With less than a month to go until the beginning of Queen Elizabeth II’s Platinum Jubilee year, the Trudeau government has yet to decide if it will do what the Harper government did for the Diamond Jubilee in 2012 and award commemorative medals to Canadians who enriched their communities and country through service.
In 2012, the federal government of the day issued 60,000 Diamond Jubilee medals – medals awarded to a wide range of Canadians such as firefighters, police officers, community volunteers and Indigenous leaders. Canadian celebrities like Justin Bieber and Gordon Lightfoot received a Diamond Jubilee medal. So did the Canadian 2012 summer Olympic team during a special ceremony in Centre Block on Parliament Hill.
Most of the MPs van Koeverden met in the House of Commons that day in September also received a Diamond Jubilee medal, for their service as parliamentarians, including the MP for the riding of Papineau, Justin Trudeau.
But, in 2021, the government now led by the member for Papineau appears ambivalent about proceeding with a similar jubilee medal program in 2022.
The Royal Canadian Legion asked the Trudeau government two years ago if it would proceed with a medal program and has received no reply either way. The Legion’s national leadership, which supports the idea of a special jubilee medal to recognize service, is now worried there will be no medal program.
“Are we going to lose something by not having a … jubilee medal? We’ll live, but we’ll live more poorly because of it,” said Steven Clark, the Legion’s national executive director. “A Platinum Jubilee medal really serves two purposes. First, it recognizes an unprecedented and significant milestone: 70 years of Her Majesty’s reign. But equally important, it is a way to recognize service in the community of those individuals, whether they are military RCMP, first responders, teachers, long-term care workers, people who have made their communities and therefore the country better.”
Indeed, the advocates for a platinum medal argue that there is a particularly special opportunity to recognize front-line workers that assisted in the pandemic as well as those who have helped respond to recent natural disasters and extreme weather in British Columbia, Atlantic Canada and elsewhere.
In the last Parliament, Gallant sponsored a petition to the House of Commons that gathered more than 1,800 signatures in support of a Platinum Jubilee program. The same e-petition has been re-submitted in the current Parliament and remains open for signature.
“We’re so blessed to have the Queen with us after 70 years of her service and we missed the Sapphire Jubilee five years ago,” Gallant said. “So this is all the more important to the people who we want to honor.”
Gallant’s caucus colleague, Pierre Paul-Hus was an army Lieutenant-Colonel in the Régiment de la Chaudière, based in Lévis, Que. The Queen is the honourary Colonel-in-Chief of that regiment and, because of that, Paul-Hus was once invited to Buckingham Palace to be received by Her Majesty on behalf of the regiment. Paul-Hus, too, wants the government to proceed with a Jubilee medal program.
He was so frustrated with the Trudeau government’s inaction on the file, he made a direct appeal to Buckingham Palace, writing a letter that made reference to his and the Queen’s common interest — the “Chaudieres.”
“It’s why I feel that today as an MP, I feel that I can relay this to Her Majesty, to ask if she can do something for us,” said Paul-Hus, who represents a Quebec City-area riding. “With the pandemic, we have a lot of stories of people being involved to help Canadians, and I don’t understand why Justin Trudeau and his government don’t want the medals.”
“I want you to tell me why you are not going to issue that medal. And that’s what we’d like to hear,” said the Legion’s Clark on Tuesday. “If you’re going to issue the medal – great. If you’re not, tell us why.”
On his way into the House of Commons Wednesday, Heritage Minister Pablo Rodriguez said the matter was still under consideration.
“We’re looking at the different options at this moment to see what’s better to celebrate this event so we’ll have more information later,” he said.
The 2012 program cost the federal government about $8 million, a cost which, at the time, drew some criticism from groups like the Canadian Taxpayers’ Federation and even some Conservative MPs.
The Harper government was generally enthusiastic about celebrating Canada’s ties to the monarchy and to Queen Elizabeth in particular but, a decade later, there may be a feeling that attitudes in the country toward the monarchy may have shifted away from that institution, particularly among Quebecers and Indigenous Peoples.
Still, advocates of a Jubilee Medal program argue that its value to Canadians is less Canada’s colonial and imperial past and more about the contributions of special Canadians to the present and future life of the country.
“I know there’s a lot of conversations around the monarchy and their relevance in 2021,” Van Koeverden said. “But if it’s an opportunity to thank front-line workers, health-care workers and volunteers over the last two years that we’ve had, I think it’s worth it.”