Class Action Suit against NVC & "Govt has no obligation to soldiers"
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Angry veterans today, union military next? - National Post - 28 Sep 2018 - David J. Bercuson
Canadian governments have been at war with disabled veterans for over one hundred years, and the war is not over yet. The basic disagreement underlying this war is simple to explain, harder to understand and has been a political football since the First World War.
The veterans claim that since their terms of service came with the understanding that anyone who puts on the Queen’s uniform is agreeing to “unlimited liability,” the government has a duty to care for them after their service has concluded. This latter idea is sometimes referred to as a social contract. In other words, soldiers know and understand that their duty may result in their death or horrible physical or mental wounds. They thus claim that the government, representing the Canadian people, owe them adequate compensation for their wounds.
Recently retired Major Mark Campbell attempted to sue the federal government in the Supreme Court of Canada for additional compensation for the two legs he lost in the explosion of an improvised explosive device in Afghanistan in 2008. The Supreme Court refused to hear his case but gave no reason why it would not.
Prior to his approach to the Supreme Court, Campbell’s claim that a social contract existed between wounded veterans like himself and Canada had been rejected by a B.C. Court of Appeal ruling in December 2017. That court ruled that there was simply no basis in law for the social contract claim and that just because Canada’s prime minister in the First World War in 1917, Sir Robert Borden, had acknowledged a special duty to care did not mean that subsequent governments were constitutionally bound to follow that promise. Their reasoning was that although such a duty did exist constitutionally between Canadian governments and Aboriginal peoples, the duty did not apply to wounded veterans.
Campbell has vowed to keep fighting in the court of public opinion — meaning politics — but in a country like Canada that collectively remembers veterans only on Nov. 11, and treats wounded veterans not much better than a man or woman who falls off a federal delivery truck while bringing copy paper to a federal office, he has little chance of success. After all, both national governing parties, Conservatives and Liberals, have played politics with disabled veterans’ benefits since the end of the First World War.
For example, the government of Robert Borden did acknowledge that wounded veterans ought to be specially compensated for their war sacrifices, but when the veterans showed up to claim their compensation, the government’s clerks did their very best to deny claims, especially by accusing many of those First World War veterans of faking it because their injuries had actually been suffered after their military service was over.
More recently changes to the way compensation is paid were made under the Harper government, which decided that lifelong payments to Canada’s wounded would be eliminated and that one lump-sum payment would be offered instead. Veterans argued at the time — and many still do — that the move undercut the government’s financial liability and that they would receive far less in total than they had received before.
The current federal government made a big issue of veterans’ compensation in the past federal election, but basically hewed to the same course as the Conservatives when in power. Now they are offering a $100-million onetime payment for Canada’s 12,000 disabled low-income veterans whose payments had been clawed back by the previous government after 2013. Minister of Veterans Affairs Seamus O’Regan is optimistic that the vets will accept this payment, but several other lawsuits remain unsettled.
There is one key problem that lies at the heart of this issue: government bureaucrats and lawyers fight tooth and nail against the idea that the government has a constitutional obligation to care, no matter what offer a government is prepared to pay. So governments make promises to pay on the one hand while their bureaucrats and lawyers fight hard against the notion that there is any real obligation to pay.
In several European countries, similar imbroglios have led to unionization in the military — a make-believe social contract becomes a legally binding collective bargaining contract. No one has seriously proposed this for Canada, yet, but if these legal battles continue, can a Canadian Union of Military Personnel be far behind?
Canadian governments have been at war with disabled veterans for over one hundred years, and the war is not over yet. The basic disagreement underlying this war is simple to explain, harder to understand and has been a political football since the First World War.
The veterans claim that since their terms of service came with the understanding that anyone who puts on the Queen’s uniform is agreeing to “unlimited liability,” the government has a duty to care for them after their service has concluded. This latter idea is sometimes referred to as a social contract. In other words, soldiers know and understand that their duty may result in their death or horrible physical or mental wounds. They thus claim that the government, representing the Canadian people, owe them adequate compensation for their wounds.
Recently retired Major Mark Campbell attempted to sue the federal government in the Supreme Court of Canada for additional compensation for the two legs he lost in the explosion of an improvised explosive device in Afghanistan in 2008. The Supreme Court refused to hear his case but gave no reason why it would not.
Prior to his approach to the Supreme Court, Campbell’s claim that a social contract existed between wounded veterans like himself and Canada had been rejected by a B.C. Court of Appeal ruling in December 2017. That court ruled that there was simply no basis in law for the social contract claim and that just because Canada’s prime minister in the First World War in 1917, Sir Robert Borden, had acknowledged a special duty to care did not mean that subsequent governments were constitutionally bound to follow that promise. Their reasoning was that although such a duty did exist constitutionally between Canadian governments and Aboriginal peoples, the duty did not apply to wounded veterans.
Campbell has vowed to keep fighting in the court of public opinion — meaning politics — but in a country like Canada that collectively remembers veterans only on Nov. 11, and treats wounded veterans not much better than a man or woman who falls off a federal delivery truck while bringing copy paper to a federal office, he has little chance of success. After all, both national governing parties, Conservatives and Liberals, have played politics with disabled veterans’ benefits since the end of the First World War.
For example, the government of Robert Borden did acknowledge that wounded veterans ought to be specially compensated for their war sacrifices, but when the veterans showed up to claim their compensation, the government’s clerks did their very best to deny claims, especially by accusing many of those First World War veterans of faking it because their injuries had actually been suffered after their military service was over.
More recently changes to the way compensation is paid were made under the Harper government, which decided that lifelong payments to Canada’s wounded would be eliminated and that one lump-sum payment would be offered instead. Veterans argued at the time — and many still do — that the move undercut the government’s financial liability and that they would receive far less in total than they had received before.
The current federal government made a big issue of veterans’ compensation in the past federal election, but basically hewed to the same course as the Conservatives when in power. Now they are offering a $100-million onetime payment for Canada’s 12,000 disabled low-income veterans whose payments had been clawed back by the previous government after 2013. Minister of Veterans Affairs Seamus O’Regan is optimistic that the vets will accept this payment, but several other lawsuits remain unsettled.
There is one key problem that lies at the heart of this issue: government bureaucrats and lawyers fight tooth and nail against the idea that the government has a constitutional obligation to care, no matter what offer a government is prepared to pay. So governments make promises to pay on the one hand while their bureaucrats and lawyers fight hard against the notion that there is any real obligation to pay.
In several European countries, similar imbroglios have led to unionization in the military — a make-believe social contract becomes a legally binding collective bargaining contract. No one has seriously proposed this for Canada, yet, but if these legal battles continue, can a Canadian Union of Military Personnel be far behind?
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