My name is Daniel Feighery. I've been following the Widows on a Warpath since June 2008. I feel as though I know their story inside out.
I've been doing a documentary on Gagetown and the entire spray program for two years. My family was personally affected. My grandfather served on the base. My mother grew up on the base. And my sister was born with spina bifida, a birth defect associated with agent orange. That's what prompted me to start the film. My sister received $20,000 from the Canadian government, and I didn't know why, so I looked into it. So that's why I began this process.
I met the widows. And I started interviewing dozens of people, including the minister himself, Elizabeth May, Judy Sgro, and many people in this room.
With regard to the chemicals, agent orange and agent purple were used on the base from 1956 until 1967. They weren't called agent orange and agent purple at the time, because those are American military code names. These chemicals were available commercially. They were used all across Canada.
After 1967 and a spray plane accident that caused the Government of Canada to compensate a number of farmers to the tune of $250,000, which was a lot of money in the 1960s, the Canadian military switched to tordon 101. It is known by the Americans as agent white, and it is contaminated with a chemical known as picloram. This is found in hexachlorobenzene.
These chemicals cause a wide range of illnesses that are not on any of these lists of illnesses recognized for this compensation package. I could go on and on about the chemicals, but I think that's pretty much...
The other really important thing to say is that agent white was used on the base until 2001. At that point they switched to glyphosate herbicides.
The chemical program continues to this day. The government did testing on the base and found 2,4,5-T, which was last sprayed in 1967. It's supposed to have a half-life of less than a year. How are they finding chemicals 40 years later on the base and then claiming this base is safe? Troops are training there right now to go to Afghanistan. This base is still contaminated.