‘Absolute travesty’

Political outrage is building over Veterans Affairs Canada’s decision to pay for the PTSD treatment of a Halifax man convicted of strangling an off-duty police officer and using a compost bin to dispose of her body.

“This is an absolute travesty as far as I’m concerned,” federal Conservative shadow critic Phil McColeman said Wednesday.

He called on Veterans Affairs Minister Seamus O’Regan to “please step in now and address this outrage,” while another Conservative MP, Erin O’Toole, called the department’s help for Christopher Garnier an “outrage of the highest order.”

Garnier was convicted in December of second-degree murder and interfering with a dead body in the September 2015 death of 36-year-old Catherine Campbell, an off-duty Truro police officer.

At a court hearing this month, Crown lawyer Christine Driscoll confirmed Garnier is being seen by a private psychologist, and that Veterans Affairs is covering the cost because his father is a veteran who has also been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder.

McColeman said while he can only speculate about what went into the decision, he wonders want kind of scrutiny was applied in this case.

“I want him (O’Regan) to intervene,” said McColeman.

“In many cases that I’ve dealt with representing veterans from my own riding over the years, there’s discretion that’s often used at the upper management levels of Veterans Affairs,” he said. “Whatever happened I think the minister owes us an explanation.”

In a statement Tuesday, Veterans Affairs confirmed relatives of veterans are eligible to apply for PTSD treatment.

The department also said counselling and other services can be offered to relatives when it is determined such a move will help veterans achieve their rehabilitation goals.

But McColeman said there are programs available within the federal penal system, which he said should be dealing with Garnier’s case.

“The majority of them deal with mental health issues and PTSD is one of them.”

McColeman’s point was reiterated in Nova Scotia, where the interim leader of the provincial Tories also issued a statement saying she’s “outraged” by the federal department’s decision to help Garnier. Karla MacFarlane called it a “slap in the face” to veterans and who often have to fight to access the services they need. Stephen Matier, left, president of Maritime Launch Services, and Maksym Degtiarov, chief designer of the launch vehicle at the Yuzhnoye Design Bureau, talk with reporters at a meeting of the proposed Canso, N.S., Spaceport project team in Dartmouth, N.S., last year.

Government experts have raised environmental concerns over a proposal to open Canada’s only commercial spaceport near the small community of Canso, N.S.

Documents released by the province detail numerous questions about the proposal commissioned by the Canso Spaceport Facility, a proposed 20-hectare site aimed at attracting firms that want to put satellites into orbit.

The project’s backer, Maritime Launch Services, was recently informed by Nova Scotia’s environment minister it must address a number of concerns before it can proceed with the project.

In the documents provided Wednesday, Neil Morehouse, a manager in the province’s Environment Department, says there is little in the proposal addressing how an explosion, crash or fuel leak would affect the nearby Canso Coastal Barrens Wilderness Area.

Morehouse says a spill would “destroy the impacted ecosystems with no chance of recovery within the next several hundred years.”

He says soils in that area are very thin and because of the wet, cold climate they have taken centuries to form.

According to the Maritime Launch Services proposal, the rockets would use nitrogen tetroxide and unsymmetrical dimenthyl hydrazine, or UDH, for the second portion of their launch into the atmosphere.

A letter from the Defence Department says the military “does not have sufficient knowledge” to assess the impacts of an accidental discharge of the UDH on the land or surface water, but “suggests an assessment should be completed.”

Chuck McKenna, a manager with the resource management unit of the provincial Environment Department, says detailed plans on how dangerous goods will be stored and handled weren’t provided.