Sophie Chatel

“Madam Speaker, first, I want to say that I agree with 95% of the member’s speech. I fully endorse that our younger veterans, whose average age is 35, are capable of filling any job that Canadian industry and the Canadian job market have to offer. From social workers to public affairs officers to electrical technicians, they can do it all. However, the question I asked the member last week was why Veterans Affairs removed the right of first refusal from the Commissionaires, a policy that has been in place since 1945. The older veteran commissionaires, on average, are in their late forties to early fifties. These are people who are just looking for work. They are already working for the Commissionaires, over 4,000 of them. Why did the government remove the right of first refusal from the Commissionaires? They are not mutually exclusive. We can have both. We can be encouraging our veterans to work everywhere and helping to set up the right conditions, but at the same time, we should be supporting the Commissionaires, the largest non-profit employer of Canadian veterans.”