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A House of Commons petition that calls on the federal government to establish an independent review board for military honours, such as the Victoria Cross, now has support from Ontario’s provincial government.
Nipissing-Timiskaming MP Pauline Rochefort has sponsored the petition, and told CBC News it’s scheduled to be presented at the House of Commons on April 15. At that point, the government will have 45 days to respond.
The petition has received more than 16,000 signatures and has support from the governments of Saskatchewan and, more recently, Ontario.
The Victoria Cross is Canada’s highest military honour, created in 1993, but it has never been awarded.
The British Victoria Cross, which was previously presented to members of the Commonwealth, was last awarded to Canadians who fought in the Second World War.
At the centre of the petition is a campaign for Pte. Jess Larochelle to be awarded the Victoria Cross posthumously.
He grew up in the village of Restoule, in northeastern Ontario’s Nipissing region.
Larochelle was an Afghanistan veteran. His family and supporters consider him a prime candidate for the Victoria Cross for the actions he took in 2006, single-handedly holding off a Taliban attack while he was severely injured with a broken back and detached retina.
On Oct. 14, 2006 Larochelle volunteered to man an observation post in Pashmul, west of Kandahar City.
A Taliban force equipped with rocket-propelled grenades and small arms attacked his company and killed two of Larochelle’s comrades in their initial attack. Three others were gravely wounded.
Larochelle briefly lost consciousness but managed to counter the enemy advance with a machine gun. After he ran out of ammunition he used the post’s M-72 rocket launcher and held off the enemy force of between 20 and 40 insurgents.
He had health issues following his service in Afghanistan, and died on Aug. 31, 2023.
Larochelle received the Star of Military Valour — Canada’s second highest citation for bravery in combat — during his lifetime, but was never awarded the Victoria Cross.
Nipissing MPP Vic Fedeli was behind a provincial motion to lend support to Rochefort’s federal petition.
“We need to use every vehicle possible to get this to happen,” Fedeli said,
“It’s not a political issue. It’s certainly not a partisan issue. It’s unanimously spoken about in the legislature of Ontario. Hardly a dry eye in the room.”
Fedeli said the provincial motion was presented shortly after Mike Harrison, a retired Royal Canadian Air Force captain from North Bay, called Ontario Premier Doug Ford.
Harrison has been a staunch advocate for the federal government to award Larochelle the Victoria Cross.
“Quite frankly, it was done in a week,” Fedeli said about the provincial motion.
“We saw Saskatchewan had passed a motion and that gave Capt. Harrison the impetus to contact the premier and say, ‘Hey, now we’ve got some momentum. Let’s have the largest province in the country join.”
Fedeli said an independent review panel for military honours is needed to make sure those deserving of those honours are recognized.
“We don’t have a system in place that’s transparent that we can acknowledge and honour appropriately our military fighters,” he said.
