Veteran’s Affairs – mackaycartoons

Tuesday January 6, 2015

January 5, 2015 by Graeme MacKay

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Tuesday January 6, 2015

Julian Fantino out as veterans affairs minister

Canada’s prime minister has replaced embattled Veterans Affairs Minister Julian Fantino with retired air force officer and first-time MP Erin O’Toole.

In a release Monday, the government said Fantino will remain in cabinet as associate minister for defence Ñ the same post he held before being named international co-operation minister in 2012.

This time, Fantino will focus on Arctic sovereignty, information technology security and foreign intelligence, the release said.

The change was made during a quiet ceremony at Rideau Hall around midday and addresses for now what has been a nagging controversy for Prime Minister Stephen Harper.

Fantino faced repeated opposition calls for his resignation or firing in the fall over his handling of the Veterans Affairs Canada portfolio. The department has faced much criticism from some veterans because of the decision to close regional offices and for a lack of support for veterans with mental illness.

In November, the auditor general found the department was not doing enough to provide mental-health services to veterans, just days after it was revealed the government had returned nearly $1 billion in lapsed funding to the treasury in recent years.

Fantino was out of the country attending commemorative Second World War events as the opposition called for a response to the auditor general’s report.

Fantino was roundly criticized for a testy meeting with veterans early last year and for refusing to speak with the wife of a veteran who pursued him down a hallway in Parliament. (Source: CBC News)

Friday December 5, 2014

December 4, 2014 by Graeme MacKay

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Friday December 5, 2014

‘Show him the door’: Opposition grills Julian Fantino

Opposition MPs spent the lion’s share of Thursday’s question period grilling Veteran’s Affairs Minister Julian Fantino’s amid a federal government attempt to block a class action lawsuit from an Afghanistan war veteran.

“Instead of making excuses for this failed minister, will the prime minister just show him the door?” NDP MP Irene Mathyssen said. “The truth is that they’re going to court to fight injured veterans.”

Seven plaintiffs are trying to sue the government for changes to their Canadian Forces compensation regime — including Major Mark Campbell, who lost both legs above the knees in a Taliban ambush. Major Campbell says he has been stripped of $35,000 in benefits. But the Attorney General of Canada wants the legal legal action tossed out. The government was in B.C.’s highest court Wednesday appealing a lower court’s approval of the lawsuit.

“There’s been a litany of failures,” Liberal MP Joyce Murray said shortly after question period. “He has no credibility left and I feel strongly that [Mr. Fantino] should be removed.”

With Prime Minister Stephen Harper absent Thursday, Mr. Fantino personally shouldered demands that he vacate his job — a growing refrain among the opposition parties. The minister rarely looked up from his notes, refusing to comment on the case as it was “before the courts.”

“It’s very difficult to get through to people who aren’t listening. My response—” he said, before the opposition drowned him out with taunts. “My concern and it should be the concern of the NDP that in this country we have great concern for due process.”

NDP Leader Tom Mulcair and Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau also did not participate in question period Thursday. (Source: National Post)

Friday November 21, 2014

November 20, 2014 by Graeme MacKay

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Friday November 21, 2014

Over $1.1 billion in unspent funds at Veterans Affairs since 2006

Veterans Affairs Canada has returned $1.13 billion to the federal treasury in unspent funds since the Conservatives came to power in 2006 — cash that critics say should have gone toward improved benefits and services.

The figure, which surfaced this week in the House of Commons, has led to renewed criticism of the Harper government, which is already smarting over its frayed relations with disgruntled former soldiers.

Data tabled in the House in response to a written question shows roughly one-third of the so-called lapsed funds were handed back between the 2011 and 2013 budget years when the government was engaged in a massive deficit-cutting drive.

The Conservatives often trumpet how much the budget for veterans care has gone up under their watch — right now it’s about $3.4 billion a year, up from $2.8 billion when the Tories took office.

What they don’t say is that anywhere between 4.7 per cent and 8.2 per cent of the total allocation has been allowed to lapse because of the department’s inability or reluctance to spend it all, said NDP veterans’ critic Peter Stoffer.

Veterans Affairs Minister Julian Fantino met Wednesday in Quebec City with select organizations representing ex-soldiers, but some of the loudest critics of the department’s spending on benefits and services were not invited.

On Tuesday, Stoffer put a pointed question about the lapsed funds to Fantino, who answered by tallying up the government’s total spending on the veteran’s department — roughly $30 billion since 2006.

“It means improved rehabilitation for Canadian veterans,” Fantino said. “It means more counselling for veterans’ families. It means more money for veterans’ higher education and retraining. It means we care deeply about our veterans.”

But that didn’t answer the question of why so much of the budget has been allowed to lapse, said Stoffer, noting that the overall budget of the department is something the government is committed to under the law.

The use of lapsed funding to reduce the federal deficit is an exercise that’s being practised across all departments, he added. (Source: Hamilton Spectator)

OTHER MEDIA

Reposted at National Newswatch. Reprinted in the Brandon Sun and the Saskatoon Star Phoenix and the Winnipeg Free Press, on November 24, 2014.

Thursday, March 6, 2014

March 6, 2014 by Graeme MacKay

Editorial cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Thursday, March 6, 2014

Dead Hamilton soldier’s mom sent one-cent cheque

A Hamilton mother whose son killed himself after serving in Afghanistan was devastated when she received a federal government cheque cut for him in the amount of one cent.

“It just tore her heart out,” said Keven Ellis, speaking on behalf of Wayne and Denise Stark, whose son Justin died Oct. 29, 2011 at the John W. Foote VC Armoury on James Street North. “It was just horrible.”

But rather than wallow in pain after receiving the cheque last Friday, the couple set out to make sure it does not happen to other families.

Hamilton East-Stoney Creek New Democrat MP Wayne Marston — who called it “inexcusable” — raised the issue in the House of Commons Tuesday and Defence Minister Rob Nicholson agreed, calling it “absolutely ridiculous.”

The minister pledged to take “immediate steps” to ensure “this never happens again,” and he also offered the Stark family an apology.

“I extend the apologies of everyone in the government to his mother and we thank this individual for the service that he gave his country,” Nicholson told MPs.

Justin Stark was a corporal in the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders when he killed himself in his barracks on a Saturday evening. He was 22.

He served in Afghanistan for seven months, starting in May 2010, after being associated with the military since 2006. His duties included patrols around Kandahar, where Canadians had their main base.

His death was the subject of several tribunals to determine whether it was related to his tour of duty, but Marston understood it was finally ruled not work related. (Source: Hamilton Spectator)

Thursday November 11, 2010

November 11, 2010 by Graeme MacKay

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Thursday November 11, 2010

There is a bill we must pay

It has been often observed that old men start wars and young men are sent off to fight them. For all the truth in that, it lets countless others — us — off the hook. It is nations — the governors and the governed — who send their young men and women off to fight, to kill or be killed.

The reality is that most of us born after 1945 don’t have a clue what being in a war is like; even soldiers’ stories are often draped in the compassionate veil of time.

It is those at home who drape the war in glory, triumph and patriotism. We bask in the reflected glory of battling barbarism, genocidal ambitions, repression and cruelty. We feel we, thousands of kilometres from what may pass for a front line, are part of the grand fight for freedom, democracy, eventual world peace, or even the right of young girls to go to school without having acid splashed on their faces.

Part of the enormous debt we recognize in Remembrance Day observances and ceremonies today is that Canada’s warriors fought far away so we didn’t have to fight at home. Whether the fight is against fascism or dictatorship or terrorism, soldiers go to fight in our stead.

Soldiers give what we civilians could not imagine losing: a part of their young lives, innocence, comrades with whom they shared a bond forged in the military experience. They lose limbs. They lose peace of mind, even their sanity. They lose their lives.

In return, they ask us to remember. A soldier’s greatest fear is that he or she will be forgotten. In Canada in the past decade, coinciding with the passing of the last of the veterans of the First World War and the increasing thinning of the ranks of Second World War and Korean War vets, there has been a resurgence of respect for Remembrance Day, the veterans it honours and the fallen it remembers. This is a very good thing. (Hamilton Spectator)