The Surrey native, then 24, was airlifted to a field hospital in Kandahar, during which time a friend who was injured alongside him died as Scott held his hand. Surgeons removed Scott’s left kidney, his spleen and part of his pancreas, but he had lost so much blood the doctors didn’t hold out much hope, his father Jim Scott said.
“He was really on death’s door. In fact, at one point they came by our house with two pastors and … they were really prepared to say goodbye or do a death notification,” Scott said.
But Daniel Scott fought back and soon afterward his parents welcomed him home to Vancouver — 40 pounds lighter and significantly weaker, but alive.
Because of his injuries, the career paths he had hoped to pursue — either police work or outdoor guiding — were no longer options for him.
Scott found himself fighting a whole new kind of battle after he received a letter from Veterans Affairs assessing the award for his injuries at a little over $41,000, to be paid out as a lump sum.
His mother, who worked for an insurance company, knew that this amount paled in comparison to what he would have received through workers’ compensation.
When the family crunched the numbers, they calculated the $41,000 plus interest Scott received from the government worked out to about $140 a month for 25 years. Workers’ compensation would have paid about $1,400 a month until age 65 for the same injuries, Jim Scott said.
The Scotts soon learned that they were not the only family in this situation. Daniel Scott’s platoon had a higher-than-average casualty rate and many of his fellow soldiers also had their injuries assessed at what they felt were unfair levels, Jim Scott said. When they tried to challenge the assessments, they hit a bureaucratic brick wall, forced to navigate what Scott called a complicated and adversarial system.
“We found that they had got themselves into a very dark place in their lives, constantly fighting a bureaucracy that is non-responsive,” he explained. “For them to move on, they need to let this go and they’re not letting it go because they know fundamentally they’re right, but nobody will listen to them. So they’re up at 2 a.m. sending an email off to somebody who will never respond to it.”
Daniel Scott, who was unavailable for an interview Wednesday because he is out of the country, is one of the plaintiffs in a proposed class-action lawsuit filed in B.C. Supreme Court Tuesday on behalf of veterans who were injured in Afghanistan.
They want the government to bring injury awards for veterans into line with what they would receive under workers’ compensation.
Before 2006, awards for injured veterans were administered as disability pensions under the Pension Act and were slightly more generous than workers’ compensation, Smith said. But the New Veterans Charter, which took effect that year, insured body parts rather than income, instituted lump-sum rather than long-term payments and capped the amount of compensation any one veteran could receive.
Furthermore, soldiers who had joined the Canadian Forces under the old regulations had no opportunity to opt out or be grandfathered in when the rules changed, Scott pointed out.
“We would like to see (the government) adjust the compensation program for veterans to be at par with workers’ compensation programs and if they’re intent on using lump-sum payments, that the lump-sum payments are consistent with what the courts would award,” Scott said.
The Scotts and like-minded families decided to pursue the issue through the courts, but had difficulty finding a law firm willing to take on the federal government pro bono, Scott said.
Miller Thomson agreed to do so on the condition that someone else pay the other costs associated with the lawsuit, such as medical exams and transport for the plaintiffs and court filing fees. Jim Scott and others established the Equitas Disabled Soldiers Funding Society last year to raise money in order to do so.
Most importantly for the plaintiffs, the lawsuit means the burden of challenging the federal government is off them and being borne primarily by the law firm, Scott said.
A spokeswoman for Veterans Affairs said Tuesday that it is inappropriate for the government to comment on a matter before the courts.
Original Article
Source: canada.com
Author: Tara Carman
No comments:
Post a Comment