Vets deserve a better deal

As they do every year, Canadians will pause today at the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month to honour those who died fighting for our country.

The bugles will sound at cenotaphs across the land; a moment of respectful silence will follow.

That’s all necessary; it’s the least we can do for the many thousands lost in the wars of the past century. But every Remembrance Day carries another reminder: that we still have a long way to go in doing right by our military veterans.

Back in the autumn of 1945, when tens of thousands of soldiers were coming home after fighting the greatest war ever known, the Star’s editorial writers offered this reminder for Remembrance Day: “Canada’s provision for the future welfare of her returned and returning veterans should be a matter of constant concern. The dead are honoured by honouring their surviving comrades.”

More than seven decades later, those words still ring true. Even now, we haven’t done all we should for our veterans, especially those who return injured in body or mind.

The Trudeau government and its (relatively) new veterans affairs minister, Seamus O’Regan, need to take this on board.

The government made a good start with veterans when it took office two years ago, but there’s growing concern among vets that it won’t deliver fully on the prime minister’s pledge to honour what he pointedly called the “sacred trust” that Canada owes to its veterans and their families.

On the positive side, the Liberals did undo much of the worst damage wrought by the Harper government to relations with Canada’s more than 600,000 vets.

They reopened nine veterans affairs offices, mostly in small cities, shuttered under the Conservatives. They restored hundreds of millions of dollars to the department’s budget and hired hundreds of workers to improve front-line service. Vets were happy.

The government has also taken an important step on one of the touchiest issues — the toll of suicide among veterans.

In early October, O’Regan and Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan unveiled a plan aimed at preventing more veterans and military personnel from taking their own lives.

Most importantly, it will collect better information on the scope of the problem with Statistics Canada reporting for the first time on the rate of suicide among vets across the country.

That should at least make it easier to direct help where it’s needed most.

On another front, the government is dragging its heels. Advocates have been warning for years that the number of homeless vets has been soaring, hinting at problems like addiction and lingering trauma.

The government has promised to come up with a strategy on that this fall, but so far veterans are still waiting.

The biggest issue the government must face, however, stems from apromise the Liberals made during the 2015 federal election as part of Trudeau’s “sacred trust” pledge to veterans. The prime minister campaigned on bringing back lifelong pensions for injured soldiers, something the Harper government abolished in 2006 in return for lump-sum payments that many vets argued were grossly inadequate.

The Conservatives went so far as to fight a group of injured veterans in court, resisting their attempt to restore lifetime pensions. And once elected, the Trudeau government has continued that court battle.

The prime minister’s repeated pledge to bring back the old pension system did not appear in the Liberals’ first budget, nor in its second last spring. And now there’s rising concern among veterans’ groups that the government won’t carry through on its promise, at least not completely.

The original promise in the Liberal campaign platform was to “re-establish lifelong pensions as an option for our injured veterans.”

Some suspect that once the government finally comes forward with its plan, it will amount simply to taking the lump-sum payment that vets are now entitled to and turning it into monthly payments.

The maximum for seriously wounded vets is now $360,000, which would translate into a monthly pension of $1,000 over 30 years.

That would fall far short of what’s needed, considering the sacrifice of many veterans and the catastrophic injuries that some have suffered.

It would not live up to the prime minister’s “sacred trust” rhetoric, nor to the promises on which his party campaigned.

This is basic stuff. If the country finds it worthwhile to send soldiers, sailors and airmen in harm’s way, then it must not skimp on its duty of caring for them properly when they come home.

On Remembrance Day in 1945, the Star’s editorialists observed that “the dead are past help. The living should not be denied it.” On this Nov. 11, the government should take that truth to heart.

If the country finds it worthwhile to send soldiers, sailors and airmen in harm’s way, then it must not skimp on its duty of caring for them properly when they come home