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PERIODICAL - (Nov, 2006) |
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Issue No: 200610 |
VVi is for you, all veterans, regardless of whether you belong to a veteran organization or not. VVi is a distribution centre, a conduit for making sure that the information you need as a veteran is there for you in a timely fashion. Our aim is to provide a forum for all Canadian veterans, serving members and their families to have access to information pertaining to veteran rights. VVi is an independent site, not associated with any governmental department, agency or veteran organization. VeteranVoice.info is maintained by independent contributions.
S.O.S.
from Disabled Veterans Left on the Field of Battle by Conservative
Government As a physically
disabled Veteran of the Canadian Forces I am writing to you in
desperation. We (Veterans) want to educate you on the daily struggles we
have to endure as we try to repair our lives and heal from mental,
emotional, and physical wounds incurred during service to our great
country. Every month thousands
of us medically released and former members of the Canadian Forces and
R.C.M.P. have, or had our Long Term Disability (LTD) payments through
Service Income Security Insurance Plan (SISIP) reduced by
the amounts of our Veterans Affairs Canada (VAC) Disability Pensions,
military service pension, and Canada pensions. You should know that our
LTD payments last for only 2 years in most cases unless we are
considered 100% disabled and that we receive only 75% of our last rate
of pay in the military or R.C.M.P. in LTD payments to begin with. At
this point our LTD is reduced by the collective amounts of our various
pensions. Using myself as and example, my $434.26 VAC disability pension
is deducted from that 75% every month. The cost to me over 24 months is
$10 422.24! I am one of the least impacted Veterans. If you receive a VAC
disability pension, but you are still able to serve in the Canadian
Forces, or R.C.M.P., you get your entire regular pay, plus the Tax Free
VAC disability pension on top of that. I ask you, who needs that money
more? I think a medically released member who is starting over and who
has lost his job is better served by not having the government claw his
or her money back. I am not saying that still serving members should not
get their disability pensions, but it makes no sense that they do and we
don’t! I am grateful for the
LTD payments as well as my VAC disability pension. I held up my end of
the bargain and took Vocational Rehabilitation Training and had my
two-year diploma paid for. I am employed again and struggling like most
of us to make ends meet and live a healthy, happy life. Many of my
disabled brothers and sisters from the Canadian Forces are unable to
re-train or work due to the seriousness of their physical and, or
mental/emotional injuries. Forget that most of us are denied outright
when we first apply for disability pensions and have to claw and fight
for every benefit we can find. That fight nearly destroyed me and I am
not suffering from Complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder like many of
my brothers and sisters are. Imagine the toll this takes on them. So this is the type of
stuff we have to deal with the other 364 days in a year when it is not
Remembrance Day. If you decide to wear a Poppy and a ribbon on your
clothes or vehicle, make sure your support for the troops extends to
those of us who are still fighting life and death battles here in Canada
with our own Government who has failed us and left us on the field of
battle. Mr Peter Stoffer, MP from Sackville-Eastern Shore introduced a motion in the House of Commons on Thursday, November 2, 2006 to try to correct some of the issues we face financially. It was moved with a winning vote in the house this past Tuesday, November 7, 2006 with 154 members in favour and 111 members against. The entire conservative caucus voted against us, yet they have extended our Canadian Forces mission length in Afghanistan. Also much of Mr. Stoffer’s motion came directly from the words of Conservative members, who are reneging on their previous promises. The
entire 5 point motion below Mr. Peter Stoffer (Sackville—Eastern Shore, NDP) The
motion included:: That,
in the opinion of the House, the government should immediately take the
following steps to assist members and veterans of the Canadian Forces
and their families: 1.
amend Section 31 (1) of the
Canadian Forces Superannuation Act so that second spouses of CF members
and veterans have access to pension rights upon the death of the
Canadian Forces member or veteran; 2.
extend the Veterans Independence
Program (VIP) to all widows of all veterans, regardless of the time of
death of the veteran and regardless of whether the veteran was in
receipt of VIP services prior to his or her death; 3.
increase the Survivor’s Pension
Amount upon death of Canadian Forces retiree to 66% from the current
amount of 50%; 4.
eliminate the unfair reduction of
Service Income Security Insurance Plan (SISIP) long term disability
benefits from medically released members of the Canadian Forces; and 5. eliminate the deduction from annuity for retired and disabled CF members
>>>>>>>>>>> How you can help!<<<<<<<<<<<< If you really want to help us then write or e-mail the Prime Minister, DND Minister, and the Veterans Affairs Canada Ministers and tell them to adopt Mr. Stoffer’s 5 point-motion to increase the quality of life for Veterans, their Spouses and their Families. Everyone
including family and friends should e-mail their Member of Parliament
and simply write this sentence;
Email Addresses are as follows: Prime
Minister Stephen Harper
Harper.S@parl.gc.ca DND
Minister Gordon O’Connor
OConnor.G@parl.gc.ca VAC
Minister Gregory Thompson
Thompson.G@parl.gc.ca
If you wish to send the same to all Conservative MP's, CLICK HERE for the email list.
Dennis Manuge & Zoë and Lily "The
Labs"
dmanuge@eastlink.ca VVi Chief Editor Comment:
This is what the Conservative Party announced as its commitments to
veterans: i)
A Conservative Government will treat all veterans with respect
and will create a Veteran's Bill of Rights to ensure that all disputes
involving veterans are treated quickly, fairly and with the presumption
in favour of the rights of the veteran. ii)
A Conservative Government will ensure the veterans of Canada's
wars and peacekeeping operations receive their veterans' benefits and
health care in a timely fashion. iii)
A Conservative Government will conduct a complete review of the
veterans' hospitals to ensure that the needs of veterans are being met. iv)
The Conservative Party would immediately disband the Veterans
Review and Appeal Board (VRAB) and replace the membership with qualified
medical and military members who are capable of adjudicating appeals on
an informed basis rather than a political basis. The VRAB would be
housed in offices separate from VA offices and be in locations as set
out in the VA Regional offices (major centres). v)
The Conservative Party would immediately enlist the services of
an Ombudsman with a mandate similar to that of the National Defence
Ombudsman. vi)
The Conservative Party would immediately extend Veterans
Independence Program services to the widows of all Second World War and
Korean War veterans regardless of when the Veteran died or how long they
had been receiving the benefit before they passed away. vii)
The Conservative Party would examine measures to ensure that
National military treasures are retained in Canada as a part of our
Canadian heritage. viii)
The Conservative Party would immediately institute a complete
overhaul of Veterans Affairs Canada bringing it online with the needs of
today's veterans of conflict and peacekeeping missions. This would
include instituting a standard of delivery of services, i.e., reviews,
payment of services, etc. Note that point vi) was part of the motion opposed by the Conservatives. How many others will suffer the same fate? I
want to make a public apology to all veterans and serving CF members.
The reason for doing so is because I think that I did a great
disservice to everyone. I lost
my temper and yelled at a group of politicians.
This was not just any bunch of elected officials it was the House of
Commons Standing Committee on Veterans Affairs.
My timing was bad and the location was not ideal.
Possibly even worse was that there were no media present. I
can say that I held my temper until Rob Anders, the chairman had ended the
meeting officially by banging his gavel.
At which point I then expressed my opinion of their shoddy performance
in supposedly service to military veterans.
I then left the room and made my way home. None too soon as the alarm was sounded for security and there
was a good possibility that I would have been arrested for breaching some
Parliamentary rule. I know that
Betty Hinton (Honourable Betty Hinton, Parliamentary Secretary
to the Minister of Veterans Affairs)
was very upset by my outburst. Not
that I care much about her sensibilities as she has proven to me that she
likes to give the appearance of doing her utmost, while actually doing very
little. This
was a landmark session for the committee as the one and only witness was
Andre Marin, the former and first DND Ombudsman.
He even brought his children to see him at work, a tradition on 1
November in Canada. Mr. Marin
gave a well-worded and pointed presentation on the need for a VAC Ombudsman.
His words were well received by the committee who praised his
insightful comments, particularly the excellent answers to a myriad of
questions. He spoke like the
veteran ombudsman that he is. For
anyone interested, please read his testimony when the minutes of the meeting
are published on the federal government website later this month. He made a
very good case for why an ombudsman was needed (sooner rather than later),
and he provided some examples of what the mandate should be based on classic
ombudsman models as supported by the International Ombudsman Institute
(http://www.law.ualberta.ca/centres/ioi/). This is encapsulated by the IOI in
the following statement: “The role of the ombudsman
is to protect the people against violation of rights, abuse of powers, error,
negligence, unfair decisions and misadministration in order to improve public
administration and make the government's actions more open and the government
and its servants more accountable to members of the public.” The word
"ombudsman" is of Swedish origin, and means
"representative". The IOI is not to be
confused with its pale imitator, the International Ombudsman Association. The
association supports organizational Ombuds worldwide working in corporations,
universities, non-profit organizations, government entities and
non-governmental organizations. It
is important to understand the difference, as there have been lots of ombuds
in recent years that do not have the same function of an ombudsman.
In fact the committee members were given some good examples of how
distinct an ombudsman is. Noteworthy because other witnesses have certainly muddied the
waters in past sessions. Included
in this group are senior bureaucrats of VAC to whom the possibility of an
ombudsman is distasteful to say the least.
This may explain why Ken Miller and others have tried to discourage
the committee from doing anything more than listen to testimony and discuss
options. Now Ken Miller was the
Director of Consultation involved in the drafting of the New Veterans Charter
(Bill C-45) and is the senior VAC official currently involved with the
creation of an ombudsman. He has
proven to be a fair weather friend of veterans.
In fact the senior bureaucrats have shown themselves to be
collectively cool to all of the proposed changes that the Conservative Party
announced in the last federal election.
This goes a long way to explaining why implementation of changes has
been protracted as much as possible. It
is likely that there will be many more months before a decision is made,
which may never come before the next election. I
was attending the committee meeting along with Louise Richard and Sean
Bruyea. Members of a group that
I refer to as the Non-Aligned Veterans Association (NAVA). Now all of us have testified in support of the ombudsman and
other initiatives over the past few years.
We have provided lots of options for the committee to review.
Noticeably absent from the session were members of the six veterans
groups as follows: ·
Royal Canadian Legion · Canadian Peacekeeping Veterans Association · Army, Navy & Air Force Veterans in Canada Association · Canadian Association of Veterans in United Nations Peacekeeping · Gulf War Veterans Association · National Council of Veterans Associations in Canada Now I do not have any
information about whether or not anyone from these groups was planning to
attend. It certainly could have
been because the meeting was actually re-scheduled and did not appear on the
calendar of the committee’s website. In
fact, notification was rather obscure: (http://cmte.parl.gc.ca/cmte/CommitteePublication.aspx?SourceId=179131) The location, Room 269, West
Block, can be hard to locate and it certainly is inaccessible to any veteran
requiring help moving (i.e. a wheelchair).
The only reason that I attended was because Sean Bruyea was kind
enough to tell me. I can give reasons why I
lost my temper; alas they are just not sufficient to justify my actions.
Yes, I have PTSD, Major Depressive Disorder and other problems, and I
even may suffer from Intermittent Explosive Disorder (aka road rage).
Things are not going well for me and I tend to be anti-social and
reclusive. What triggered my outburst
was the post-meeting talk about the need for more study and an interim report
and more talk. I had just heard
one of the best presentations on the subject and listened to the discussion
during the lengthy question period (about 90 minutes).
One of the points made was that an ombudsman may have resolved the
legal case of the WW2 veterans exposed to mustard gas, which reminded me of
all the other issues that have been going on for decades with many still
unresolved. There are over 7,500
files being reviewed by VRAB, there are tens of thousands of veterans and
dependants going without services and benefits, and so many other injustices
that could really benefit from an ombudsman.
Compare that with all the resources wasted by VAC including the
expenditure of $176,000 on travel by the DM and $185,000 by the ADM.
So the senior bureaucrats enjoy their privileges while veterans do
without basic services supposedly guaranteed by 45 pieces of federal
legislation. I
was wrong, and feeling that veterans are being wronged by the very people who
are paid to help them is not good enough justification.
I know that two or more wrongs do not make a right.
What was echoing through my head at the time were the words of the
former MVA, Albina Guarnieri:
“To give you some history,
returning veterans from the Second World War were offered a program that
boasted of opportunity and security. But as they aged, the programs for
veterans aged with them. Opportunity programs were dismantled and faded into
history.” I did not believe that the
politicians of the committee had any appreciation for their responsibilities
as stated by the Prime Minister: “accountable, trustworthy
and committed to properly addressing issues that Canada faces today and in
the future” So to everyone, please
understand that I feel very guilty and embarrassed.
I just hope that my ill-spoken comments do not damage the efforts of
others to honour serving and veteran members of the CF.
I am a poor representative for you.
I do hope that among the estimated 837,000 veterans, there are enough
to counter-balance my outrageous and grievous act. Gray, P All veterans are encouraged to pass information, opinions, links to self-help sites onto VVi. VeteranVoice.info is a distribution centre and we are dependant on others to pass information. This is your site. Tell other veterans about your site. Email info@VeteranVoice.info . Military Veterans Research-Study (Medical Pensions) https://veteranvoice.info/vetsurvey.htm
Veteran Anonymes http://www.veterananonyme.com/
Reading Your Med File - https://veteranvoice.info/MyMedFile.htm
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