OTTAWA — The Harper government has spent nearly $8 million fighting veterans and their families seeking compensation for exposure to the defoliant Agent Orange at CFB Gagetown in New Brunswick.
Documents recently tabled in Parliament show four departments have been involved in battling the class action suit with Justice spending the most at $5.8 million followed by another $1.5 million spent by National Defence. Health Canada and Veterans Affairs have paid about $445,000.
Liberal Senator Percy Downe who requested the tab on legal costs said $7.8 million in legal fees are “beyond the pale” especially when, he said, veterans exposed to Agent Orange are being denied what’s owed to them.
The tally includes outside legal fees and departmental costs between July 2005 and March 2010.
“These surviving veterans and their families have waited long enough: it’s time to stop paying lawyers and start paying our veterans the debt to which they are owned.”
Downe said veterans and civilians were forced into a law suit for compensation after the Harper government failed to honour an election promise to compensate anyone affected by the spraying of the powerful defoliant on the base between 1956 and 1984.
The tight restrictions of the $96-million compensation plan the government eventually introduced is a far cry from that election promise, said Downe.
The spraying began in the 1950s to clear dense brush and continued into the mid-1980s. The U.S. military tested Agent Orange and other chemical defoliants on a section of the base for a few days between 1966 and 1967.
The government’s compensation package was only offered to veterans and civilians who lived, worked or were posted at CFB Gagetown or resided within five kilometres of the base between 1966 and 1967 when the Americans sprayed. They must also have developed illnesses related to Agent Orange exposure as of February 2006 when the Conservatives were elected.
The Agent Orange Association of Canada Inc. has been fighting the restrictions, which president Carol Brown Parker said is only aimed at limiting the numbers who qualify for compensation and the government’s liability.
The association is now racing to get information out and help people with their paperwork and medical testing for the new Sept. 17 deadline to apply for compensation. The original deadline was April 1.
Veterans railed against the tight restrictions for only offering the $20,000 payments to those exposed between 1966 and 1967. Some 4,000 veterans and civilians are involved in a class action suit against the government, along with the companies that manufactured Agent Orange.
By late May, the government said it paid tax-free $20,000 payments to 2,800 victims and more than $79 million was paid to veterans and their families.
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Government re-victimizes its victims – again
The government's actions in this case are shameful, but absolutely typical.
Wherever there is a human tragedy caused by government incompetence or misconduct, politicians and bureaucrats quickly circle the wagons and scramble to avoid blame. As part of the strategy of denial, Justice Department lawyers serve as the government's attack hounds, ruthlessly pursuing the most aggressive legal tactics against those who seek any kind of redress. In this way the government tries to avoid admitting any liability – and re-victimizes those already harmed by its actions.
This was the case in the Air India disaster where the families of those who died due to government security blunders were treated "like adversaries, as if they had somehow brought this calamity on themselves" according to commissioner John C. Major's report. They were forced by what Major calls "hard bargaining" into accepting minimal compensation while the government concealed the evidence of its own culpability. Many of them didn't live to hear Harper's apology or the promise of fair compensation, which came after 25 years of government stonewalling.
The Tainted Blood scandal was the worst public health failure in Canadian history, infecting tens of thousands of unsuspecting Canadians with HIV and Hepatitis C, and causing the premature death of at least 8,000 people. The tragedy was greatly magnified by years of government denial that there was any problem in the blood supply. When those damaged by tainted blood sued, government lawyers adopted cynical delay tactics that were highly effective – the victims (and their leaders) got sick and died by the hundred before their cases could go anywhere.
Whistleblowers are also doubly victimized in just the same way, as demonstrated most dramatically in the Joanna Gualtieri case. After they have suffered vicious reprisals within their departments for telling the truth, if they seek a remedy in court the Justice Department stands ready to finish them off – no matter how long it takes, or how much it costs the taxpayer in legal fees.
None of this appalling behaviour will change until we have much stronger mechanisms to ensure that the truth will always come out, even when the most powerful people in the land want to keep it hidden.
David Hutton