Evidence of meeting #83 for National Defence in the 41st Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was know.
A recording is available from Parliament.
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A voice
We would say it in a different way.
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Voices
Oh, oh!
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Liberal
John McKay Liberal Scarborough—Guildwood, ON
I was thinking we could recommend that to our colleagues at the House of Commons.
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Liberal
John McKay Liberal Scarborough—Guildwood, ON
Over the course of a parliamentary session, we gained eight members. It's a disorder that affects many of us.
Ms. Gallant anticipated my first question, and you basically confirmed that the folks who you heard before, in some respects, have an even more difficult struggle than you do, because even though you still have to get a doctor's note that says you don't have both your legs, that they haven't grown back.... That sounds more absurd than—
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Fundraising Chair, Amputee Coalition of Canada, As an Individual
We don't have salamander DNA.
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Liberal
John McKay Liberal Scarborough—Guildwood, ON
Okay.
But it's basically confirming that particularly for the PTSD folks, this is an even greater hill to climb, and the military bureaucracy drives them even crazier than it drives you with yours.
I think it was you, Master Corporal Mitic.... How do you end up owing thirty thousand bucks? I don't quite understand.
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Fundraising Chair, Amputee Coalition of Canada, As an Individual
I don't think he's the right person to ask.
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MCpl Jody Mitic
Basically, this is the thing. This bag of papers is how I'm supposed to figure it out for them, because they're saying they did everything. We had a budget that they controlled, and then they told us afterwards that they were paying percentages of parts of the project. Whether they would sit down in a room, probably a lot like this one, and talk about it—it was never with me or Alannah. They had lots of meetings and decided that they would pay for 75% of the front walkway, which I need for the wheelchair.
I walked in here, and I run marathons, but I spent half of 2012 in a wheelchair because I had a lot of skin issues. Skin breakdown is one of the biggest problems for an amputee. I had infections. I had to get part of my bone cut out. So when I'm not on my legs, I'm in a wheelchair, much like Paul...exactly like Paul.
I even took my kids to Mexico in a wheelchair. I did not have the best vacation. Mexico was not barrier-free.
We went into a meeting one day in the fall of 2011. We've been dealing with this for six years, anticipating getting a cheque to pay back a lot of the upfront costs.
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Liberal
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MCpl Jody Mitic
I have, for a lot of it. They always say, “You pay and we'll reimburse”, except one day the reimbursements dried up. They said, “You know, you've gotten a lot of money.” And we said, “You guys have taken a long time to do this, so we've paid for storage and this and that.” We went in anticipating a cheque for $36,000, I believe—we were going to just pay off the line of credit and stuff like that—and they said, “It turns out you owe the system $40,000”, or something like that. A little warning before the meeting would have been nice. Then they said, “Don't worry—we convinced the military family fund to cut you a cheque for the original amount you thought you were going to get, and you're going to pay the system back some $20,000 of it from the military fund”, as if that were a charity. We were sitting there saying, “Okay, umm...”, and to this day we are still trying to figure out exactly how we ended up owing this money.
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Liberal
John McKay Liberal Scarborough—Guildwood, ON
Actually, it's one thing to say that you owe you the money, but do you legally owe the money?
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MCpl Jody Mitic
Yes. They threatened to take it off my pay.
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Liberal
John McKay Liberal Scarborough—Guildwood, ON
They would garnishee your wages in order to pay back the loan they've decided...?
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MCpl Jody Mitic
Well, I guess they have these percentages. That meeting was the first time we heard about that. I wish I could have brought a copy for everybody, but my printer doesn't print that much.
We thought the front walkway would be 100% paid for. Let's say it cost $38,000 to get the ramp all done up and widen the door and then do the front hallway. They handed us a sheet and said, “Look, we only paid 75% or 80%.” We said, “Okay, but that was done in 2010. This is 2012.” They said, “Well, we spent the amount of money that it cost on that. So for every project we paid for, there was a deficit coming up at the bottom.”
Do you know what I mean?
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Liberal
John McKay Liberal Scarborough—Guildwood, ON
Yes. I sort of know what you mean, but it seems like a pretty bizarre system where....
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MCpl Jody Mitic
My back door, my deck, still isn't done. It's supposed to have a lift on it for my wheelchair. That's been in storage since it was bought in 2010 because the contractor bailed and ran on his responsibilities for the backyard. Then the money that was supposed to pay for the walkway from the back gate to the deck was apparently spent on other things, even—
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Liberal
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MCpl Jody Mitic
I know. I try to make sense of it myself. But then they said, “Well, we gave you that money for that walkway.” Where? What cheque? That's the thing. There are cheques flying everywhere, and then to retroactively apply the cap on what the house was worth in 2009, when we bought it, to the project in 2012, when it finally got finished....
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Liberal
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MCpl Jody Mitic
Well, we're working on it.
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Liberal
John McKay Liberal Scarborough—Guildwood, ON
Mr. Franklin, how did you get your wheelchair repossessed?
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Fundraising Chair, Amputee Coalition of Canada, As an Individual
In 2006 Veterans Affairs offered to purchase wheelchairs for me. I think their cap was $2,200. I was offered a $7,000 wheelchair from Shoppers Home Health Care. I needed one for downstairs and one for upstairs, because you transfer up. DND bought them, and they purchased—
