We will remember them: The Canadian Armed Forces's Casualty Identification Program

The 2003 discovery of two sets of human skeletal remains of Canadian soldiers killed in action during the First World War revitalized the Canadian Armed Forces's responsibility for identifying and burying its war dead from the First and Second World Wars. In 2007, the Casualty Identification Program was formally established with a mandate of identifying newly discovered remains of Canadian soldiers and airmen.¹ The Program is now also responsible for adjudicating research into identifying remains previously interred as an "unknown" soldier or airman. The Casualty Identification Program's tenets (e.g., equality in death) and procedures (e.g., no repatriation-the remains are buried in the closest appropriate cemetery to where they fell) are closely linked to policies established in 1917 with the creation of the Imperial War Graves Commission (now the Commonwealth War Graves Commission), of which the governments of Canada and Newfoundland were signatories. In modern investigations into the identity of newly discovered human skeletal remains, historical, archaeological, anthropological, odontological, and genealogical research, as well as stable isotope and DNA analysis, can be included in the Casualty Identification Program's process. It is the principal goal of the Program to ensure that fallen Canadian service members are recognized as soldiers and airmen who died for Canada with their name and buried alongside their comrades.