Former prime minister Brian Mulroney personally lobbied the Liberal cabinet to grant full combat benefits to Canadian veterans of the Persian Gulf War, but newly released government records show his plea was dismissed.Blacklock's Reporter said in a 2022 letter to the Minister of National Defence, Mulroney urged Ottawa to recognize the service of the 4,458 Canadians who deployed in Operation Desert Shield and Desert Storm. “Military deployed for the liberation of Kuwait served with courage and distinction and brought high honour to Canada,” he wrote. “They must not now be forgotten.”Mulroney argued that “years have passed since the end of the Persian Gulf War and I believe sufficient time has passed for this review of Canada’s military history.”Then-defence minister Anita Anand replied with a form letter, directing Mulroney to the veterans affairs portfolio. “Please note this issue falls under responsibility of the Minister of Veterans Affairs,” Anand wrote.Veterans of the eight-month operation have long sought recognition of their “wartime service” in claims for benefits, even though no Canadian troops died in combat. .An Access To Information memo from the veterans affairs department described the Canadian contribution as supporting coalition forces, noting that only a single direct exchange of fire occurred on Jan. 30, 1991, when two CF-18s attacked an Iraqi patrol boat attempting to flee to Iran. The memo also highlighted that women in the Canadian Armed Forces were deployed in combat roles for the first time.A 2025 report by the Commons veterans affairs committee, titled The Persian Gulf War Was A War, recommended that legal definitions should not block veterans from qualifying for full benefits. “The Gulf War was objectively a war by any standard definition of the term,” the committee concluded. “It was also a war in the sense of the subjective experience of all those who participated in it.”The report noted a legal loophole: while Canada participated in combat, the conflict did not threaten Canadian territory or citizens, meaning it fell outside the narrow legal definition of war in Canadian law. “Anyone following events in Kuwait and the region during this period would have said this indeed was a war,” the report said, emphasizing that the absence of a UN mandate for hostilities did not diminish the reality of combat operations.
