World War II veteran Harry Leslie Smith, 92, said his time is coming to an end – but first he has a message – elect a progressive government.

Smith told his story, by video, to a captivated crowd at Broadbent’s progress summit in Ottawa Saturday afternoon. He said he grew up impoverished in England and came to Canada after fighting in World War II.

Smith said his generation built a strong social safety network, created universal healthcare, public pensions, built affordable housing and demanded that education was everyone’s rights, but those things are disappearing under Harper’s watch.

“I speak to you as an old man who has sailed through the rough oceans of history. My soul was skinned by poverty, hunger and homelessness in the 1920s and the 1930s,” said Smith.

“As a boy I lived in supreme poverty created by the Great Depression that put millions of workers into destitution including my father. As dad couldn’t find work my family was on the doorstep of starvation so I foraged through garbage bins for my tea like an animal,” Smith said.

When he was 18, Smith felt the call to join the war against Hitler who was terrorizing Europe.

“I knew that Nazism was just a great of threat to democracy as unbridled capitalism, so I joined the army and did my bit in that most terrible war.”

In 1950, Smith and his wife moved to Canada because it “promised a better life for everyone, including its new immigrants.”

He earned a living, paid his taxes, cut the grass in the summer and shovelled the snow in the winter. “It was marvelous to me how far I had travelled from street urchin to responsible middle class man,” he said.

But since then, much has changed, said Smith.

“Today however, as I reach the end of my time, I find that we are returning to the burdens of the 30s.”

Children still go to bed hungry and hopeless, he said, adding that a great number of people are being written up in the “black book of redundancy as if they are waste from the cutting room floor.”

“There is one thing I know, the answer does not lie with the Harper government.”

Harper’s brought back the “dog-eats-dog world” of the 1930’s, said Smith.

“The Harper government has robbed the vulnerable of their benefits and they have snatched from the workers of this country the right to a dignified wage.”

“He has treated veterans with disdain, intimidated scientists, environmentalists and most importantly the poor,” continued Smith.

Smith said Harper is eradicating the progressive society that his generation built.

“Sadly my generation’s greatest achievement, the welfare state, has become tarnished by the politics of austerity caused by [the] right wing.”