identified an important difficulty: In Veterans Affairs Canada documents, the expressions “wartime service veterans” and “modern-day veterans” are mainly used to classify different cohorts of veterans. These categories do not, in themselves, have a legislative basis and do not determine eligibility for programs and services.

That is what has created persistent confusion. On one side, veterans see in the expression “wartime service” a more accurate recognition of what they lived through. On the other side, the government responds that the designation of “special duty service” already gives them access to the applicable benefits for injuries sustained in that context, and that changing the category to “wartime service” would not necessarily change financial benefits.

The precedent of the Korean War makes this question even more delicate. Canada did not officially declare war during the Korean War, yet Korean War veterans were included in the category of “wartime service” veterans. Gulf War veterans, therefore, argue there is an inconsistency: If Korea could be recognized as “wartime service” despite the absence of an official declaration of war, why couldn’t the same reasoning apply to the Gulf, the Balkans or Afghanistan?

It is this inconsistency that fuels the sense of injustice.

During the 2025 election campaign, Prime Minister Mark Carney proposed to expand service recognition by reviewing the designation of certain military missions. However, to date, no concrete measures have been implemented to act on this commitment.

More worrisome still is the fact that the Liberal government’s responses skirt the central issue, merely reiterating that veterans already have access to special duty service benefits. That is not the question they are asking, however. Veterans are not asking if their injuries are covered. They’re asking if their country is prepared to clearly and unequivocally recognize the nature of their service.

The Liberal government’s administrative response to what is primarily a moral question is insensitive and technocratic. It amplifies the sense of injustice expressed by those who have served. This is not just about modern veterans having access to programs. It’s about whether official policy properly acknowledges the reality of their service to the country.

To those who have served in a theatre, who have been exposed to real threats and who have borne the consequences of their service for years, the words their country uses matter. That is the issue Bill S-246 seeks to address.

Honourable colleagues, concretely, Bill S-246 proposes to create a national framework to officially recognize certain military service as wartime service. It establishes objective criteria, including the level of risk, the nature of the operations and the conditions in which military members were deployed, and provides for a review of Canadian operations since the end of the Korean War.

On that basis, the government could formally designate certain military service as wartime service by order. It is also important to emphasize that this recognition would be symbolic and commemorative in nature and would not create new financial benefits.

That said, Bill S-246 is not the only way to address this question. The report of the Senate Subcommittee on Veterans Affairs proposed a slightly different approach to recognizing modern military operations. The committee proposed an approach aimed at clarifying the categories rather than simply relying on those that already exist.

Its reasoning is as follows: Since the category of “wartime service” does not have a clear legislative basis and has contributed to some confusion around the benefits and recognition, it would be preferable to create new, more precise designations.

The committee notably recommended two new categories: “war emergency operation” for situations where Canada would officially declare a war emergency and “war zone operation” for operations carried out in defence of another state where the situation would likely have justified the proclamation of a war emergency by that state.

That approach has its own logic. It seeks to recognize modern realities without confusing the experience of military personnel with Canada’s legal definition of a war emergency. It would therefore allow us to say: Canada may not have been legally at war, but our military personnel served in a war zone.

Bill S-246 chooses a different path. Rather than creating a new category, such as “war zone operation,” it gives a legislative framework for the notion of wartime service. The difference is subtle but important.

The committee wanted to avoid relying on an administrative category that had already created confusion. Bill S-246 instead chooses to take that category and attempt to correct its ambiguities by giving it a legislative basis, objective criteria and a public process.

These are therefore not two contradictory approaches in their objectives. Both seek to recognize modern military service more fairly, but they do not start from the same institutional diagnosis.

This difference in no way diminishes the importance of the bill; rather, it shows that the bill’s scope will need to be carefully examined.

As a result, the committee that will be examining Bill S-246 will have an important role to play. It will have to consider whether the term “wartime service” is the best means of achieving the objective or whether the term needs to be more carefully defined in order to avoid further ambiguities.

We must also ensure that veterans clearly understand what this recognition means and what it does not mean.

Bill S-246 does not address all of the issues before us today, but it does address one major shortcoming and that is the lack of a clear mechanism to officially recognize Canadian military personnel who served in wartime conditions, even when Canada did not officially declare war. That is why this bill should be supported and carefully examined.

Honourable senators, at its core, this debate is about how a country recognizes those who accepted to serve it in its most demanding moments. The men and women we are speaking about today did not choose the words that would be used to describe their service. They did not debate legislative frameworks or designations. They accepted to be deployed, to serve and to face realities that very few Canadians will ever know.

They did their part. It is now up to us to do ours.

Recognizing their service fairly, not only in fact but also in the language we use, is not a mere symbolic gesture; it’s a matter of respect.

For the Conservatives, that position is clear. We will continue to stand with those who served their country. We will continue to defend recognition that truly reflects the nature of their commitment and service.

And when a country asks its soldiers to wear its uniform in conditions of war, it then has a moral duty to name their service truthfully. For these reasons, this bill deserves our support, colleagues. Again, I want to thank Senator Yussuff for doing the right thing and bringing this forward.

To all those who have worn Canada’s uniform — yesterday and today — we owe you our respect, our debt of gratitude and our recognition. I think the Senate owes at least to look at this bill concretely.

Thank you, colleagues.