Injured Mounties want full pensions
Demand clawback be overturned
HALIFAX David White turns off the phone in a small meeting room and makes sure cellphones are silenced to help quiet the piercing sounds that have afflicted him since he was an RCMP officer in Nova Scotia and Newfoundland.
It’s a ritual he has to go through routinely to deal with the constant ringing and acute sound sensitivity in his ears since his hearing was damaged in two service-related accidents in the mid-1990s and 2001. The incidents led to his involuntary release from the RCMP in 2002, for which he was given a pain and suffering pension from Veterans Affairs and long-term disability for several hearing impairments linked to his 30 years of service.
But White and other injured RCMP members say most of that money is clawed back under a system similar to one that a judge deemed harsh and unfair in a class-action lawsuit by military veterans, but which still applies to the police veterans. White, 61, is hoping to end the disputed practice through a proposed class-action suit against the federal government, which has so far not sat down to try to come up with a settlement in the almost identical case.
“It’s disappointing,” White said. “Some of our veterans are suffering and the clawback being stopped is definitely going to help them. They’re getting older and it would be nice to have it resolved before too long.”
Dan Wallace, White’s lawyer, plans to meet with federal attorneys Monday in the hopes of crafting a deal for injured RCMP veterans who have seen their awards heavily skimmed since 1975.
Wallace, who also handled the protracted military veterans’ case, said several meetings with Justice Department lawyers have been cancelled over the last year and a settlement has not been proposed for a class that could number around 800 people.
A Federal Court judge ruled in May 2012 that Canadian Forces veterans should not have their awards clawed back because the money is not income.
Wallace says if the meeting fails to produce proposals to settle the matter and end the clawback, the group will head to court in the fall to have the case certified as a class action. He says he’s heard from about 200 people so far who want to join.
Pierre- Alain Bujold, a spokesman with the Treasury Board, said in an email that he wouldn’t comment on the case because it is before the courts.
About 8,000 wounded military veterans were awarded a $887.8-million dollar settlement after former army sergeant Dennis Manuge launched a class-action suit against the federal government in 2007.