Indeed, the highest demand a country can make of its voluntary soldiers is to send them off to war.
As veterans we know full well the toll of war on the human body and mind. Since the carnage of the First World War, Canadian soldiers have believed our federal government, having sent us off to a foreign battleground, would take care of us upon return.
It was, after all, part of a sacred social contract.
For decades that contract was mostly honoured. For decades our soldiers, wounded mentally and physically, depended on the government’s financial and human support to recover and integrate back into meaningful civilian life.
That painful shift was not easy at the best of times. But, until recently, it was easier.
We do not think it is too much to ask, after risking our lives, for Canada to honour that commitment to its returning soldiers.
In the past 10 years, however, we have been left far too often without that necessary support, without the hope of recovering, without a lifetime pension that other veterans took for granted.
Indeed, as it turned out, we did not come home to peace but to another battle, this time with Stephen Harper’s Conservative government.
Their shameful record of failure to properly support veterans in the last decade is well-documented.
Within weeks of entering office the Conservatives brought into law a bill which stripped from disabled soldiers the right to a lifetime pension. This was replaced by a woefully inadequate one-time lump-sum payment.
When veterans sought justice in the courts, the Conservatives spent hundreds of thousands of taxpayers’ dollars to oppose us — saying there was no special obligation by government to its military personnel.
Despite documented evidence of increasingly longer waiting times, the Conservatives proceeded to kill 900 jobs, slash budgets and close nine veterans offices. Meanwhile, Veterans Affairs managers collected more than $500,000 in reward money for cutting costs.
More of us took our own lives than were killed in the entire Afghanistan War. The number of soldiers suffering from post traumatic stress disorder has more than doubled. Yet getting timely help is very tough.
When veterans protested the cutbacks and the loss of meaningful pensions, the government tried to smear the courageous soldiers who were standing up. The government was caught circulating private medical records to politicians to discredit the veterans involved.
Between 2006 and 2014, the Conservative government clawed-back more than $1 billion from money budgeted to take care of returning veterans.
But this is not a numbers game — this is about real people killed and severely injured in the line of duty who deserved the respect and support of our nation. It is also about the pain and suffering of our families who live with and support disabled veterans.
Yet despite a decade of despair, there is good news.
On Oct. 19 there is an election. The people of Canada get to pass judgment on how veterans were treated.
And we are hopeful. The most recent poll by Insights West shows a startling 73 per cent of Canadians are dissatisfied with how the Conservative government has treated veterans. More surprising is that 64 per cent of Conservative voters in the 2011 election are dissatisfied, with 25 per cent of Conservative voters very dissatisfied.
One-third of Conservative voters go one step further and say the lack of support of veterans is a “reason to defeat Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s Conservatives” in this year’s federal election.
It is very encouraging that the poll shows so much support for better treatment for veterans, but there is only one survey that really counts for Canada’s veterans and that’s on Oct. 19.
On that day our organization, Canadian Veterans — Anyone But Conservative — Campaign 2015, is asking Canadians to support fair treatment and respect for veterans by voting for the candidate in your riding who has the best chance of defeating the Conservative candidate.
For the sake of our country and our veterans, please join us and let’s work together to defeat Stephen Harper and his Conservative government.
Source: thestar.com/
Author: Tom Beaver and Ron Clarke
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