Thank you, Chair.
Thank you to the committee for providing me with this opportunity to speak to you this morning.
My name is Mike Blois. I served in the Canadian Forces from 2000 until 2011.
I joined the army at the age of 17 and wanted to do nothing else with my life but serve and fight for my country. I served in the Royal Canadian Regiment. I'm immensely proud of the accomplishments my regiment and my fellow Royals completed during my time in the military.
I was wounded in Afghanistan on January 29, 2007. This ushered in the end of my military career, much to my displeasure. I was medically released in 2011. I then went to law school and have become a partner at Diamond and Diamond Lawyers LLP, where I'm fortunate to be able to use my experience to help injured people put their lives back together after being injured.
I'm also afforded the opportunity with my law firm and my partners to help other veterans, on a pro bono basis, with their appeals to Veterans Affairs or other legal matters. We also put them in touch with other legal experts if their needs are outside of our scope of practice.
As you're all aware, 20,000-plus Canadians fought in the war in Afghanistan, all of whom would refer to each other as combat veterans. As such, the designation from special duty area to wartime service, outside of any implications that may come from benefits—I think the first witness outlined quite well that probably very limited, if any, changes will come in the benefits—is nothing but a semantic change. It fails to address the real issues faced by Afghan veterans today. Again, I think the second witness did a great job of outlining what those are.
The Prime Minister of this country, prior to being elected as the Prime Minister, stated that no veteran should have to sue the government for benefits that they're entitled to, but that's had to happen many times since he has become Prime Minister.
In my capacity as a lawyer, I've represented a class of Afghanistan war veterans suing Veterans Affairs Canada and the government for failing to meet their own policies and time frames. The wait times that Afghanistan veterans suffer while waiting to get benefits is unacceptable, and nothing seems to change. In this lawsuit, we were successful in obtaining certification and are now in the appeals process.
Afghanistan veterans have fought the most recent war in our nation's history and, unfortunately, have to continue to fight for the benefits that we're entitled to from the government that sent us to that war.
I'm coming before you today to discuss changes that should have been done at the outset of a war and, as Sean stated at the beginning, probably should have happened as far back as the end of the 1940s. All the problems that have flown from there are nothing but fluff on the outside of the real issues that veterans and Afghanistan veterans are facing today.
Thank you.