CRAZY ‘GOING FORWARD’
Convicted cop killer gets PTSD therapy on taxpayers’ dime
There is cop-out written large in the words “going forward,” the very words used by Veterans Affairs Minister Seamus O’Regan to squirm out from under the controversy surrounding convicted cop killer Christopher Garnier.
It was not one of O’Regan’s prouder moments.
Catherine Campbell can’t complain, of course.
Before Christopher Garnier strangled the life out of her after a one-off meeting at a pub, however, he laid a good beating on the off-duty Truro, N.S. police constable, blackening both her eyes and breaking her nose before stuffing her into a compost bin and dumping it near a Halifax bridge.
Her partially-decomposed body was found five days later, almost exactly three years to the day that O’Regan stood in the House of Commons Tuesday and appeared as if he would have preferred to be under a rock.
Murder is a messy business at best, of course, and never more so than when it is up close and personal, as in eyeto-eye.
As Justice Joshua Arnold put it in sentencing Garnier to life imprisonment, with no parole eligibility for 13.5 years, this was no quickie murder.
“Ms. Campbell’s death was not akin to a single punch that results in death, a quick squeeze of a trigger or even the quick stroke of a knife,” said the judge.
“The life was intentionally squeezed out of Ms. Campbell over a number of minutes, and such action is not merely a split-second lapse in control.”
So, who can blame Christopher Garnier for suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) as a result of his actions.
Who wouldn’t beyond a bona fide psychopath?
What got O’Regan jammed up, however — and this is beyond the embarrassment of being a cabinet minister whose own department kept him in the dark — was word leaking that Garnier was being treated for the PTSD his murderous exploits caused him, and that all the costs were being covered by Veterans Affairs Canada because Garnier’s father was a military veteran.
This created a righteous ruckus, of course, which led to the Conservatives tabling a motion in the Commons to yank the benefit of a taxpayer-funded psychologist being extended to Garnier which the Liberal majority shamefully had no qualms shooting down by a vote of 151-127.
If anyone questioned exactly where the Tories stood, there was no need to look any further than the tweet put out by Michelle Rempel.
“You’re a ridiculous coward,” Rempel tweeted in reference to O’Regan. “You know damn well I’m talking about Christopher Garnier, a cop killer who isn’t a veteran, but who you continue to give Veterans benefits even though he’s never served a day in his life.
“Do your damn job and revoke his benefits,” she demanded. “You are a disgrace.”
Fast forward to Question Period where, halfway through, it finally became obvious to O’Regan that his department had unilaterally made an internal decision — “going forward” — to no longer provide benefits to a veteran’s family member who happens to be incarcerated in a provincial or federal jail. It just hadn’t told him.
It is obvious by the words “going forward,” and by Veterans Affairs spokespeople hiding behind the Privacy Act, that Garnier will continue to get his hand-holding time with his psychologist.
This is something even our country’s medicare system doesn’t cover, even if you have never beaten or killed anyone in your life, let alone a 36-yearold female police officer who was also a volunteer firefighter.
In Catherine Campbell’s case, there is no retroactive justice for her killer.
Instead, she has the additional indignity of being cited as the cause of her murderer’s mental illness.
It could not get crazier.