Orrell, MacLeod jumped the gun on vets’ behalf

To the editor, Why won’t politicians just listen to what we veterans have to say? For months veterans here and across the country have been asking for a chance to sit down with Veterans Affairs Minister Julian Fantino so he can hear why we need our Veterans Affairs offices left intact.

Fantino hasn’t even been polite enough to respond. We were also ignored by his predecessor, former Veterans Affairs minister Steven Blaney.

And this week we saw two Nova Scotia MLAs — Eddie Orrell and Alfie MacLeod — talk to Fantino in Ottawa about how to solve our problems. It’s great that they are trying to help, but I wish they had talked to us before they left.

If they had, we would have told them that the only solution is to keep our Veterans Affairs office open.

We would have told them we need our own place to go — a place for us, where we can have private one-on-one conversations with our case managers and with the other workers who can assist us with everything from helping us understand programs and services to filling out our forms.

We would have told them that we need all the workers we have in our office, not one or two. There are 13 very knowledgeable, experienced and sensitive workers in our Sydney office. Not one is dispensable.

We would have also told them that we aren’t just fighting to keep our office open here in Sydney. The more than 3,000 people I marched with in Sydney on Nov. 9 were marching for veterans in all the communities where the government wants to close Veterans Affairs offices. The workers are indispensable in all of those offices too.

I hope now that the MLAs will use their power and privilege to deliver a different message to Fantino: That we need him to come here and listen to what we — the veterans — are saying.

Ron Clarke North Sydney