There’s a military code that says you don’t leave a comrade lying on the battlefield. The federal government could do well to follow that code. In his fall report, auditor general Michael Ferguson has criticized Veterans Affairs for its handling of psychologically wounded veterans, forcing them to deal with a complex tangle of paperwork and making them wait months for help.
Veterans suffering from the psychological effects of battle and other military assignments can wait up to eight months to learn if they are eligible for long-term mental-health disability benefits, the auditor general said Tuesday. And Veterans Affairs has no idea if its treatment programs are effective.
“The department doesn’t really seem to have spent time looking at the process from the point of view of the veteran,” Ferguson said. “And we think the department needs to put themselves in the shoes of the veterans who are trying to access these services … so they can understand the experience of trying to navigate through that whole process just to get an answer.”
Veterans dealing with post-traumatic stress disorder or other mental-health issues are trying to cope in daily life. Forcing them to jump through a series of bureaucratic hoops is rubbing salt in their unseen wounds. If they are struggling with anxieties, it is cruel and counterproductive to heap on more anxieties.
In fielding questions about the report in Parliament, Defence Minister Rob Nicholson focused on Ferguson’s positive comments about short-term rehabilitation programs, dodging the darker elements of the auditor general’s findings.
It’s interesting that Nicholson was answering questions, not Veterans Affairs Minister Julian Fantino. That’s because Fantino was in Italy for ceremonies marking the 70th anniversary of the Italian campaign of the Second World War.
While remembering sacrifices and honouring the war dead is important, it’s hard to escape the irony of a government focusing on a past war and soldiers long dead, while neglecting living soldiers still suffering from more recent battles. The Conservative government likes to make a big fuss about past military accomplishments — for example, the War of 1812, when Canada was not yet a country — but its support of today’s military comes up short. It wears its heart on its sleeve in such matters, but it needs to show more genuine heart in dealing with veterans’ distress.
On Sunday, the government announced $200 million in new funding for mental-health treatment in the military. That is welcome, but no one is fooled. The Conservatives’ image is looking tattered these days, and the timing of the funding increase looks equally shabby, coming as it did in anticipation of the auditor general’s report.
The government should not have waited for the embarrassment of a low grade on its report card to take action. The auditor general’s report is not a surprise. It verifies and quantifies what veterans have been complaining about for years.
The Defence Department’s own statistics show that more members of the Canadian military have died from suicide in the past decade than were killed in battle — 160 personnel committed suicide between 2004 and 2014, compared to 138 combat deaths between 2002 and 2014, when Canada’s Afghan mission formally ended.
Perhaps not every veteran seeking help needs extensive treatment, but the process to assess veterans’ needs should be streamlined. As the auditor general strongly hints, the aim should be to help veterans, not satisfy a cumbersome bureaucratic process.
We have no quarrel with commemorations and services of remembrance, but the first responsibility is to the living, not the dead. The Conservatives should be less concerned about rescuing their tarnished image, and more concerned about rescuing veterans still suffering on a psychological battlefield.
