The Real Story of How the Canadian Soldiers Are Treated

The estates of disabled Canadian veterans have been mismanaged for decades and actually extinguished upon their deaths by successive Canadian governments since the first world war.

This longstanding, painful oversight has given rise to a class action law suit representing tens of thousands of disabled Canadian vets and their families. One facet of it dealing with the right of Parliament to change the law affecting compensation for the veterans was dismissed last July 23, 2004, when the nine justices of the Supreme Court of Canada rendered a unanimous decision upholding the right of the government to extinguish the property of vets any time the legislators felt like it. And this was precisely what the Mulroney government did when it slipped in a clause into a complex bit of legislation that obliterated any actions the vets might take after 1990 to have their property and funds returned to them. The seven justices sided with the government’s power to enact such legislation but hinted in its ruling that the legislation itself was not ethical. While acknowledging successive federal governments mismanaged the veterans’ affairs (not paying interest and extinguishing their properties upon death) “the parliament has, by enacting legislation to that effect, made the debt unenforceable.”

It was argued by the lawyers for the disabled vets and their families that the Canadian Bill of Rights should be foremost in protecting the life, liberty and property of all Canadians. To imagine that any government, (corrupt or not) can enact legislation in order to get out of paying a legitimate debt is appalling and an outrage to all vets and their families, if not all right-thinking Canadians.

”When a government sends its youngest, and its bravest into the battlefields of the world to protect the general rights of all Canadians and to stand in harm’s way to protect the Canadian Bill of Rights, then that government and all successive governments should do its utmost to protect those vets returning home mentally disabled or at least not competent to manage their own financial affairs,” stated David Greenaway, lawyer for the veterans.

Successive Canadian governments reaching all the way back to WW1 did exactly the opposite and stole what was rightfully the vet’s property and that of his heirs. And the fact that Jean Chretien pushed this issue all the way to the Supreme Court makes him just as dirty as Mulroney. How can any of these people possibly consider this a victory?

This case is ongoing despite the ruling of the Supreme Court because that ruling applied to only one aspect of the overall case. This month Judge Brockenshire of Windsor, Ontario, will be making a statement as to how much monies are owed the thousands of veterans and their families for these misdeeds of the federal government. It is expected that once again the lawyers for the federal government will appeal any payouts to the disabled veterans or their families while interest has been accruing since December 2004 on a sum of approximately two billion dollars.