Madam Speaker, I will be splitting my time with the member for North Island—Powell River, who is a strong advocate for veterans. I want to thank her for her hard work on the veterans file. I also want to the thank the member for Brantford—Brant for tabling today's motion.
Before I get started, I want to recognize the veterans who are standing outside. Their voices are very important today. “Left out in the cold” is their theme today. It is about veterans falling through the cracks.
I want to thank my colleague from the Liberal Party who spoke previous to me for talking about imagining us not playing politics on this issue. I do not think any of us want to be playing politics or talking politics when it comes to our veterans. What veterans want is what was promised to them. They want the service they expect.
There are 29,000 veterans waiting right now for their disability claim to be processed. That is a 50% increase over the last eight months. When we talk about not being political and not playing political games, it is really tough when we hear, from the government side, its boisterous announcements and its boisterous rhetoric around how it is treating veterans, when veterans cannot get the service for the things it is announcing. If the veterans cannot get service, the benefits do not matter if they cannot access them.
New Democrats and Canadians love and respect our veterans. We thank them and their families for their selfless service and sacrifice. I really want to underscore their families, because they were really left out in the cold in the recent announcements and promises the government has made.
The events of the Prime Minister's Edmonton town hall, the meeting of February 1, left many of us confused, bewildered, and angry. This is, after all, a Prime Minister who during the last election made two specific promises to Canada's veterans: to re-establish lifelong pensions, and to ensure that no veteran would ever be forced to fight their own government for the support and compensation that they deserve.
What we know is that the Liberal leader, the Prime Minister has completely reneged on those commitments to Canada's veterans. What happened in Edmonton is that he was called out for breaking those promises by retired corporal Brock Blaszczyk, a brave gentleman who, as we know, has both the courage to fight and defend the interests of Canada in an armed war zone, and to confront our Prime Minister for failing him and his colleagues. We salute his courage on both accounts and we thank him very much.
I would like to read some of Mr. Blaszczyk's question and the Prime Minister's response into the record. Mr. Blaszczyk said:
...on August 24, 2015, you made the promise, and I’ll quote it here: “No veteran will be forced to fight their own government for the support and compensation they have earned”. Yet you are still currently in a legal battle with veterans regarding equal support and compensation to their peers. ...we have two standards of veterans...the ones prior to 2006 and the ones after...one under the old pension act and one under this new lump sum...option....
My question is what veterans were you talking about? ...honestly, Mr. Prime Minister, I was prepared to be injured in the line of duty when I joined the military.... I was prepared to be killed in action. What I wasn’t prepared for, Mr. Prime Minister, is Canada turning its back on me.
In response, the Prime Minister said:
Thank you for your passion and your strength, and for being here today to share this justifiable frustration and anger with me and all of us here.... First of all, why are we still fighting against certain veterans' groups in court? Because they are asking for more than we are able to give right now..... Hang on. You are asking for honest answers.
We know that the Prime Minister said this and veterans across our country had to hear this. This is when the government is spending lots of money, including an $8 million hockey rink outside that will not be used by most Canadians and certainly not most veterans. This is when CEOs on Bay Street are getting stock option loopholes that cost taxpayers almost $1 billion, and the Prime Minister is telling veterans that he cannot fulfill his election promise.
Here we are today. We have a Liberal leader who makes bold new promises to address a massive social injustice. The Canadians who desperately need this assistance buy into this and elect the Liberals to govern, take photos with the Liberal members while they are campaigning, and then once they are elected the Liberal government fundamentally changes its position and abandons its promises.
At one time, the love and respect felt by Canadians for our veterans and their families was clear and obvious in their treatment by the government. Lifelong pensions, the creation of Wartime Housing Limited, which my friend from Saanich—Gulf Islands talked about, and complete coverage for all disabilities incurred during service were some of the ways this love was shown to veterans by the government on behalf of Canadians.
Indeed, it is widely agreed that at one point in time the government firmly believed that it had a “sacred obligation” to care for our veterans and their families in exchange for their selfless sacrifice. We voted for this last night, in the bill tabled by my colleague from Barrie—Innisfil, but the Liberals voted against it. This obligation was a clear acknowledgement that when women or men entered into the service of our country and put their health and lives on the line for us, the government would be there to care for them for the rest of their lives. I say that we believed that “at one point in time”, because I am no longer sure this is the case.
The Harper Conservative government made an effort to modernize the rights, services, and benefits provided to Canada's veterans, but it inadvertently made life worse for many. The lump sum payment option for veterans was certainly one of the worst policies brought forward. In the interest of full disclosure, the NDP voted in support of the new veterans charter when it was brought before the House.
However, the difference between us and the Conservatives is that once problems became obvious, such as the lump sum payment option, we proposed to fix those issues. Unfortunately the Conservatives and their ministers of veterans affairs quite literally turned their backs on those in need by not supporting the need to reverse that.
Now, for his part, the Prime Minister made lofty goals, as we know, and raised expectations so high for so many people in need, including veterans. However, it is now obvious that those crisp and clear Liberal promises were designed for a quick headline and to trick Canadians into voting for a progressive agenda that the Liberals had no intention of implementing once in power.
The New Democrats will always work with other parties, and we are here to do that today, in the best interests of veterans. To do so, we must commit to remembering the past, not erasing it. We must never forget our collective failings as a society and government. It is all of our responsibility to take care of and look after veterans who were exposed to Agent Orange, nuclear radiation, and other lethal and debilitating toxins and agents over the course of their service; the horrific sexual trauma that has been endured by many military personnel, particularly women, over the course of their military service; the serious psychiatric side-effects associated with the use of the anti-malarial drug mefloquine; the widespread prevalence of operational stress injury; post-traumatic stress disorder, and psychological challenges faced by active and retired armed forces personnel; and the unconscionable transition gap, which I alluded to earlier, which denies benefits to many veterans who transition from active duty to civilian life.
A particularly stark example of how the governments have changed the way they serve veterans is with housing.
Wartime Housing Limited was created after World War II to transfer 30,000 affordable homes to veterans. However, at the Standing Committee on Veterans Affairs this week, we heard that as many as 5,000 veterans were homeless and living on our streets today, like our friends Trevor Sanderson and Dick Groot, who are here visiting and have been camping out just a couple of blocks from here to raise awareness around this issue. In addition, there are the unintended and negative consequences experienced by veterans as a result of changes under the new veterans charter.
The Equitas lawsuit, which seeks to re-establish the old lifelong pension regime, began under the Harper Conservatives, whose defence in court was to argue that the Government of Canada had no sacred obligation to take care of our veterans who were injured while defending our country and interests. It was a shameful line of defence taken by the last government and former ministers of veterans affairs, who sit here today and complain that the Liberal government is treating veterans exactly the same way they did.
What is clear today is that the Liberal government, like the Conservative government before, has failed to live up to its promises to veterans. The New Democrats will not allow the Liberal Prime Minister to adopt the shameful legacy of the last Conservative prime minister without answering to our veterans and Canadians. We hope the Liberals will do that today, with a different tone. Instead of just this boisterous attitude of all these announcements, apologizing to veterans for the comments made by the Prime Minister would be the right thing to do. He owes that apology to retired Corporal Blaszcyk and all veterans. An apology is clearly needed, and that is why we will support the motion.