MPs on the House Veterans Affairs committee got an earful from veterans of Canada’s mission in Afghanistan, who say that the New Veterans Charter that was put in place partway through the 10-year conflict has broken the social contract between Canada and its veterans.
Canada’s new generation of veterans say that they’re receiving less benefits and services under the charter than they would have under the Pension Act that it replaced. In particular, they see the lump-sum disability payment of between $25,000 and $45,000 that has replaced ongoing disability payments as an insult.
The committee heard from veterans of Afghanistan and members of Equitas, a group that is spearheading a class action lawsuit on behalf of soldiers who are receiving fewer benefits under the new charter than they would have under the previous benefit plan, on Dec. 10.
Afghan war vet Kevin Berry made an impassioned plea for MPs on the committee to fix the charter. Mr. Berry called the lump-sum payout an attack on veterans’ “stability, security, and hope.”
“We are members of society that have sacrificed our bodies and minds for the collective betterment of society,” Mr. Berry reminded the committee.
“Now, a lump-sum? We’re not mercenaries. We’re not sent into harm’s way for profit, we’re not sent into harm’s way on the understanding that if we’re hurt we’ll be given a bag of money. We’re sent into harm’s way by our country and we are told from the day we enter basic training that our country will take care of us if we are hurt, period.”
Appearing before the committee with Tommy, his PTSD therapy dog, Mr. Berry told the committee that five of the 2,200 soldiers he was deployed with in 2003 committed suicide within a year of returning, and “dozens more since” have taken their own lives.
“I’m here today because lives hang in the balance,” he said. “We’re seeing suicides right now as a result of this legislation. Men and women are penniless as a result of this.”
Witnesses accused the bureaucracy at Veterans Affairs of designing an inaccessible program without the input of the veterans that the charter now applies to.
Don Sorochan, the lawyer representing Equitas, told the committee that bureaucrats “basically snowed” new veterans when they designed the program.
“It was an effort by the bureaucracy to cut budgets and save money, and it did so on the backs of veterans, but at the time it was being thought about, there wasn’t any war going on,” Mr. Sorochan said.
The committee is in the midst of a statutory review of the charter, which was passed unanimously in 2005 and came into force in 2006. It was meant to modernize how the Canadian government takes care of its veterans, but veterans of Afghanistan are becoming increasingly outspoken in their criticisms of the legislation and how its being managed by Veterans Affairs Canada.
Parliament passed some revisions to the New Veterans Charter in 2011, but Veterans Affairs Minister Julian Fantino (Vaughan, Ont.) asked that the House Veterans Affairs Committee conduct a statutory review of the legislation in September.
The review comes at a time of crisis for veterans of Canada’s mission in Afghanistan.
Four Canadian Forces service members who served in the conflict committed suicide in the last week of November.
A 2011 Library of Parliament report on Post-traumatic Stress Disorder found that 42.5 per cent of veterans that are receiving care on the New Veterans Charter have PTSD, and estimated that between 25,000 and 35,000 CAF members will be released between 2011 and 2016. The report notes that individuals with PTSD are at a higher risk of “suicidal ideation” if they experience depression or return to combat.
“To meet the anticipated needs of the thousands of service personnel who will become veterans over the coming years, the services introduced over the past 10 years will need to be made available on an even broader scale,” the report observes.
A 2011 Statistics Canada report looked at the cause of death for 2,620 males and 204 females who served in the Canadian Forces between 1972 and 2006.
The report found that 696, or 26.6 per cent, of the male deaths, and 29, or 14 per cent, of the female deaths were the result of suicide.
The report observes that individuals with some military career are 45 per cent more likely to die as a result of suicide than the general public.
The Senate Veterans Affairs Subcommittee also met last week to hear from Veterans Affairs ombudsman Guy Parent, whose latest annual report calls for an overhaul of the new benefits system to ensure that disabled veterans receive ongoing compensation and have greater access to vocational training and tuition reimbursement.
Mr. Parent told committee members that he was concerned with “the degradation of services” under the New Veterans Charter and said that there needed to be a much better effort by Veterans Affairs and the federal government to reach out to veterans of Afghanistan.
Quebec Liberal Senator Roméo Dallaire, chair of the Senate Veterans Affairs Subcommittee, told The Hill Times that the New Veterans Charter is “philosophically different” from the Pension Act that previously applied to veterans.
“It’s essentially telling people, ‘We’re giving you a sort of insurance policy—workers compensation—but we expect you to get off your ass and sort yourself out,’ while the Pension Act and old Veteran’s Charter from 1943 said, ‘We see a covenant between you and us for life, we want you to go back to work, we want you to be effective, but we’re there as a safety net for you,’” Sen. Dallaire observed. “The troops are having a hard time figuring out why all this has changed and how to respond to it.”
A retired lieutenant general, Sen. Dallaire headed the United Nations’ peacekeeping mission in Rwanda in 1994 but was prevented from intervening in a mass genocide that took place during the mission.
He’s spoken openly about his struggles with PTSD and recently admitted that he’s been unable to sleep following the rash of suicides by veterans who served in Afghanistan.
Sen. Dallaire said that he believes the New Veterans Charter is compounding the suicide problem among Canadian Forces personnel and veterans.
“The New Veterans Charter is complex, it’s got a multitude of elements to it,” he explained. “The quality of all the services being provided has not always been there because people are on steep learning curves of how to implement this charter.”
Sen. Dallaire said that the charter could be fixed “with significant revisions”—which he acknowledged was not an easy task.
He’s optimistic that Mr. Fantino has a better understanding of the issues given his previous career in law enforcement.
You have to have a minister who’s got Cabinet behind him, to say, ‘Go in there, take it apart, and rebuild it,’” he said. “Fantino wants to see how he can affect this. I think he—being ex-police and having seen his boys and girls in the field and seeing the impact of what it means to wear the uniform and be at risk—I think he has a far more determined perspective to see what can be done.”
But not all veterans are convinced the new system can be fixed.
Veterans advocate Sean Bruyea, an outspoken critic of the New Veterans Charter, said that the system for caring for Canada’s veterans needs to be designed with the input of the veterans and their families. He described the current system as “absurd” and compared it to a benefits plan designed without the input of the union it applies to.
Mr. Bruyea, who served in the Gulf War as an Air Force intelligence officer, urged politicians to leave Parliament Hill and meet with veterans and their families in their communities.
“For the Senate or the House to have a sanitized, factual debate on the Hill is absolutely disrespectful of the deep emotional commitment and sacrifice that the veterans have made,” he said. “There needs to be widespread public hearings, directly hearing from the veterans and their families. Having Canadians educated on what veterans go through, on Canadians’ behalf. Canadians need and deserve to know that.”
Original Article
Source: hilltimes.com/
Author: CHRIS PLECASH
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