Thank you.
I'm Don Sorochan. I'm the lead counsel in the class action that flowed from the visit that Jim made to my offices, in which he told me of the various cases that had come up.
I became aware of it because one of our neighbour's kids, whom I've known since his mother came home with him as a baby, served in Afghanistan. While in British Columbia, he was ordered to go and clear some brush and trees. A tree fell on him and his legs were seriously damaged, requiring surgery in Afghanistan and Germany, and then follow-up surgery in Vancouver. He was still being kept in the military when I heard about this situation from his father.
In years before that, prior to the Afghanistan war, there were instances in the military of people who had been injured in the normal course of events, and the issue then was universality of service. If you were injured and you couldn't perform completely, there was a tendency in the military to try to have you removed from the Canadian Forces.
That wasn't the case with this young man. In fact, the armed forces were basically making a job for him. They were making a job for him at the Jericho base in Vancouver, and he was getting some level of support from that.
You'll see in the written material I've handed out that, when he came in to see me, he told me he was getting a lump-sum award of $13,000. I make reference in the material to the details in the statement of claim and the judgment of the British Columbia Supreme Court. I don't have time to get bogged down in details here, but I did want to make a point that this $13,000 that I refer to in my written material is only the issue that triggered it. At the end of the day, he received some additional moneys for PTSD. This is the thing that got me wondering how this could be.
All political parties are represented here. I've worked with all the political parties during my career, and I've learned to respect members of all political parties. I believe there's a genuine effort on all sides to do right by our veterans.
I have to say I was completely astonished. I made some inquiries of people—I'm not going to name them—people who were ministers. I asked how this got in. How did this happen? They said this was supposed to be a benefit. All parties voted 100% to bring in this new Veterans Charter.
While I'm going to say kind things about politicians, I'm not so kindly inclined towards the bureaucrats, because they basically snow people. We were told by the bureaucracy that this was for a benefit. But the research I've done shows that it was well and truly known to those bureaucrats that it would have the adverse effects that it has had, and it was an effort by the bureaucracy to cut budgets and save money. It did so on the backs of our veterans.
At the time it was being thought about, there wasn't any war going on. It wasn't that we anticipated that we would be having a whole bunch of new casualties. It was, in fact, some sort of academic exercise to look to how we could mesh the various pension schemes of the federal government. But I digress.
I've posed some questions at the front of my written remarks I've handed to you. Is there any justification for compensating veterans for injuries incurred while serving Canada on a lesser basis than the courts would award in damages in personal injury litigation? I'm going to be talking about the honour of the crown as a way of enforcing the social covenant.
In the aboriginal context, we are still working our way through what the honour of the crown means. There's no ambiguity here, though, about what is meant by appropriate compensation for injuries. There isn't a type of personal injury whose value hasn't been assessed by our courts, whether it occurs by a medical error or motor vehicle accident or whatever. The courts have assessed what the value would be for a given injury, so we don't have a big question mark about what it means to have adequate damages paid.
The first question I would ask is whether there is any justification for these types of personal injuries departing in a lesser extent from what other Canadians would get if they had an injury that could go to the courts.
The next question I would ask is whether there is any justification for compensating veterans under the new Veterans Charter differently than old veterans were compensated under the pension cheque. What's the difference? They all served Canada. It was quite clear when the new Veterans Charter was advanced that it was not—I repeat, not—to affect the previous pension benefits of our World War II, Korean, and other veterans. It was to go forward.
Well, that might have kept the wolves at bay for people who would be howling if you brought in a piece of legislation that cut the benefits to existing veterans. You can tell me what you think your constituents would have said as they headed out of the Legions if that had been brought in. I submit that there's no justification for old veterans being paid considerably more compensation than new veterans.
Is the substantial reduction of benefits under the new Veterans Charter a breach of the social covenant? On that, I know there are people who have said, “Well, Sorochan, how can you argue that this promise made by the Prime Minister of Canada on the eve of the First World War can bind a subsequent government?”
It can do that because it wasn't just any promise. It was a promise that led to our being a country. We weren't independent in 1867. We only became an independent country, where the Westminster Parliament couldn't override the laws passed in this building by the Statute of Westminster, in 1931. The independence that led to the Statute of Westminster in 1931 flowed from the victories that the Canadian army obtained in the First World War, and particularly the battle at Vimy Ridge.
That promise, that social covenant, was made by the Prime Minister of the day as a foundational promise, not of his government, not of his political party, but of the people of Canada to those who were going to put themselves in harm's way of an unimaginable nature. Remembering what they faced at Vimy Ridge, they faced an obstacle that had defeated the French army and other armies before it. They were men who were going out of trenches into machine-gun fire with almost certain consequences of injury and death. In fact, of the people who heard Prime Minister Baldwin speak, 50% of them became casualties, that is, 50% of the people involved in that battle were killed or wounded.
It was not just any promise. It was a promise made to people who then and subsequently have put their lives on the line for their country. If they didn't obey the orders of their senior officers, up until capital punishment was removed, they could have been executed. It's still an offence. You don't as a soldier get to decide whether you like the orders you're given by the chain of command on behalf of the country. You must obey the order or suffer the consequence. There's no other member of society, including others who put themselves in harm's way daily—police officers and firemen—who can be sent to prison for not obeying their orders.
So the social covenant lived on. It lived on in legislation. It wasn't just a transitory speech made in order to bring people to the battlefield in the First World War. It lived on through legislation, and it disappeared from the legislation in the new Veterans Charter. Somebody thought that taking the reference to the covenant out of the legislation meant it didn't count any more. In my respectful submission, it counts, and it's a constitutionally protected concept.
So how do you enforce that constitutionally protected concept? I'd suggest we do it through the honour of the crown. The honour of the crown has been used to give effect to promises that the Government of Canada, through its representatives, made when they built this country geographically, and when they dealt with our first nations as they went across the country. The alternative was the way the Americans did it. They had their so-called Indian wars. We didn't have Indian wars. We had commitments to our first nations, and they have been given effect to constitutionally by the honour of the crown. There's more vagueness as to what it all means in the aboriginal context, I would suggest to you, than there is in this context. As I said before, we know what the courts have valued these items at. I get carried away when I start talking about these things.
I want to suggest that you're all here as members from different parties, but you're all here, just as I was, as a member of the community. I didn't get involved in this because I'm politically active. I got involved in it because a father walked across the street and said his son was very seriously hurt and was suffering by it. I don't have any screening on my telephone, and I get calls that come through on a daily basis from people in tears, not just from the veterans, but equally often from their families. The effect of this on families is unbelievable. I can't believe that you aren't getting those calls in your offices. I can't believe there's a community in Canada where people aren't touched by this issue. I would really have a merry Christmas if the joy of the season would descend upon this committee so that we could put aside partisan concerns and try to address this for the good of your constituents.
Can I wrap up with one brief story? I was told not to tell stories.