Disabled veterans lose court ruling over pensions

OTTAWA— A group of veterans vowed to keep fighting the federal government after the B.C. Court of Appeal rejected their landmark legal effort to win back lifelong disability pensions for former members of the military.

A three-judge Appeal Court panel threw out the five-year-old lawsuit alleging the government discriminated against disabled veterans when it changed the way those injured in the line of service are compensated.

Chief among the most controversial changes, implemented in 2006, was replacing lifelong disability pensions with a lump-sum payment, career training and targeted income support — a regime known as the New Veterans Charter.

The six veterans involved in the lawsuit claimed the charter provided veterans with about 40 per cent less over a lifetime than the previous pensions, which they want reinstated or replaced with a true equivalent.

The suit — which argued that Ottawa is honour-bound to uphold a 1917 “social covenant” from then-prime minister Robert Borden that the government would always look after those in uniform — has no chance of success, the Court of Appeal ruled.

“The idea that inspirational statements by a prime minister containing vague assurances could bind the government of Canada to a specific legislative regime in perpetuity does not, in any way, conform with the country’s constitutional norms,” Justice Harvey Groberman wrote on behalf of the panel. The judgment did not comment on whether disabled veterans were adequately compensated.