Mr. Speaker, 73 years ago this week, an Allied force of over 150,000 soldiers, 4,000 ships, and 11,000 airplanes began the D-Day attack to defeat Nazism and liberate the people of western Europe. The Canadians went north to the Netherlands, a distance of some 300 miles. It took them four months to get there, advancing only three miles a day. Every mile of ground was soaked in Canadian blood.
Eleven months after D-Day, in May 1945, Canadian soldiers finally liberated the Netherlands, including my mother’s family in Friesland.
More than 7,600 Canadians died in the canals, fields, and villages of the Netherlands so that my mother and her family could live, and the Dutch have never forgotten. I am here today because of the sacrifices of those Canadian so long ago.
We will never forget. Je me souviens.