Evidence of meeting #103 for Veterans Affairs in the 44th Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was war.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Kevin (Sammy) Sampson
For example, when we asked them what “wartime service” was, they said, “Well, you place them on active service and then we use a system to decide whether it's special duty or wartime service.” Where's that policy at?
How do we know there is this subjugation policy from active service down to special duty service if there are no directives on how that actually gets done? What are the metrics and criteria?
Conservative
Fraser Tolmie Conservative Moose Jaw—Lake Centre—Lanigan, SK
Mr. Sampson, I'm going to ask this question and pre-empt it with a bit of a statement. I want to get your reaction or insight into this.
Whatever theatre of operation the Canadian government sends the military to, whether it be a combat mission or a peacekeeping mission—you said “multi-dimensional mission” and “special duty service”, and there are numerous others—the personnel are trained with specific skills. They're deployment-ready and possess skills the average person on the street does not have or is willing to commit to. They all wear the uniform.
What you're saying to me is that it doesn't matter what theatre they go to. Their benefits should be based on their service, not theatre of operation. Is that what I'm understanding?
Kevin (Sammy) Sampson
To be clear, what I'm advocating for is this: When members of Parliament decide to place us on active service, the Department of National Defence should not then, in turn, come in and say, “Well, we're going to reduce this one and we're going to reduce that one. This one is not going to be....”
Active service is active service. I've been on peacekeeping missions, which you consider to be benign and not really dangerous. In Rwanda, I was forced to live with the genocidaires for two months on my own—with four other guys. In the context of war, it wasn't a war. However, while I was under active service, Roméo Dallaire could give me whatever command he wanted to and I was forced to do it.
Conservative
Fraser Tolmie Conservative Moose Jaw—Lake Centre—Lanigan, SK
It doesn't matter where we send Canadian Armed Forces personnel. There is the potential for danger. That's the reason we're sending military personnel.
Kevin (Sammy) Sampson
I spent three years in Italy. There was no danger to me in Italy. I was working for NATO intelligence. When we send people out of the country, we can send them out of the country on service—seconded to other organizations, for example. However, when the Privy Council and the Governor in Council place people on active service, it's a big deal.
Up until 1994, this involved an order in council. Every time the Government of Canada stripped the rights of Canadian people and sent them off to a war with guns in their hands, there was a debate in the House of Commons under section 32. The government hasn't done this since 1994. None of that is happening anymore.
Yes, sir. Go ahead.
Conservative
Fraser Tolmie Conservative Moose Jaw—Lake Centre—Lanigan, SK
No, it's okay. I'm just asking. I don't want to cut your time off. I just have one minute.
Conservative
Fraser Tolmie Conservative Moose Jaw—Lake Centre—Lanigan, SK
We get a red flag and a yellow flag from this chair, and I don't want to be red-carded.
Kevin (Sammy) Sampson
I should probably be clear. When we go to war, we're not doing it for Canada. We're doing it for the Department of Foreign Affairs.
Global Affairs Canada is the requesting agency for Department of National Defence soldiers. They're getting that request from an ambassador in either the United Nations or NATO. When we're going off and dying for people, we're not dying for Canadians; we're dying for the Department of Foreign Affairs.
Conservative
Fraser Tolmie Conservative Moose Jaw—Lake Centre—Lanigan, SK
I have a quick question, and hopefully I can fit it in.
You've been advocating, you've said, for quite a while. How do you feel about the last nine years, having the Liberal government here? It's been claiming to support what you're doing, but are you getting supported? Is this happening with what you're doing?
You're here. You said that you've not really had the opportunity to come and speak. This is your first time. Can you share a little about that?
Kevin (Sammy) Sampson
I think that my time is best spent avoiding political discussions and just staying on the issue. I appreciate your question. I appreciate the timeliness of your question, but I choose not to answer it.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Emmanuel Dubourg
Thank you very much.
Now I'd like to invite Mr. Bryan May for five minutes, please.
Bryan May Liberal Cambridge, ON
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
To correct the record, this is of course not your first time at this committee. You reminded me when we walked in that we have met, although it was virtual. When I was in another chair—I was the chair—I saw everybody in little boxes on the screen. If I'm not mistaken, we were talking about commemoration at that time, as Monsieur Desilets pointed out.
Earlier this year, the world marked the 30th anniversary of the genocide against the Tutsis in Rwanda. My understanding is that this is again not your first time talking about it to this committee. In that regard, could you share with us some additional background on your advocacy efforts that have been undertaken to address issues related to service classification and benefits, specifically for the Rwandan veterans?
Kevin (Sammy) Sampson
That is a very big question that I will try to push into five minutes.
Before I answer that question, I will quote from document PRB 00-06E from the Library of Parliament, which is the “International Deployment of Canadian Forces: Parliament's Role”. I have sent that to the gentleman down there. He can probably share it with you if you would like it. It's in French and English, and it talks about how we get deployed.
One of the things this document talks about in great detail is how successive governments failed to follow federal legislation when it came to the deployment of Canadian Armed Forces, specifically the legislation in section 32, and specifically one party, the Liberal Party of Canada, failed to follow the legislation, unfortunately. What this document doesn't do is that it doesn't tell us why or how it came to be. It doesn't give us any indications of how that happened.
What I've brought for you is a cabinet classified document that has never been revealed before, going back to 1994, about a classified mission in Rwanda that the Department of National Defence wanted to hide from members of Parliament, wanted to hide from Canadians and even kept us veterans on the down-low about. In order to get this mission out the door, there was one big issue—Parliament. You members of Parliament and the freedom to ask questions about military operations were going to seriously disrupt the possibility of us rescuing Roméo Dallaire and the mess that he was in Rwanda.
Again, the title of this document is “Rwanda: Involvement of Parliament”. It was sent to cabinet with options to avoid accountability and transparency in 1994 amidst the Somalia inquiry, when members of Parliament were asking for just that. This document and this document alone is responsible for successive governments failing to follow parliamentary process, which would ultimately result in questions being asked, like “Is this a war?”, “Why are our soldiers in Latvia?” and “Why are we fighting ISIS in Mali and calling it peacekeeping?”
In the context of Rwanda, they would have asked, “Who's going?” They would have been told “nobody”. They would have asked, “When are they coming?” They would have been told, “Not for months, we're sending our Canadian soldiers there alone”. This mission was hidden until 2019, when I told the CBC the story and I was attacked for stolen valour. The Department of National Defence didn't even know the truth about the mission and called me a liar. In fact, what that created was that it made me the most successful conspiracy theorist in the history of Canada because I floated a story about a secret mission in Rwanda and there were 400 people with me to corroborate that.
I ended up proving the historians at DND wrong and setting the record straight. That doesn't change the fact that Roméo Dallaire, Order of Canada and senator, disobeyed lawful commands from the Prime Minister of Canada and cabinet and then hid the details from Parliament for 30 years. He's still hiding it from Parliament for 30 years. The government hid for 30 years 400 Canadian soldiers who went to Rwanda.
These things do happen and, in the context of active service, of all the missions that I served on, Rwanda was the craziest mission that you could ever imagine. It was just absolutely insane. It was not peacekeeping.
It was not peacekeeping. It was genocide cleanup and cleaning up the nightmarish marketing issue of having the Canadian foreign policy for peacekeeping dragged through the mud in the United Nations and around the globe for failing to save one million Black people.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Emmanuel Dubourg
Thank you, Mr. Sampson. The five minutes are up.
Mr. Desilets, you have the floor for two and a half minutes.
Bloc
Luc Desilets Bloc Rivière-des-Mille-Îles, QC
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Could we get a copy of the document? Has it been published?
Bloc
Luc Desilets Bloc Rivière-des-Mille-Îles, QC
Okay, thank you very much.
I'll go directly to my questions.
Apart from all the financial issues, such as compensation and insurance, I would like to hear you briefly talk about the human consequences. I'm sure it affects a member of the military when a distinction is made between wartime service and special duty service.
Kevin (Sammy) Sampson
Up to now, I've spoken only about insurance. Now I will talk about commemoration very briefly.
The impact on the man.... You'll notice I'm wearing medals over my heart. This medal is not. This medal is from the ambassador of Kuwait, who gave it to me personally. Because my mission was not wartime service, I am not allowed to wear this medal on this side, over my heart, and every time the ambassador of Kuwait sees it, it's embarrassing for us both.
On a very international level, the suggestion that wartime service and the rules associated with it.... To your very specific question—and I have a second piece—yes, there is an impact on the man and the woman. It is obvious that you don't consider my service in Kuwait to be equal to service in World War II or in Korea.
The second point I'll talk to you about, sir, is the Victoria Cross, which is only awarded for wartime service. I'm not suggesting that the Victoria Cross should be awarded to anyone in the Gulf War, but I am appalled by the government's decision to not award the Victoria Cross for Afghanistan, when all of our colleagues, allies and friends—the Commonwealth countries—all awarded the Victoria Cross. From my perspective, the only reason we have not awarded the Victoria Cross is that our mission was not wartime service. That's the only time the Government of Canada has historically awarded the Victoria Cross—not for Korea and not for Afghanistan. None of them. It's because they're not wartime service.
Bloc
Luc Desilets Bloc Rivière-des-Mille-Îles, QC
What you are saying is a huge deal. You're recognized by other countries for your service, but not by your own country. Is that what I am to understand?
You're nodding your head yes.
Kevin (Sammy) Sampson
We can certainly accept the “thank you for your service” and the gratitude we get from Canadians. While most Canadians don't understand anything we do, I think they are highly appreciative.
If you want to put your money where your mouth is, you can pay for our insurance, you can call us war heroes, you can allow me to move my medal over to the other side and you could give Afghan veterans a hero. This is because Canadian veterans deserve a hero, and the government's unwillingness to make heroes out of Afghanistan veterans and give them the Victoria Cross is a political decision meant to keep heroes out of the media. The government doesn't want a hero coming in and changing opinions.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Emmanuel Dubourg
Thank you, Mr. Desilets.
Let's go now to Ms. Blaney for two and a half minutes, please.