HANNAFORD: Canada's veterans too white for today's civil servant?

“When I first joined the department we had a wonderful program, ‘Heroes Remembered.’ It didn’t occur to me for a very long time, I was always seeing older white men from World War I and World War II.”Thus Amy Meunier, assistant deputy minister at Veterans Affairs, apparently lamenting at a DVA conference that a First and Second World War commemoration program for veterans was dominated by white men. A couple of things for Ms. Meunier.First, who else would you expect? Veterans Affairs has very properly gone to some trouble to celebrate the wartime exploits of black, Asian and indigenous Canadians. However, while gratefully acknowledging what they did and taking inspiration from it, the fact remains that during the two global conflicts of the twentieth century and also in the Korean War, Canadians who served in this country’s army, navy and air force were — overwhelmingly — white and male… a million of them in the Hitler war.Also, almost entirely white were the 50,000 Canadian women who put on uniform as members of the The Canadian Women's Army Corps, The Women's Division, Royal Canadian Air Force and The Women's Royal Canadian Naval Service.How could it have been otherwise? Statistics Canada reports that in its 1941 census, the second year of the Second World War, Canada had a population of 11.5 million, of whom less than 2% were non-white. (More than half traced their ancestry to the British Isles, in those days a fairly conclusive indicator of Caucasian genes.)In other words, the Canadian military reflected the demographics of Canada… something that remains a government objective today, although so far unrealized.These are simply facts, drawn from the website of Ms. Meunier’s employer, the DVA and from Statistics Canada. Thus her regret at the parade of white men across her computer screen is comparable to that of a person disappointed to see only small children in a kindergarten classroom. What else would you expect?Secondly, actually, one might perhaps expect a little explicit gratitude, especially in somebody working on behalf of veterans.For, it is hard to read Ms. Meunier’s words without detecting in them a tinge of regret... as though from her perspective it would have made a better story if the fate of the nation had rested in more pleasingly multicultural hands. To young people cursed with what passes these days for an education, perhaps that is how they see things.But that’s not how it was. These boringly monochrome white men really were the people who defeated the great fascist empires of their day — in Germany’s case, real white-supremacists of the kind we are daily invited to disown. They risked their lives, often had a thoroughly uncomfortable time and all too often saw their comrades killed beside them. And it is because of them that people such as Ms. Meunier enjoy the freedoms they do today and in her particular case, the liberty to speak regretfully of the insufficient ‘diversity’ men whose efforts made Canada the fourth-ranking military power in the world in 1945. Possibly Ms. Meunier is a dedicated civil servant and a wonderful comfort to veterans of all colours who need the services of the DVA. Nevertheless, her remarks as reported were birthed in ignorance, offensive to the memory of brave men and frankly, rather silly.And in what must surely be an unintended consequence, they lend aid and comfort to those who believe the Trudeau Liberals despise Canada’s once-respected military and are content to treat it as a laboratory for woke social experimentation.No wonder recruitment is a problem. Make a big deal about gender equity and putting tampons in the male washrooms, and regular guys will lose interest and you’ll end up with the ones who want to self-express by parading in skirts.To get Canada’s armed forces back on track, the priority must be upon renewed cultivation of military virtues — as opposed to “focussing on how individuals may face multiple layers of discrimination (misogyny, racism, homophobia, colonialism, transphobia, ageism and other prejudices”). I suspect that will take a change in government.But that’s coming.Meanwhile, it would not be too soon for Ginette Petitpas Taylor, the Minister of Veterans’ Affairs, to repudiate the words of a public servant that seem like an attempt to diminish the worth of a generation of white men, and to rob them of their honour.How dare she?

HANNAFORD: Canada's veterans too white for today's civil servant?

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