If the sale and trade of any medals are restricted in Canada, that law will only be effective in Canada. As Mike D. notes, many medals wll then end up sitting in dusty back rooms of museums across the country abd be forgotten because of the lack of resources and space to research and display them. Others, perhaps too many others, will then leave the country by whatever means to places where there are still collectors that assign them monetary value, collectors who wil not be bound by Canadian law. The ones that go will be those that any such legistaltion will be aimed at keeping in place.
How then, would the proponents of such a scheme to limit the sale of medals control this? Shall we register them as was done with firearms?
I suspect the number of medals that were sold by vets to pay for medicine, etc., is very small. Many others that circulate, divorced from the documents that would provcide them a place, time and serviceman's name in our collective history, would not be out there if the average Canadian had felt any sentimental value attributed to them because of Dad's or Granddad's service.
It is sad that the history of so many of these medals has been lost. It would be even sadder of the collecting community had not preserved the many medals that it has, and continued to do the research to bring more of them, and their associated history to light.
Banning trade in medals or other militaria would weaken the collective understanding of our history, not strengthen it. If Parliament wants to support the memory of Canadian veterans and their collective sacrifice, better a motion to aid and support the return of medals to Canadian soil, for example; making the importation of Canadian medals exempt from import duties. Assisting the repatriation of medals is a far stronger statement of commitment to their memory than invoking legislation that will drive the collecting markets underground.
