Mr. Speaker, I am astonished that the hon. member for Halifax West wishes to condemn the government's action on behalf of Canadian veterans held at the Buchenwald concentration camp. Let us get the facts on the table right now.
Some countries, Australia and New Zealand in particular, opted in the 1980s to make a one time payment of $10,000 and $13,000 respectively to their Buchenwald veterans. Canada had already chosen a different path in the mid-1970s.
We opted for the payment of monthly compensation for life with a continuing benefit for the veteran's surviving spouse. Those indexed payments are equivalent to a minimum of $45,000 in today's dollars for each veteran with at least 89 days of captivity. Compensation payments, as in the case with all veterans benefits, are not subject to income tax. If the veteran incurred any disability as a consequence of the imprisonment, that is separately compensated for through disability pension awards which again are tax free.
In terms of the compensation payment announced on December 11, that arose because attempts in the 1980s and 1990s to gain compensation from the German government did not succeed. The Government of Canada therefore decided that these veterans had waited long enough and decided to pay compensation on exactly the same basis as was awarded to the Hong Kong prisoners of war, namely $18 per day of captivity in Buchenwald, although the payments to our Buchenwald vets were considerably less than the payments to our Hong Kong veterans who suffered three and a half years of unspeakable captivity.
A final point is the Minister of Foreign Affairs made it clear on December 11 that the government payment of compensation to the Buchenwald veterans did not close the door for further representation on their behalf to the German government. Those representations were made by the Prime Minister personally to the new chancellor of Germany. The chancellor agreed to look into the question and the Department of Foreign Affairs has been following up on that commitment.
In short, everything has been done that there is to be done right here. I think the hon. member should acknowledge that.