S-246Wartime Service Recognition Act

What it does

• Requires the Minister of National Defence to develop a national framework with objective criteria for wartime service and with symbolic and commemorative ways to recognise it.
• Requires consultations with veterans, veterans’ groups, non-Canadian Armed Forces personnel who served alongside Canadian forces, military history experts, and others the minister chooses.
• Requires the minister to table the framework in Parliament within one year and publish it on the Department of National Defence website.
• Requires the Governor in Council, on the minister’s recommendation, to designate military service as wartime service when it meets the framework’s criteria, including a first review of Canadian Armed Forces operations from July 27, 1953 to the framework’s tabling.
• Requires the minister to keep a public searchable list of Canadian Armed Forces operations, update it when operations start or change, and publish the minister’s recommendations and reasons.
• States that a wartime service designation does not create any new financial benefit a member or veteran does not already have under another Act of Parliament.