Party of One (60 page)

T
HE
LAST
TROOPS
to leave Afghanistan were greeted by the prime minister in March 2014. As Harper welcomed them home, they could not know that his government had just instructed federal lawyers to argue in court that no legally binding covenant existed that obliged Ottawa to look after the troops.

In October 2012, six veterans of the Afghanistan war had filed a suit in the BC Supreme Court. They called their group the Equitas Society. The veterans launched the suit to challenge the New Veterans Charter, which came into effect in 2006. Under
the old system, disabled veterans received a tax-free benefit of about $31,000 per year for life. The new legislation replaced that with a lump-sum payment up to a maximum of $301,000. As of September 2013, only 148 people had received the maximum award since 2006. The average award is $45,000, $2,000 less than the Harper government paid for a photo op of the then defence minister, Peter MacKay, climbing in and out of a plywood mockup of the F-35.

The Equitas Society veterans argued that the government had a “social contract” with the soldiers who put their lives on the line for their country. Since the sixteenth century, under the reign of Elizabeth I, British legislation required each parish to care for sick and wounded soldiers and mariners. But the litigants also cited the words of a former Canadian prime minister to bolster their case. In the spring of 1917, Sir Robert Borden, the Canadian prime minister during the First World War, attended the first imperial war cabinet and conference in Britain. He made regular visits to Canadian soldiers in military hospitals. On the eve of the Battle of Vimy Ridge, which took place on April 9, 1917, Borden made a pledge to Canadian soldiers, many of them wounded:

You can go into this action feeling assured of this, and as head of the government I give you this assurance: That you need not fear that the government and the country will fail to show just appreciation of your service to the country and Empire in what you are about to do and what you have already done. The government and the country will consider it their first duty to see that a proper appreciation of your effort and of your courage is brought to the notice of people at home, that no man, whether he goes back or whether he remains in Flanders, will have just cause to reproach the government for having broken faith with the men who won and the men who died.

The soldiers expected the government to honour this promise made by a previous Conservative prime minister.

The Harper government wanted the case thrown out without a hearing of the facts, a tactic it had used against former Conservative cabinet minister Helena Guergis and the Council of Canadians when each of these parties sued the government. But a BC Supreme Court Justice, Gordon Weatherill, rejected Ottawa’s request in the fall of 2013 and allowed the Equitas case to proceed. Lawyers for the vets argued that the government had a sacred obligation to care for soldiers injured overseas.
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The justice department denied this in a written submission and is appealing the Supreme Court’s decision to allow the matter to go forward. This was odd. Stephen Harper’s own veterans ombudsman, a position his government created, had reported that the New Veterans Charter needed to be changed. Colonel Pat Stogran found that senior officers benefitted most under the new charter, while the most severely injured soldiers were the biggest losers. Stogran had commanded the Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry in Afghanistan in 2002 and pushed hard for improvements to benefits for wounded soldiers.

Court papers filed by federal lawyers in a statement of defence against the class action suit on January 31, 2014, were not made public until March 18, 2014—the same day Stephen Harper greeted the last Canadian soldiers returning from Afghanistan. In the statement, the government argued it did not have a special obligation to soldiers who fought for Canada: “The defendant further pleads that at no time in Canada’s history has any alleged ‘social contract’ or ‘social covenant’ having the attributes pleaded by the plaintiffs been given effect in any statute, regulation, or as a constitutional principle, written or unwritten.” It was therefore unfair to bind the government to a statement made by another prime minister almost one hundred years ago: “The defendant
pleads that Parliament, within the bounds of constitutional limits, has the unfettered discretion to change or reverse any policy set by a previous government.”

The Harper government’s lawyers argued that what Prime Minister Borden had said to the troops just before ten thousand of them would be killed or injured in the Battle of Vimy Ridge amounted to just words—nothing more than a speech by a politician. Ottawa’s thirty-seven-page filing maintained that the speech merely reflected the policy positions of the government of the day, and was never intended to create a contract, or to bind future governments.

Ironically, at the launch of the New Veterans Charter on April 6, 2006, Stephen Harper had offered a few words of his own that sounded a lot like Prime Minister Borden’s: “In future, when our servicemen and women leave our military family, they can rest assured the Government will help them and their families’ transition to civilian life. Our troops’ commitment and service to Canada entitles them to the very best treatment possible. This Charter is but the first step towards according Canadian veterans the respect and support they deserve.” The prime minister’s rhetoric notwithstanding, Canada’s veterans had to do a surprising amount of fending for themselves in court actions against the government that promised them the “best” of care.

In March 2007, a class action suit was filed on behalf of Dennis Manuge and over 4,500 other disabled veterans. Their long-term disability benefits were reduced by the amount of their Veterans Affairs disability pension—the payment they received for pain and suffering. Once the legal battle got under way, a review of files increased the number of vets eligible for back payments to 7,500. After a five-year battle, the Federal Court of Canada finally ruled on May 1, 2012. The court agreed with the veterans. Judge Robert Barnes ruled that monthly Veterans Affairs pensions for pain and
suffering were not “income benefits,” and that the clawback would create “a particularly harsh effect on the most seriously disabled Canadian Forces members who have been released from active service.” The judge rejected this outcome “unreservedly.” Manuge, who had battled hard for his fellow soldiers before the federal veterans ombudsman, Parliament, and the Senate for years, was pleased but not jubilant: “The money will never fix any of us, but it will provide that little bit of dignity.”

The then defence minister, Peter MacKay, waited nearly a month before announcing that the federal government would not appeal the ruling. MacKay appointed a negotiator to make a deal with disabled veterans. The agreement was reached in January 2013 and rubber-stamped by the court. Ottawa would repay thousands of disabled veterans whose benefits they had clawed back, to the tune of $887 million, including $424.3 million in payments retroactive to 1976. The rest of the money was interest, $35 million in legal fees, and an estimate of what the veterans would be owed in the future. Julian Fantino’s office noted that unlike the DND, Veterans Affairs was not compelled by the courts to halt the clawback. Still, he saw the legal handwriting on the wall. According to his spokesperson, “Our government voluntarily decided to cease the deductions as an additional action to recognize the sacrifices of Canada’s veterans.”
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Although Dennis Manuge won his case, it raised another troubling issue about Ottawa’s treatment of veterans—and critics. Manuge discovered that his personal file had been accessed almost a thousand times. Most of the access was legitimate, but several cases of access by political staff in the office of a senior assistant deputy minister were a clear violation of Manuge’s privacy. The Harper government did not seem to take breaches of privacy of ex-soldiers or their advocates seriously. Private information—a diagnosis of PTSD—was also used to smear veterans champion
Sean Bruyea, a retired Air Force intelligence officer and an ardent critic of the government’s New Veterans Charter.

The government ignored almost every recommendation from veterans groups for changes to the new charter. By November 2010, veterans across the country were protesting against the Harper government—the first such protest in almost ninety years. Sean Bruyea was the first person to publicly oppose the New Veterans Charter, even before it was implemented in 2006. His private information (including psychiatric reports) was provided to a cabinet minister and other members of Parliament. It was also the basis of a briefing to staff in the PMO. Over eight hundred Veterans Affairs employees saw his personal file, where it was also noted he was an advocate for veterans.

In October 2010, Privacy Commissioner Jennifer Stoddart reprimanded the government for the illegal distribution of Bruyea’s “sensitive medical and personal information.” She called the widely distributed breaches “alarming” as well as “entirely inappropriate.” Retired colonel Michel Drapeau described this as the worst privacy breach he had seen: “It’s despicable. It’s dishonourable. It’s unethical. And also illegal.” Backed into a corner, the Harper government surrendered. With the government facing widespread condemnation by Canadians as well as veterans, a lawsuit launched by Bruyea was mediated. In October 2010, Bruyea became only the second individual to receive an apology from the Harper government. (The first was Maher Arar, who had been imprisoned and tortured in Syria based on information from Canadian intelligence sources.) Former veterans affairs minister Jean-Pierre Blackburn issued the apology in a news release and on the floor of the House of Commons. He later called Bruyea personally.

Bruyea became a military activist, standing up for other injured soldiers such as Corporal Steve Stoesz. Stoesz was worn down by the red tape that veterans had to wade through to get counselling,
physiotherapy, and other medical care. He waited three years to get surgery for some of his injuries, and believed his depression and anxiety were caused by years of fighting to get help from the Forces, not by his tour of duty. Stoesz concluded that loyalty was a one-way street with the Harper government: “They expect it from us but they don’t give it in return.” Eventually, Stoesz spoke out about the lack of health services in the military, despite being ordered by a superior not to talk to the media or face punishment. Stoesz said his fight to get help for injured soldiers was worse than the battle he endured in Afghanistan. He returned from Afghanistan having survived three bomb attacks, but suffering speech and balance problems. He told CBC News, “They broke me in the fight after, in the dealing with my own country. The country that I fought for now has broken me.”

Other advocates, such as Harold Leduc, who sat on the Veterans Review and Appeal Board, got the same treatment as Manuge, Bruyea, and Stoesz. The board gives vets a chance to appeal benefit claims rejected by Veterans Affairs. Leduc was known to give veterans the benefit of the doubt. The RCMP conducted an investigation after Leduc claimed that fellow board members leaked private information about his PTSD diagnosis in order to discredit his decisions at the board. The Human Rights Commission ordered the veterans board to pay Leduc $4,000, including legal costs, for harassment he suffered from other board members.

As it has done with several civilian critics, the Harper government tried to muzzle its detractors in the military. Wounded soldiers were required to sign a form giving their agreement not to criticize senior officers on social media. The form was leaked by members of the military who saw it as a way of preventing them from making the case that the New Veterans Charter was not working. On April 1, 2014, the man in charge of the Joint Personnel Support Unit, Colonel Gerry Blais, gave MPs the government’s line that the form was intended to benefit the wounded,
not to stifle criticism: “The form is there more for the protection of the individuals because unfortunately there are occasions where people, especially when they are suffering from mental health issues, will make comments or become involved in discussions that, later on in the full light of day, they would probably prefer that they had not been involved.” So the victims were to blame.

Not everyone embraced Colonel Blais and his notion of compassionate muzzling. Veterans advocate Sean Bruyea described the JPSU form as “right out of something you would see during the Soviet era.” The form, introduced in March 2013, stipulates that those in the JPSU are not to disclose their “views on any military subject,” which, as everyone knew, included complaints about health care. Ironically, it had been through leaking to the media that the new policy ending danger pay during the Afghanistan War was rescinded.
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Military personnel in the JPSU would be held responsible for their comments on social media, as well as for the comments of their friends. Some people getting treatment under the JPSU refused to sign because it took away their freedom of speech. Colonel Blais said the form is “not restrictive, per se.” Rather, “It is guidance.”

The Afghanistan mission officially ended on March 12, 2014. The Harper government declared May 9, 2014, a National Day of Honour “to commemorate our service and our sacrifices in order to achieve the security and stability we brought to Afghanistan.” Not everyone thought this was a good use of taxpayers’ money. Priscilla Blake, who lost her husband, Petty Officer Craig Blake, in a deadly explosion in Kabul, said that the money used for the commemoration should be spent helping returning veterans who suffered mental and physical injuries.

After Canada’s Afghanistan mission ended, the father of Corporal Jordan Anderson, who was killed on July 4, 2007, by a roadside bomb outside of Kandahar, gave an appraisal free of the
empty rhetoric of politicians. Rejecting the PM’s claims of success in Afghanistan on the day the mission ended, James Anderson of Yellowknife told CBC, “I think it was a waste in all respects. The personal cost, the emotional cost, the financial cost, and Canada’s place in the world, quite frankly.”
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