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Ser1,240
Article Date11-05-2012
Record TYPENews
Article TOPICVRAB
Article TitleMore shabby treatment for Canada's veterans-VRAB
Article ContentMore shabby treatment for Canada's veterans

THE CHRONICLE HERALD | EDITORIAL



May 11, 2012 - 4:09am
VVi 11 May 2012 db


Guy Parent, Canada's veterans ombudsman, released a critical report Monday on the Veterans Review and Appeals Board. (SEAN KILPATRICK / The Canadian Press)
VETERANS learned yet again this week that federal agencies ostensibly there to assist them don’t have their back.
Monday, the Veterans Ombudsman released a sharply critical report on the Veterans Review and Appeals Board, the body supposed to give sympathetic hearings to veterans who appeal decisions by Veterans Affairs on benefits.

Instead of helping those who served this country, however, Ombudsman Guy Parent found — by analyzing 140 appeals of VRAB decisions to Federal Court — that the agency, in 60 per cent of cases, was ruled to have failed to act with procedural fairness.

Veterans did not, as they are entitled under the statute governing VRAB, receive the benefit of the doubt; uncontradicted, credible medical evidence was ignored and reasons for decisions were unclear.

Worse still, the VRAB failed to change its procedures even after repeatedly being admonished by the Federal Court as it sent cases back to be re-heard.


That seems enough of a shocking dereliction of duty to veterans. But dig deeper into Ombudsman Guy Parent’s report and one learns the VRAB overturns, in favour of the applicant, about half the roughly 5,000 yearly requests for review of departmental decisions on veterans’ benefits. A further one-third are overturned within the VRAB’s own appeal process.
Which suggests, as Mr. Parent touches on, that there’s a wider systemic problem within Veterans Affairs itself. Veterans seem to be treated remarkably poorly by the bureaucracy that’s supposedly there to help those men and women who served this country honourably.

Veterans Affairs Minister Steven Blaney has already ordered that all of Mr. Parent’s recommendations on improving how veterans are treated by the VRAB be implemented. That’s a good start.

But a larger question has lingered for years in the wake of scandals over Veterans Affairs’ disrespect for veterans’ privacy rights, as well as ongoing accounts of the department’s adversarial way of dealing with veterans: Can Ottawa change what seems to be a persistently suspicious, anti-veteran culture within the Department of Veterans Affairs?


(edits@herald.ca)

http://thechronicleherald.ca/editorials/95090-more-shabby-treatment-for-canadas-veterans
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Source URLhttp://thechronicleherald.ca/editorials/95090-more-shabby-treatment-for-canadas-veterans
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Periodical Issue11-05-2012
Periodical No 
VVi ContributorCJ
ACTION GENERALOn-Going