Let’s do right by our veterans
On Remembrance Day, Canadians will go through the familiar rituals. Veterans will gather at cenotaphs. Many of us will wear poppies and pause for a moment’s respectful silence at the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month. Politicians will utter pieties about “never forgetting” those who fought for us.
Another thing that hasn’t changed, on the 96th Remembrance Day since it was made official in Canada, is that the same politicians will fall short in making sure that our military veterans are supported in deeds, not just words.
The Trudeau government has now had a full year to repair the damage done by the Harper Conservatives to relations with Canada’s 600,000 veterans. It has made significant progress, but there are still lots of problems that need to be addressed.
It was counterintuitive that the Conservatives would have alienated so many veterans, given their positive attitude toward the military. But they managed to do it.
The government closed nine veterans affairs offices, most of them in small cities, as a costcutting measure in 2013. They slashed hundreds of jobs at Veterans Affairs and clawed back hundreds of millions of dollars from the department’s budget. That made it harder for many vets to access federal services.
And the Conservatives issued what they called a “New Veterans Charter,” which replaced lifetime pensions for many veterans with one-time lump-sum payments. That drastically reduced the benefits for vets on the new system.
The Liberals included restoring lifetime pensions and better services for veterans in their long list of campaign promises last year. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau even spoke of a “sacred trust” that Canadians owe to veterans and their families.
To their credit, the Liberals have delivered in some areas. The nine offices closed by the Conservatives are being reopened, and Veterans Affairs got the go-ahead to hire several hundred new workers to improve front-line service. That’s all positive.
But many veterans are upset that the Liberals haven’t followed through on their promise to restore lifetime pensions. That was conspicuously absent from the government’s first budget. It did include more money for veterans but ministers said they needed more time to figure out the complexities of the pension commitment. “What happened to their promise about the ‘sacred obligation?’ ” asks veterans’ activist Michael Blais.
There are other problems, as well. More and more evidence is emerging that veterans suffer disproportionately from posttraumatic stress disorder and other illnesses. One recent survey found that at least 70 veterans of the Afghanistan conflict have committed suicide after returning home, and many did not receive the supports they needed.
At the same time, Military Ombudsman Gary Walbourne has urged the forces to improve the way it handles vets discharged for medical reasons. In September he reported that many are discharged before they start receiving services and benefits, sending them spiralling into crisis. These are problems the Liberals inherited, but they aren’t tackling them with the urgency they warrant.
The bottom line, says Blais, is that compared to the dismissive treatment of vets under the Conservative government, “It’s better than it was, but we’ve got a long way to go.”
That’s a useful reminder to the Liberal government as politicians join thousands of veterans and ordinary citizens on Friday morning to remember the dead of the past century and honour the service of Canada’s veterans. The words are always important; actions even more so.
We must honour our military with actions as well as words