Matt Gurney: Veterans let down equally by Conservatives and Liberals
Matt Gurney November 4, 2010 – 8:43 am
Captain Krzysztof Stachura, Canadian Forces Combat Camera/ DND
A Canadian forces engineer patrols a grape field in Kandahar province.
After years of turning the Canadian Forces into a shell of a combat force, trotting them out a handful of peacekeepers at a time to ingratiate themselves to the international community, the Liberals don’t have a lot of credibility on matters relating to national defence. During his tenure as prime minister, Paul Martin made some small effort to begin to reverse the damage his party had done to the military, but as evidenced by Michael Ignatieff’s eagerness to scrap the worthy F-35 purchase to score a few political points, it’s clear that to the Liberal party, the Canadian Armed Forces are an abstract political issue without any real inherent value or worth, to be used and abused as needed to meet other, more pressing policy goals.
The Conservatives have done better. Not as well as they should have, but they have given the military better tools and far more respect. But when it comes to how both parties treat veterans, particularly wounded soldiers, both major parties should be embarrassed. The attempts by both Liberals and Conservatives to pin the mess that is Veterans Affairs on each other are embarrassing. They need to stop.
The problems stem from 2006, when the New Veteran’s Charter (NVC) was instituted by the federal government. Among the charter’s many changes was a move away from life-time support for wounded veterans in favour of an upfront lump-sum payment instead of a continuing pension. There were obvious problems with this approach from the beginning — $250,000, the maximum possible, isn’t a lot to offer a soldier left permanently disabled. Further, someone suffering from PTSD, and possibly related substance abuse and impulse control issues, shouldn’t be given a lump sum and a pat on the back before being told that the government’s responsibility is at an end. Don’t spend it all in one place, soldier.
It gets worse. Take the case of Dennis Manuge. After breaking his back in an accident while on duty, he was discharged and given long-term disability, but found that his veterans’ pension was being deducted from his disability payments, despite there being no connection between the two programs. (No other government employee has their pension deducted from disability payments). Or consider Sean Bruyea, a veteran whose confidential medical files were circulated freely amongst government officials and bureaucrats, in complete violation of Bruyea’s right to privacy, after he was publicly critical of Veterans Affairs and the NVC. There are many more stories like those of Manuge and Bruyea, ranging from poor service to outright abuses of political power.
Veterans Affairs is, put bluntly, a disaster. And how has the government responded to this crisis? They’re blaming the Liberals, of course.
“This new charter was adopted under the Liberal government’s rein and not ours,” [Veterans Affairs Minister Jean-Pierre Blackburn] told the House of Commons. “I don’t know what they meant to do, whether they meant to save at the expense of our veterans, but that is not our intention.”
Not so fast there, champ.
Yes, it’s true that the Liberals originally introduced the NVC. But the Conservatives voted for it in the House and Senate in a deal with their Liberal counterparts struck by Stephen Harper and Paul Martin to salvage the plan, which had been threatened by the instability of a minority parliament. So nice try, Mr. Blackburn, but passing the buck on something that your party supported in both chambers, as part of a deal with the Liberals, doesn’t fly. And that was four years ago. If it’s as big a Liberal-caused disaster as the Tories would have us believe, exactly how much longer did they expect veterans to wait until they got around to fixing it?
The NVC was intended to modernize a system that was deemed obsolete, a relic of the world wars. But it has failed to serve the needs of our veterans, and has become a political liability and public relations nightmare for a government keen to show off how much it loves the military. It would be nice if the Liberals and Conservatives could unite on this issue, admit that well-intentioned mistakes were made and immediately agree to reform Veterans Affairs. Instead, they’d rather play the blame game, leaving veterans out in the cold rather than risk a damaging sound bite. This coming Remembrance Day, both parties should recommit themselves to serving some of our finest citizens. The disgrace of the last four four years has gone on long enough.
National Post
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