Vedder Golden Branch 280

Global News : Thursday, May 10, 2012

A group of injured Canadian soldiers is launching a class-action lawsuit against the federal government over services and benefits for veterans.

The soldiers say Ottawa’s treatment of them is shameful, and a newer veterans charter – touted as an improvement – Is actually worse than the old one.

Maj. Mark Campbell is one of these veterans. He lost both of his legs in June 2008 after an improvised explosive device detonated beneath him during a Taliban ambush in Afghanistan.

His left leg was all but vapourized in the blast. His right leg barely hung on by a few strands of shredded bone and tissue.

Today, he suffers phantom limb pain where his left leg below the knee used to be – an excruciating kind of torment so severe, he needs methadone to manage it. He’s on maximum allowable doses of other pain medications, and their list of side-effects is long. “But I have no choice,” the Edmonton father of two says. “It’s that, or I don’t want to live.”

Campbell also has “severe abdominal scarring, ruptured right eardrum, and traumatic brain injury, which has resulted in short-term memory loss.”

He says learned to live with his disability, but not with the way he’s been treated by the government.

“I can take being legless. That’s not too hard to take,” he told Global News. “What’s really hard to take is seeing my family falling apart, watch my wife and children – my children failing school, because we’re looking at no long-term financial security.”

Campbell is one of a growing number of veterans discovering their disability benefits are actually lower under the newer veterans charter, which was introduced in 2006. “(There is) 40 per cent less financial compensation over the course of my lifetime, easily.”

The Equitas Society, a support group for veterans headed by Vancouver police officer Jim Scott, says the benefits have proven to be woefully inadequate.

“The new veterans’ charter has reduced the benefits to disabled soldiers by one-third for severely disabled soldiers, and to up to 90 per cent for partially disabled soldiers,” Scott says, whose son was badly injured in Afghanistan.

“They have no remedy other than the courts, because they have brought this issue to Veterans Affairs Canada and have been basically with presented with spin, denial and refusal that there is a problem.”

Equitas also says disabled veterans are receiving less than what civilians get under workers’ compensation programs.

The group has been working for months on the class-action lawsuit, even persuading national law firm Miller Thomson to take the case for free. A suit such as this would normally cost millions of dollars.

“I’m outraged that two young men that I actually know, were so badly treated after serving our country so bravely,” says lawyer Don Sorochan in Vancouver. He believes the government is not upholding its end of the bargain with veterans who risk life and limb for Canada.

“There’s a social contract which, put very simply, is to look after (soldiers), to make sure they’re looked after. Now, people say what does that mean? And I’m trying to say that there’s a constitutional aspect to that social contract.”

The lawsuit will cite Section 15 of the Charter of Rights, which provides every Canadian with equal protection and benefit of the law, without discrimination.

Campbell says there’s no other option than the lawsuit, and is optimistic about the outcome. “We’re gonna win this one too, because we’re talking about natural justice.”

But that success could be years away as the case winds its way through the courts. In the meantime, it will take several more weeks for lawyers to compile the lawsuit.

To avert another legal war, Equitas says it would prefer Ottawa to replace the veterans’ charter.

On May 7, 2012 the Office of the Veterans Ombudsman will release a report entitled Veterans’ Right to Fair Adjudication. This report provides an analysis of Federal Courts decisions pertaining to the Veterans Review and Appeal Board.

The report will be available online at www.ombudsman-veterans.gc.ca/reports-rapports/vrab-tacra-03-2012-eng.cfm as of 9:00 a.m. ET on Monday, May 7, 2012.

Press release from the Legion:

OTTAWA – Patricia (Pat) Varga, the Dominion President of The Royal Canadian Legion says the federal government must honour the landmark Federal Court decision regarding the Service Income Security Insurance Plan (SISIP) which ruled in favour of injured veterans.

The decision concludes that Canada has applied a substantial limitation on injured veterans which deprives the most serious disabled veterans from recovering much, if anything, for their loss of income.

Pat Varga commends Denis Manuge who brought this challenge to the Federal Court. “His courage and tenacity on behalf of all Veterans should be commended,” she says.

The Royal Canadian Legion has for many years advocated that the federal government must end this unfair practice of clawing back veterans compensation received for injuries as a result of their service to Canada from their SISIP benefits. “Veterans were there for us and now we need to be there for them,” states Varga.

This decision should not be viewed in terms of deficit reduction but rather recognizing the contribution and sacrifices of the men and women who serve this country on our behalf. The Royal Canadian Legion and its more than 330,000 members and their families strongly urge the government to do the right thing and not appeal this decision.

An excellent story can be read at the Vancouver Sun.

The Veteran’s Ombudsman Report on the rights of veterans to receive the reasons for a decision by DVA has been released. A copy can be viewed Veteran’s Ombudsman Report. Note: PDF reader is required to view this document. Its is a large document will take a few minutes to load.

Veterans need to shed their well-indoctrinated sense of loyalty and sacrifice to a government system that has neither shown them loyalty at the senior levels nor sacrifice.

Veterans Affairs Canada, now led by Veterans Affairs Minister Steven Blaney, has a six-decade old habit of keeping a tight leash on CF veterans, writes veterans’ advocate Sean Bruyea.
-
By Sean Bruyea, THE HILL TIMES-Feb. 06, 2012

OTTAWA—Veterans Affairs claims it wants to do business differently. The big question is: can Parliament, Canada, and veterans trust the bureaucracy? And can veterans trust that the veteran organizations will not just bark but finally bite when Veterans Affairs Canada instinctually and inevitably strays off the path?
Veterans Affairs has a six-decade old habit of keeping a tight leash on CF veterans. The department has failed to fulfill its legal and ethical obligations to Canadian Forces members and their families by denying CF veterans access to similar assistance given to World War II veterans.

This week (Feb. 8-9), Veterans Affairs will be hosting its third “stakeholder committee” meeting in Ottawa. This stakeholder committee involves executives from CF veteran groups, some of which have been clamouring to be heard for anywhere from five years to five decades.

Why the change? It is certainly not because of some sudden realization that the demographics are changing. The CF, Parliament, military veterans, their families, and even the auditor general in 1998, have been telling VAC to adequately respond to the demographic shift for almost 20 years following the Gulf War in 1990-91.

What has changed are six years of growing scandals which reveal a department in crisis and woefully out of touch with the military it claims to serve. The past two years have shone a bright light on the department’s inability to comprehend the needs of veterans and their families. They, along with Canadians are outraged at the payment of one-time lump sums for lifelong military injuries, the maximum of which ($293,000) is deceptive as the average payout is only $40,000. To put that in perspective, one year’s compensation package for a Deputy Minister like Suzanne Tining is $415,000 for a DM-2 as of April 1, 2010. This is 70 per cent more than the maximum lump sum, of which only 134 received the maximum in the first four years of the program.

This is the same deputy minister who oversaw the escalation of the privacy scandal from what could have been resolved quickly and quietly and which instead became a national outrage.

Meanwhile, in November 2010 and 2011 more than 10,000 veterans and supporters took to the streets in national public demonstrations for the first time in over 90 years protesting the department’s insensitive policies.

Why should Canada expect any better from VAC? Only 100 employees of 4,400 have worn a military uniform and not a single executive or senior manager has ever served. Of the more than 1,107 veterans with disabilities who have applied for priority hiring in the public service over 10 years, VAC has hired just 26, or 1.8 per cent.

The department seems to believe that this new stakeholder committee holds the key to reversing their losing game. What is the committee supposed to accomplish? According to the terms of reference, three of the five “roles and objectives” consist of focusing upon discussion and exploration. The remaining two roles focus upon action, responsibility for which absurdly falls upon the veteran organizations to “provide a mechanism for dissemination of information on VAC initiatives and programs.”

You see, in sharp contrast to the more dedicated and far more sympathetic frontline employees, the senior managers at the department have been briefing ministers for more than five years that the reason for the scandals, the homeless veterans, the inadequate programs and poor treatment and the overworked frontline staff is that there is a communication problem. This problem, according to senior officials, centers upon the lack of information for veterans, or, more patronizingly, veterans who don’t understand the good intentions of VAC denying the programs the veterans need.

One only has to look at the “record of decisions” from a meeting last fall to see how VAC senior managers are massaging the message and perpetuating failure. The department has thus far refused to publish actual minutes of proceedings. The “record” is most notable for what it doesn’t contain. For instance, VAC is in the process of a five- year modernization of their IT and online resources for veterans which in the words of senior officials at the last meeting, will bring VAC up to where it should have been “five years ago.”

This five-year plan met with vociferous and widespread condemnation as well as emphatic offers to petition that more resources be given to VAC. Nevertheless, the “record of decisions” leaves the five-year plan to go ahead as planned, over five years.

VAC is legally mandated for the “care, treatment and rehabilitation” of veterans and their “dependants,” as the government condescendingly calls family members. Yet, families are not represented as a stakeholder on the committee. Nor are any of the dozens of regimental or other veteran organizations which are far larger than some of the traditional CF veteran organizations.

Of those stakeholders who meaningfully contributed to the discussion, there was unanimous insistence that VAC implement all 86 recommendations from the New Veterans Charter Advisory Group published more than two years ago. The House Committee on Veterans Affairs has also unanimously insisted all recommendations be implemented immediately. The stakeholders also emphasized the immediate implementation of the more substantial recommendation of increasing payments to injured soldiers unable to work so as to match 100 per cent of actual military members’ salaries and expected career advancement.

Curiously, no mention of any of this made it into the record of decisions. Perhaps one of the most glaring omissions is the near unanimous insistence to see the “Keith Coulter Report.” This was a report prepared by a CF veteran, former Snowbird pilot, chief of Canadian Securities Establishment and most recently commissioner of Corrections Canada. Mr. Coulter submitted the report to the minister more than 18 months ago as part of the preparations for cutbacks in the department. The report remains a Cabinet confidence and no mention of this exists in the record of decisions.

Since that time, the original contract amount paid to Mr. Coulter has been amended from $18,990 to $24,995.25, and exactly $4.75 under the threshold that would require a competitive bidding process. Why has the report remained secret this long? Was Mr. Coulter asked to change the report to contradict the possibility that his original findings indicated the department did not require cutbacks?

Perhaps the most telling indication that the department intends on having the committee accomplish nothing is the committee’s “Code of Conduct and Confidentiality.” The longstanding complaint from the community of more than 700,000 retired and serving CF members has been that the government refuses to publish the minutes of advisory, stakeholder or working group meetings. The good thing is that stakeholders have not signed any confidentiality agreement nor should they seeing how so many sacrificed for open and transparent government.

It is quite clear that such confidentiality has only served to allow the department to avoid acting responsibly, effectively and comprehensively to the needs of the military and their families. The United States Department of Veterans Affairs conducts its advisory group meetings in the open with minutes and findings widely published.

In true Orwellian “doublethink,” VAC justifies such secrecy in order that “the work of the Committee will be conducted in such a manner as to foster openness and communication, respect for human dignity and diversity, with fairness and civility.”

Others see clear malicious intent in VAC’s actions. “The bureaucrats control the agenda, they control the minutes and they control the timings of the meetings,” explains Allan Cutler, president of Canadians for Accountability. “It is a ‘father-knows-best’ mentality and a ‘big brother’ attitude which allows the bureaucracy to avoid doing anything of substance.”

Taking VAC’s line of argument, if lack of communication to veterans is really the problem, then recording the meetings and publishing the minutes can only benefit veterans.

How has VAC been allowed to get away with this? Sadly, it is because of the complicity of the leadership of veteran organizations, both new and old. The Royal Canadian Legion was born in the tumultuous public protests following World War I.

However, the Legion Dominion Command wrote to its membership when veterans began organizing the 2010 public demonstrations: “Comrades, the legion as an organization does not advocate in this manner and does not condone this method of advocacy.” Executives in other veterans’ groups are equally complicit and often more passive.

Politicians and bureaucrats fear only one thing: negative media coverage which translates into lost votes and broken anonymity in maladministration. If veterans’ groups aren’t willing to exercise the very rights for which so many of their “comrades” sacrificed their lives, then bureaucrats and politicians have nothing whatsoever to fear. Stakeholder committees, advisory groups and councils become nothing more than paper tigers secretly struggling in vain. As Thomas Moore, in great futility, said when he defended himself before he was executed, “silence gives consent.”

Veterans have much to learn from Canada’s First Nations, a similarly sized population which has, at $12-billion, more than three times the annual budget of VAC devoted to its well-being. First Nations have been willing to exercise their democratic rights. Just last month, the Prime Minister sat down to intervene where the bureaucracy has failed.

Veterans need to shed their well-indoctrinated sense of loyalty and sacrifice to a government system that has neither shown them loyalty at the senior levels nor sacrifice. As cutbacks loom inevitable, it is no longer reasonable for Canada’s bravest and most marginalized to believe that senior bureaucrats absolutely loyal to Treasury Board policy can be trusted with the better angels of our nature. Veterans and their families must be loyal to themselves first and become their own angels of salvation.

Sean Bruyea is a columnist, former intelligence officer and graduate student of a master’s in public ethics at St. Paul University in Ottawa. His privacy case was settled in 2010.

news@hilltimes.com
The Hill Times

By David Pugliese
Defence Watch

The search is on for a fitting location in Ottawa for the cenotaph built at Kandahar airfield to honour Canada’s Afghan war dead.

But where should it go?

Military officers have already considered sites at Dows Lake, the Beechwood Cemetery and the Canadian War Museum as locations for the reconstructed cenotaph but decided that those aren’t the best locations.

Still, the National Capital Commission, which is conducting the search for a site in Ottawa for the Canadian Forces could still determine that one of those might fit the bill.

Also under consideration is the Nortel Campus, which will be the new home for the majority of Defence Department employees and Canadian Forces members working in Ottawa and Gatineau.

There are, however, concerns that the Nortel site is too far outside Ottawa’s downtown core and would not allow for easy accessibility for the general public. It’s not like the National War Monument which is right in the middle of downtown.

Could there be some green space near the old War Museum or one of the parks down there, near the peacekeeping monument?

Or what about one of the parks near Dow’s Lake, along the canal?

The military wants to announce the location of the site next year, with a finished cenotaph unveiled by the end of 2014, the year the current training mission of Afghan national security forces is to end.

On the cenotaph are 149 plaques that honour Canadian Forces members who died as well as Foreign Affairs official Glyn Berry, Calgary Herald journalist Michelle Lang, and Marc Cyr, a civilian from the company SNC Lavalin that was under contract to the Defence Department. Another 40 plaques honour the 39 U.S. military and one civilian member who died while serving under Canadian command. A plaque is also to be added for Master Cpl. Byron Greff, the most recent Canadian fatality in the Afghan war. He was killed in Kabul by a suicide bomber.

Any ideas on where it should go?

Saturday, December 03, 2011

By Scott Taylor ,Ottawa Sun

A Pembroke man who spent 28 years in the Canadian Forces is among the first 13 Canadians to receive benefits from Veterans Affairs for contracting Alzheimer’s disease at least partially due to his time in the field.
Steve Discher suffers from an aggressive type of early Alzheimer’s disease.
Only 50 when he was diagnosed, a doctor told his wife Sonia to start thinking about where she would put Steve when she was no longer able to care for him.
In fact, he was told he had about six years to live, most of them to be spent in oblivion.
Cutting-edge stem cell treatments have noticeably slowed the disease’s progression, but he needs them about once a year and he can’t get them in Canada.
On Nov. 22 Veteran’s Affairs tabbed 13 former soldiers who have Alzheimer’s to receive financial and medical benefits.
“I just got a letter in the mail (Tuesday) saying Steve has been approved with the VA,” Sonia said.
“They still need to do an assessment on how disabled he is before they will let me know the final percentage (of the lump sum), but great news nonetheless. It means so much to us.”
Last spring, the Montgomery Legion held an event that raised more than $16,000 for treatment Discher received in Miami. Sonia Discher broke down and cried when the cheque was presented but even through her tears she knew that there would be a next year and one after that. It was just going to become more difficult.
Her biggest fear was Veteran’s Affairs saying Steve was not a candidate for medical benefits like prescriptions and a caregiver to help him get around should he one day need it.
He also couldn’t receive a supplement to his salary when he’s no longer able to work.
This latest news changes all that. A spokeswoman said it was the right thing to do.
“Veterans Affairs Canada places the highest priority on making sure veterans and their families have the support they need, when they need it,” said spokeswoman Janice Summerby in an email.
“In general, disability benefits can be provided in cases where a medical condition is caused or aggravated by military service, or if the condition had its onset during Special Duty Service, such as the Gulf War, Bosnia, Afghanistan. Members are covered 24-7 for any disabilities that might arise.

Subject: MESSAGE FROM DOMINION COMMAND
RE: WestJet Baggage for Veterans
Hello everyone.
On behalf of Dominion Command, please post the following information in your branch for veteran’s information.
Thank you.

A CF 75 card, now known as an NDI 75 card, shall be issued to any member of the CF who has completed 10 or more years of service in any component of the CF or who, at time of release, was entitled to an annuity.
People may apply to the Director Military Careers Administration and Resource Management 3-2 at 613-996-7901 or 613-992-1228. CF Veterans are eligible for the baggage fee exception with WestJet provided that they have their NDI 75 – Record of Service Card with them and present it to the WestJet agent at check in.
This will enable them to check in a second bag without having to pay the $20 fee to do so.
Please note that overweight fees will apply if their bags are over 50 lbs and any additional bags (3rd bag or more) would be subject to fees as well.

R.J. (Bob) Butt
Director Communications
The Royal Canadian Legion

A new music video from the Military Families Fund. Featuring many Canadian music stars… click the link below.

Standing Strong & True (For Tomorrow) Official Music Video (HD)