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.
Liberal
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Emmanuel Dubourg
Thank you very much, Mr. Sampson.
Mr. Desilets now has the floor for the next six minutes.
Bloc
Luc Desilets Bloc Rivière-des-Mille-Îles, QC
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Good morning to all my fellow members.
Mr. Sampson, thank you for being here. Greetings also to Mr. McGlennon, who is with you today.
Mr. Sampson, what you said was very, very clear and extremely interesting. That said, I would like a clarification.
You say that the rate has been increased from 20% to 40%. Can you give us a concrete example? If I take part in such and such a war and I lose a leg, what does that mean in terms of money?
Kevin (Sammy) Sampson
I'm driving in a car with a member of the RCMP, a Korean War veteran and a World War II veteran, and I'm an Afghan or Gulf War veteran. We hit a mine. All four of us lose the right leg of our body and suffer no other injuries. We are each given a benefit from the Government of Canada. All of them will receive 150% more than I'm receiving for the exact same injury, because the Government of Canada has chosen to put them on wartime service or under the Pension Act and has decided that I'm only going to be put on special duty service.
To understand completely, sir, the government's position would be “we're losing money on these three, but we're saving money on the one guy who only gets 40% insurance.”
Bloc
Luc Desilets Bloc Rivière-des-Mille-Îles, QC
Great, that's very clear. That's the clarification I wanted.
I would like to ask you another question.
You appeared before our committee on May 5, 2021, to take part in the study on a strategy for commemorations in the 21st century. During your testimony, you referred to Veterans Affairs Canada's policy document 1447. The document refers to the wartime service and special duty service categories. In your words, it is “quite possibly one of the most repulsive policy documents in Canada”.
Can you tell us why you described this document as repulsive? What message did you want to get across?
Kevin (Sammy) Sampson
Thank you for your question, Mr. Desilets.
The message is clear: If you have two children, you have to choose which one will receive all the benefits for the family. The other one will receive only 40%.
That makes it one of the most heinous documents. It's like telling your kids you are going to put more money into one education, one injury and one benefit. You are automatically telling the second son or the second daughter they're never going to go to university, they're never going to go anywhere, they're going to be stuck in lower class, they're going to be impoverished and they're never going to receive more than 40% of the benefits.
Exactly, sir.
I will note that Veterans Affairs Canada's document 1447 is the document you are referring to. It's called “The Insurance Principle”. At least Veterans Affairs Canada has a document which demonstrates that the government delineates wartime service and special duty service.
The Department of National Defence has no such document. It's like a unicorn. Until we started asking questions of the Department of National Defence about how this is chosen.... The Department of National Defence suddenly just said, “We decide arbitrarily, and we systematically choose special duty service every single time.”
That was their message.
Bloc
Luc Desilets Bloc Rivière-des-Mille-Îles, QC
Did they really say that they arbitrarily decided on the amounts allocated?
Kevin (Sammy) Sampson
No. The decision on the amounts is not arbitrary. The decision on the amount of money an injured person gets is based on policy definitions within Veterans Affairs Canada. I'm not even going to challenge that. I think that when it comes to injuries, the policy people do a fair job of making sure that the person is getting the right amount of money for the injury they have.
What I'm saying is that if we go all the way back to when the government places us on active service, the Department of National Defence decides for us that we are special duty service and, therefore, will only receive 40% of the insurance benefits the wartime service veterans get.
Bloc
Luc Desilets Bloc Rivière-des-Mille-Îles, QC
If I'm not mistaken, there are other differences between the two regimes. The treatment is not the same for long-term care versus hospitalization. Am I wrong?
Kevin (Sammy) Sampson
The new veterans charter has a number of exceptional programs in it. It might be beneficial to help you understand that, when we're talking about wartime service, it means the entire benefit program for a veteran would change from special duty service to a new program entirely, which is more lucrative—the wartime service plan. As a result of this study, the committee should understand that veterans are really only interested in that monthly disability benefit. They want to make sure that's what they get for going to war and for taking on dangerous tasks.
The other really big thing, which is a big sticking point for veterans, is the death benefit when a person dies. The death benefit between the old system and the new system differs. There is no clause to allow your benefits to be carried over by your partner and your family, whereas the wartime service benefit does permit you to do that. When we die, we leave less for our family.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Emmanuel Dubourg
Thank you very much, Mr. Desilets.
Now we are going to have questions from Ms. Blaney for six minutes, please.
NDP
Rachel Blaney NDP North Island—Powell River, BC
Thank you, Chair.
I want to thank you so much for being here with us, Sammy. I hope it's all right that I call you Sammy. Thank you so much for your service, and thank you for taking the time to rigorously explain a lot of these things.
One of the things I've learned in this role is that you think you know a little something, and then you find out how much you don't know and you just have to work harder. Thank you for helping us understand.
This is just for my own clarity. You talked a couple of times about insurance, and then you talked about the pension in terms of the 20% and the 40%. Can you just explain that so I understand what we're talking about?
Kevin (Sammy) Sampson
My perspective on Veterans Affairs is not unique. I see Veterans Affairs Canada as an organization within the Government of Canada that deals primarily in commemoration and insurance of veterans benefits.
When I talk about insurance and I talk about pensions, I'm very specifically talking about the monthly tax-free disability benefit. If you want to show a Canadian that their service has equality with that of wartime service veterans, then you pay those injured the same amount. When I'm talking about insurance and pensions, I'm simply reminding you that the pension we are getting is not a pension because we served. This is not a service pension. This is not money that Canadian veterans are getting for being good people. This is because we've lost a leg.
I came back from Rwanda with PTSD, multiple intestinal parasites and parasites in the topical skin, and these things stuck with me for a decade. You don't get a pension for that. You get injury insurance for that, and that is managed under various pensions.
Veterans commonly refer to “pensions”, which often misleads people into believing that this is something other than injury insurance. It is, in fact, injury insurance.
NDP
Rachel Blaney NDP North Island—Powell River, BC
That was very helpful. Thank you so much. It really helped me understand.
In your first intervention you talked about Australia having a model that's based on risk. When we look at what we're hoping to suggest to the government...and I agree. We know, as you said in your presentation, that the Korean veterans fought for this. They had to go through a whole 30 years, and now the Persian Gulf veterans are going through the same thing. After that, it will be the next set of Afghanistan veterans. It seems to me to be very time-consuming that veterans who served now have to come back and fight this fight just to get something that respects their service.
I'm just wondering. You talked about Australia. Is that a model we should look at? How does it assess risk? I think what you said is so important—that it can be classified as anything, but the risk is really what matters.
Kevin (Sammy) Sampson
That's a great question, and that's a question the Department of National Defence does not want me to answer, because there is legal documentation out there that will help us classify missions and it comes from the organizations we're a part of—the United Nations and NATO.
First off, on the question concerning Australia, there is a Commonwealth insurance model that has three tiers. Australia uses bronze, silver and gold. Their soldiers who get injured in a war are awarded a gold insurance card—the colour is actually gold—and that gives them more benefits. They get that because they're in a place where there's more disease and more risk of death, and they're being asked to do things that will often result in serious injury or harm.
Those are what the UN calls chapter VII missions. Are you familiar with those? As a rule-of-law country, Canada will never go into a foreign country with a weapon unless the United Nations provides a United Nations resolution clearly stating that this is a chapter VI or chapter VII mission. Those chapter VI and chapter VII missions each have legal documents to indicate when we are allowed to shoot people. These legal documents are what we use to determine whether it's a peacekeeping mission or a war.
For peacekeeping missions they invite you into the country to do peacekeeping. In a war they don't invite you into the country, and you're going there to take their property from them. They each have inherent documentation with them, and that documentation is what the Australian government uses to classify its missions.
If you're in service in your country and you hurt yourself falling down in your office, you get roughly the same thing that an Australian would get on workplace safety. That's normal. When you are placed on active service and you go to do peacekeeping and you're not really being shot at but there are some risks, you get more money. When you go to war and you're being told that, out of the 12 of you, two of you will likely die today and four of you are going to be injured and that we need to take that hill, that's gold-level insurance, and that's what Canada calls wartime, special duty and service.
The only difference between our system and the Australian system is that we only ever get to the bottom two tiers. The Government of Canada always stops us from getting to wartime service, never brings it up and hopes that it will die and go away, and that Mike and Harold and I will never come and speak to members of Parliament about it.
NDP
Rachel Blaney NDP North Island—Powell River, BC
You talked about the change from 20% to 40%. What year was that? Do you know?
Kevin (Sammy) Sampson
That was the change when the current Liberal government took over. There was a discussion—this is a lesson in not using proper policy definitions—in which veterans stated they wanted the pension for life. They didn't very specifically state they wanted the monthly tax-free disability benefit from the Pension Act. They got a 100% increase in benefits, from 20% to 40%, and they stretched that over a lifetime. However, it is still just 40% of what wartime service and the RCMP get.
Thank you.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Emmanuel Dubourg
Thank you, Ms. Blaney.
Now we're going to start a new round of questions. The second round is going to be a full round, but in the third round we're going to stop. We will have questions, perhaps, from Mrs. Wagantall and Mr. Casey. We're going to close there.
I'd like to invite Mr. Fraser Tolmie for five minutes of questioning with Mr. Sampson.
Please go.
September 19th, 2024 / 11:45 a.m.
Conservative
Fraser Tolmie Conservative Moose Jaw—Lake Centre—Lanigan, SK
Thank you, Mr. Sampson, for joining us today. Thank you for your service. Thank you for taking the time out to advocate for veterans.
How long have you been advocating for the changes you discussed in your presentation to us?
Kevin (Sammy) Sampson
A lot of research had to go into this. There was a research period from roughly 2016 to 2019, when I had to go in.... One of the questions I have from you is, “Why don't many people know about this?”
It's multiple departments, multiple policy documents and some federal legislation. Then there's some experience involved in this. Unless you're able to tie all those documents together and understand that this is how the government is doing it.... The one thing that isn't happening is this: National Defence is not being clear with us. The generals in the executive of DND are keeping all of this information from Canadians and everyone else.
Conservative
Fraser Tolmie Conservative Moose Jaw—Lake Centre—Lanigan, SK
I'll touch on that. What are they withholding?
