The Politics of Veterans’ Grievances

Campbell Clark’s piece for the Globe and Mail about the “tricky issue” of veterans’ grievances for the federal government contains some insights into opinion within the national Conservatives about their party’s standing among veterans, and about veterans’ grievances. According to Clark, Conservatives are confident that the bitter complaints of veterans and their families about inadequate services that have been especially noticeable since about 2008 “come from a minority of veterans with problem cases.” (I’m currently unable to access his article online, so my hyperlink is to The Globe home page and not the specific article. The article is listed below.)

Clark offers some evidence that this is true. Injured Afghanistan veterans and their families founded Equitas and launched a suit against the government, and The Canadian Veterans Advocacy is another organization speaking out against poor services for veterans physically and mentally damaged by their Afghanistan experiences.

I do not know enough about contemporary veterans’ services and the problems of Afghanistan returnees to attempt to quantify the success of Veterans Affairs in treating returned soldiers and supporting their civilian reintegration. But I am confident that measuring the success or re-establishment efforts must include “problem cases” and, certainly, the injured and ill survivors of war. Canada has come a very long way from its first major government effort to re-habilitate and settle veterans in civilian life during and after the First World War. Whereas fit returnees after that war were given little more than a one-time benefit payment, today “fitness” is measured more inclusively and more accurately, and healthy returned soldiers have resources they can lean-on during their reintegration into civilian life.

Success, then, should really be measured in terms of addressing the needs of the injured and ill. This was how veterans measured success in the past, though they advocated for reintegration support for the able-bodied too. I am sure any opinion poll on the question would find the same basic view that satisfying the needs of the ill and injured was top priority, and not the well-being of the veteran population as a whole.

The wounded have always been a minority in Canada’s wars and military missions (since Confederation at least), and given the small numbers deployed in Afghanistan, Canada’s latest generation of injured veterans is, historically speaking, small indeed. But all this should lead us to conclude is that there can be very few excuses for allowing even a small minority (if that is true) of veterans deeply upset about the extent and quality of their entitlements. It is this group, after all, that needs the most attention.

As insight into current thinking on the “tricky” politics of veterans’ entitlements among federal Conservatives, Clark’s article is informative. But the apparent confidence it reveals about the overall health of Canada’s veterans seems unwarranted. The confidence may be more about a calculation that the grievances of Afghanistan veterans are “tricky” but not a major political threat.

 

Sources:

Campbell Clark, “Veterans’ complaints a tricky issue for Harper,” 9 November 2014, Globe and Mail (accessed online via National Newswatch Twitter feed @natnewswatch, 10 November 2014)

Equitas Society, http://www.equitassociety.ca/

The Canadian Veterans Advocacy, http://www.canadianveteransadvocacy.com/

Wounded Warriors Canada, http://woundedwarriors.ca/

Veteran Affairs Canada, http://www.veterans.gc.ca/eng