‘What the frig is wrong with that guy?’
Fantino ought to be thanking vets, not pooh-poohing their concerns
Thousands of veterans protested Friday as eight Veterans Affairs service centres across Canada closed their doors for the last time.
The government says that veterans will still get the services they need at nearby Service Canada centres, and case workers can do home visits, but veterans are justifiably nervous about those promises.
While it’s theoretically possible that Veterans Affairs can maintain service levels without as many offices, the government has not convinced veterans that will be the case.
A worker from each of the closed offices will be assigned to a nearby Service Canada office.
But the Royal Canadian Legion is worried that veterans will not get face-to-face assistance from someone experienced in dealing with the demanding paperwork required to get benefits.
Veterans Affairs delivers a wide variety of services and it’s not easy to determine who qualifies for some benefits. Some forms are 18 pages long. Service Canada employees who spend most of their time processing passport applications may not be able to make sure veterans with complex medical problems get the help they need.
Fewer veterans will now be able to get to a dedicated office.
After the office in Corner Brook, Newfoundland, closes, for instance, the nearest full-service office will be a seven-hour drive away in St. John’s, which will pose challenges for arranging home visits in western Newfoundland.
Most of the frontline workers at the offices in Saskatoon, Brandon, Thunder Bay, Windsor, Sydney, Charlottetown and Corner Brook are being eliminated — about 100 people across the country, according to numbers put together by the Public Service Alliance of Canada.
The union says the government is getting rid of 784 jobs throughout the department in the next two years. Departmental reports show that Veterans Affairs, which had 3,758 employees in 20062007, when the Tories took office, will employ just 2,755 by 2015-16.
If there are fewer people working at Veterans Affairs, and fewer offices where veterans can sit down with trained support workers, it’s likely that more of them will fail to fill out the right forms and won’t get the support they deserve.
This has already been identified as a problem.
A 2012 report from Auditor General Michael Ferguson found that National Defence and Veterans Affairs “have difficulties in communicating and meeting service delivery standards and requirements, particularly as they relate to assessments and case-management services. The result may be that Forces members and veterans do not receive benefits and services to which they are entitled, or do not receive them in a timely manner.”
Second World War and Korea veterans are getting on in years, and may need help in identifying what services may be helpful to them. Younger veterans with posttraumatic stress disorder can find it difficult to reach out for help. It’s hard to see how shutting offices will make their lives better.
All of which is to say that veterans have darned good reasons to be concerned.
So when a delegation of veterans came to Ottawa last week to complain to Veterans Affairs Minister Julian Fantino, the minister ought to have been grateful to them, not just for their service to the country, but for taking the trouble to advocate on behalf of their comrades. But Fantino, who seems to have some kind of problem, stood up the veterans on Tuesday, leaving them to cool their heels in his office for more than an hour, apparently because he was at a cabinet meeting.
He then caught up with them as they were preparing to complain on television, and had an ugly exchange, in which he pooh-poohed their legitimate concerns and made them very angry.
While they were still denouncing him on camera, Fantino issued a statement blandly saying that he had met with veterans at a “roundtable” where he had been “pleased to reassure” them about the government’s service improvements. He also denounced PSAC, which flew the veterans to Ottawa.
Fantino’s high-handed approach earned the Tories some terrible TV reports, something that is especially toxic to their carefully constructed brand, which relies heavily on association with the military.
So on Wednesday, Fantino stood in the House and read an apology.
But in an interview with the Toronto Sun on Thursday, he hit back, complaining that he had been set up by scheming union bosses.
“The veterans were used by the union,” he said. “They were duped.”
There can be no doubt that the union, in an effort to save its members’ jobs, is using the veterans to draw attention to the office closures, but so what? That doesn’t mean the veterans aren’t right, and for Fantino to attack them as if they are partisan opponents says more about him than it does about them.
Alfie Burt, a veteran taking part in a sit-in protest at the Sydney office, put it this way: “What the frig is wrong with that guy?”
Good question.