Tories no longer battle for military
Treatment of veterans has been shocking
No federal government in the modern era has worked harder, advocated more, devoted greater energy and resources to the Canadian military than Stephen Harper’s Conservatives. Right? This is the mantra.
Even Thursday, as the government unveiled sweeping changes to the Citizenship Act, the minister responsible, Chris Alexander, could not resist warbling the now pro-forma hymn of praise to those who have given and sacrificed so much, that we might enjoy the great blessings of this land, and so on and so forth. The setting, in keeping with the Conservatives’ War of 1812 fetish, was Toronto’s Old Fort York.
There’s just one wrinkle: It’s not true.
Ottawa’s treatment of veterans has latterly moved beyond shoddy, to disgraceful and shocking. Plans to purchase military hardware — planes, ships, trucks, helicopters, the works — are a ramshackle, disjointed mess, with no improvement in sight, despite an ostensibly “new” procurement process unveiled Wednesday. If anything, the revamped system introduces new layers of bureaucracy, and will create further delays.
How can this be? Is it all still the fault of Jean Chretien’s Liberals, who famously imposed a “decade of darkness” on the troops beginning in 1993, following the end of the Cold War? How much longer can that rhetoric have any heft, even among those barely paying attention, given the reality of broken submarines, Inuit Rangers wielding First World War rifles, aircraft held together with chewing gum and baler twine, shuttered veterans offices, and damaged soldiers committing suicide?
Recent images of Julian Fantino, the minister of bluster, huffing and puffing and stomping out of a meeting with veterans, simply because they dared contradict him to his face, were astonishing not so much because of the substance — a disagreement over how service is delivered, which is to be expected when systems change — but because of the tone.
Judging from his body language, Fantino had little respect for those with whom he was speaking. Shouldn’t any Canadian veteran — and especially the elderly warriors of the Korean and Second World wars, whose numbers dwindle by about 50 each day — be afforded every visible token of respect, particularly from the minister whose job it is to uphold their interests? Fantino later apologized, while showing no contrition; he doesn’t do contrition, apparently. How does such arrogance pass? How does the prime minister allow that to pass?
It may be true, as Harper has said in the House of Commons in response to opposition questions, that the closing of eight veterans offices across Canada does not necessarily mean a diminution of service, because that work will be assumed by Service Canada, which has 600 centres of its own. It’s not efficient, the PM maintains, to provide the evershrinking ranks of veterans their own, tailored service. The subtext: how are veterans different from any other recipient of government services? Why should they get special treatment?
But that, of course, is the point. If any one group has earned the right to special treatment, it is Canadians who’ve placed life and limb at risk in the service of the rest of us. It is quite true — as anyone who deals with veterans’ health will tell you — that vets can be demanding and determined in the pursuance of what they believe to be their due. What is shocking is that this surprises. These are men, and in the aftermath of the Afghan War, women too, who’ve survived combat. Of course they’re not pushovers. The mistake would be for a political power elite steeped in weasel words to try to push them over. Is this federal government truly so bereft of imagination it cannot devise a way to get to a balanced budget in 2015, without symbolically giving veterans the back of its hand?
It would be unfair not to acknowledge the renewal of the Canadian Forces that occurred post-2006, as the Afghan conflict raged. The RCAF’s C17 and C130J air transports, in particular, have proved a godsend for the military. But let’s be honest: those purchases were driven by the war, and propelled by the leadership of former chief of the defence staff Rick Hillier. Nearly a decade ago, a plan to buy new search and rescue aircraft foundered. New ships are mired in delays. The F-18 jet fighter replacement project — nearly four years after the ill-considered decision to sole-source a purchase of F-35s, and more than a year after that plan was shelved — has yet to yield a fair, public, transparent competition. This is not efficiency. It’s chronic dysfunction.
The military proved a handy early symbol for a government determined to own the patriotic vote. Some worthwhile early investments were made. But the most recent big win, the C-17 purchase, was years ago. Fantino’s fight with veterans was as bizarre as it was ugly. The Conservatives can only hope it doesn’t prove to be one of those watershed moments that turns a tide, and is impossible to reverse.