I see that the DVA is undergoing structural changes! Well I cetainly hope the decrease in staff or services does not harm our youngest group of Veterans.This article by Peter Worthington a Veteran of the Korean war is very apropos:
Courtesy PPCLI Association
D.D. (Dell) Blakney, CD1 visit www.thepointsman.ca
Don’t abandon vets
Slashing Veterans Affairs a disservice to those who can’t be thanked enough
By PETER WORTHINGTON, QMI Agency
Last Updated: July 26, 2010 12:00am
With minimum public attention, there seems a plan afoot to curb, cut or even eliminate Veterans Affairs Canada (VAC), which has been sort of a comfort blanket — even umbilical cord — for many Second World War and Korean veterans in old age.
Veterans Affairs Minister Jean-Pierre Blackburn has confirmed that downsizing is being discussed, but just how is unclear. Certainly the number of Second World War and Korean vets is rapidly decreasing — maybe down to about 150,000 from the peak of well over a million in uniform in the Second World War.
That doesn’t mean much, since those who need VAC are old-timers, many with debilities that require full-time care, and others with war wounds that need an advocate fighting for them in the halls of bureaucracy.
If the $3.5 billion that goes to Veterans Affairs is too high, then cut the VAC staff, as required. Don’t send so many staff on reunion pilgrimages and such.
Talk to veterans, and you’ll find that those with disability pensions have often had to fight and lobby to get them — and not just survivors of the Second World War. Many who’ve been injured on UN peacekeeping missions have had to struggle to get compensation.
In some cases, a 10% disability pension has had to be argued up.
Lobbying is useless if there’s no one who will respond. That VAC has been open to be persuaded is a tribute to the department.
Minister Blackburn’s observation that VAC clientele is shrinking is only true in total numbers. Reality is that soldiers today are surviving with horrendous injuries that would have been fatal in the Second World War or Korea.
And while old vets get decent treatment today, it wasn’t always this way. Progressively, treatment of vets improved. It’s the wounded from Afghanistan who tend to be sidelined today, and that’s another horror.
As the saying goes, theirs is a debt that can never be repaid.
Cliches and platitudes aside, young men who’ve lost limbs or endured life-altering injuries that would have killed them in past wars deserve everything the country can do for them. Whether they ask for help or not — and many are reluctant to even ask, much less demand — it is Canada’s duty to be there for them.
Reducing the size and scope of Veterans Affairs may be in order — but not as a means of economizing, as a succession of past governments have done with the military budget by cutting and trimming it, year after year, and expecting the military to maintain its standards and competence.
Integrating VAC into some other department — human resources or health or even DND — would be a mistake. More than a mistake. Wrong. That would ensure that veterans should get short shrift.
Canada has got to maintain a separate department dedicated to the welfare and well-being of those who once wore their country’s uniform. It’s that simple.
Costs rise
The former commissioner of prisons, Keith Coulter, has assessed the veterans’ situation with an eye to cutting costs as the number of veterans decline, yet expenditures seem to rise. The concern is real, but costs seem to constantly rise.
That’s bureaucracy.
There are some 1,000 wounded veterans from Afghanistan who someday may require VAC’s good offices. Possibly, double that number, with no visible injuries, may increasingly need help.
Veterans are the sole priority of Veterans Affairs. The Canadian people understand this and endorse it, so should the government. Tamper with VAC at your peril.
Wearing Red on Fridays is a symbol of our support for our TROOPS.
Nil Sine Labore
Robby
