The SNC-Lavalin scandal could be taking the focus off veterans’ needs and putting pressure on the Veterans Affairs headquarters in Charlottetown.
A Senate committee heard frustration Wednesday from veterans’ advocates about the recent “revolving door” of Veterans Affairs ministers in Ottawa.
During the meeting of a subcommittee on Veterans Affairs, senators heard that department has seen six ministers in five years and almost nine since 2010. The most recent change in ministers occurred after the resignation of Jody Wilson-Raybould from cabinet in the midst of the SNC-Lavalin controversy.
Wilson-Raybould held the veterans affairs post for less than a month, having been shuffled from the justice portfolio after Public Prosecution Service lawyers declined to negotiate an agreement with the engineering firm SNC-Lavalin. The agreement would have seen the firm avoid criminal prosecution. Earlier this month, a Globe and Mail story cited unnamed sources who alleged that Wilson-Raybould declined to direct prosecutors to negotiate the agreement with SNC-Lavalin, even after pressure from the Prime Minister’s Office.
In the midst of this scandal, the head of a national union says the concerns of veterans are being ignored.
“No other federal department has seen this kind of turn-over and it sends a very negative message, the message that our veterans are not a priority to the government,” Virginia Vaillancourt, president of the Union of Veterans Affairs Employees, told senators on Wednesday.
“This amount of turnover has created instability for our veterans and concerns for our members.”
Thomas D. Irvine, dominion president of the Royal Canadian Legion, called the treatment of the department an “alarming situation”.
“It appears the department is being treated as a revolving door with too many different leaders taking the reins for a short period of time,” Irvine told the committee.
“The position and department is not getting the attention and respect that it, and veterans deserve.”
Senators also heard that Canadian military veterans are concerned with a possible merger of the Department of Veterans Affairs with the Department of National Defence. After the departure of Wilson-Raybould, Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan has been acting as the interim minister of veterans affairs. Some have suggested the two departments could be merged.
P.E.I. Senator Diane Griffin, who was present during the committee meeting Wednesday, told The Guardian she agreed with the concerns of Vaillancourt and Irvine.
"Veterans will get lost in the shuffle in a much larger department,” Griffin said.
Folding the department in with DND could also mean that longstanding staffing issues in the Charlottetown headquarters of Veterans Affairs would not be prioritized, Griffin said. Hundreds of staff positions were eliminated by the federal government in 2012 and 2013. Since then, some have been rehired but not enough to keep up with demands from veterans.
"What's happening now is there's a big line of people waiting to get their claims adjudicated. There's just not enough frontline people," Griffin said.
Griffin said the fallout from the SNC-Lavalin scandal has meant that key issues for veterans, such as the new Pensions for Life program, are not getting the attention they deserve from legislators. The new pension system is due to be implemented on April 1.
On Feb. 21, a report by the Parliamentary Budget Officer found that the replacement of the old Pension Act with the new Veterans Charter in 2006 will allow the federal government to save billions while reducing the benefits of severely injured veterans. Most veterans, however, could see an increase in financial support under the new plan, according to the report.
On Tuesday, P.E.I. Senator Percy Downe spoke out about during a Senate session about what he described as a lack of due diligence applied to the 2005 changes to the Veterans Charter. Downe referred to the rushed passage of the change by senators a “regrettable failure of the Senate”.
