With global tensions rising, soldiers may soon be asked to do more than they are already — and it's our job to make sure they're prepared

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In its century-plus of life, the Canadian Armed Forces have upheld a strong tradition of humbly, and valiantly, defending the freedom of Canada and its allies. Our soldiers have always stood up for Canada, and it’s time Canada stood up for them.

Since Confederation, the Canadian tradition of service has brought about many acts of extreme bravery. The Boer War saw five Canadians decorated with the highest military decoration in the British Empire, the Victoria Cross; the First World War, another 73; the Second, another 16. Later, our soldiers shipped off to Korea, where, in the 1950s, they repelled relentless attacks in remote mountains by waves of communist Chinese forces at night, often outnumbered and sometimes cut off from supply lines.

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Entering the 1990s, they joined the Gulf War, our fighter pilots unfazed in escorting American bombers. They went to Kosovo in 1999, where Canadian pilots made precision bombing runs and disproportionately took on high-risk missions — risking their safety and that of their families, who faced “very real threats of retribution threatened by elements sympathetic to the Serbian cause, in Canada and abroad,” according to a 2000 Canadian Military Journal account.

>After 9/11, they served in Afghanistan for more than........

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