Released from the military for medical reasons in 2012, Patrick Wilkins was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder and irritable bowel syndrome from a tour in Afghanistan; chronic back pain from falling out of a helicopter on a training exercise; and two bad knees from years of marching with a rucksack.
The 23-year veteran believes that if he had left the military seven years earlier, he would have received a disability pension of around $60,000 a year. Instead, because of changes to veterans’ benefits introduced in 2006, he was given a lump-sum payment of $245,000.
Wilkins used the money to buy a house in Kelowna, B.C. Since then, however, he has struggled to make ends meet. A motorcycle tourism business has yet to take off, while his PTSD has scared off prospective employers. “There are days I just don’t function as a human being,” he says.
The 45-year-old does receive a $1,600 monthly allowance from Veterans Affairs for not being able to work. But he says that amounts to less than half what he would get after taxes if he had been able to take the pension, and leaves him barely above the poverty line.
Wilkins is one of more than 76,000 injured veterans who have received a total of $2.8-billion in lump-sum payments since lifelong disability pensions were abolished in 2006. But he is also one of those who wants to be included in the Liberal government’s pledge to reintroduce the disability pensions.
“I don’t want anything that I’m not entitled to,” he says, “but when I started off my career in the military, the pension was promised if I got injured. They agreed to it, and I agreed to it.”
While veterans such as Wilkins say offering pensions to everyone injured in uniform is an issue of fairness and equality, the move could also cost billions for a government already staring at a much larger deficit than originally promised.
The Liberals were the only party that promised to reintroduce disability pensions for injured veterans as an alternative to the benefits and services offered through what’s called the “New Veterans Charter,” the system implemented in 2006. Veterans Affairs Minister Kent Hehr told the Citizen last month that his department was drawing up options to make good on the Liberals’ pension promise.
Details have been scarce. Hehr declined to say whether the disability pensions would be exactly the same as those offered to veterans before 2006. His office also won’t say if the pensions will be offered retroactively to those injured veterans forced to take one-time payments upon release from the military.
“The department is looking at options on how best to provide for the needs of all veterans in a viable and sustainable manner, which includes the mandate commitment on pensions,” Hehr’s spokesman, Christian Duval, said in an email. “It would be premature to discuss considered options at this time.”
Former NDP MP Peter Stoffer, his party’s longtime veterans critic, says he disagreed with reintroducing the lifelong pensions. He says he received numerous complaints about the old system, and that the new system is better – even if some veterans don’t receive as much money from the government – because the focus is on helping injured veterans find civilian careers. This was especially important with a new generation of veterans from Afghanistan.
“The whole genesis of the charter was you did not want to give a 23-year-old a monthly pension and just leave him alone,” said Stoffer. “That’s generally what the old system was. Instead, you wanted to help them become productive members of society.”
Former veterans affairs minister Erin O’Toole says the system in place under the New Veterans Charter also directed the majority of resources to veterans who really needed them. Under the old system, veterans who suffered even minor hearing loss or back and joint pain could get hundreds of dollars a month for life.
“In those cases, are you targeting a lot of funds at where you need it most? A hearing injury?” said O’Toole, who was re-elected and is now the Conservative public safety critic. “Where you need it is moderate and serious injuries.”
Both Stoffer and O’Toole acknowledge shortcomings in the new system. But while they disagree on the extent of these, both believe the issues can be addressed without reintroducing pensions, which would also be prohibitively expensive.
The Liberals did not cost out the pensions in their platform, though they did promise to invest about $143 million this year to increase benefits under the New Veterans Charter.
Ray McInnis of the Royal Canadian Legion says reinstating the old pension system “wasn’t on our radar at any time.” Instead, the Legion has been asking the government to improve the new system, including topping up the income of seriously disabled veterans to 100 per cent of what they were making in the military. The current rate is 75 per cent, and Liberals have said they will increase it to 90 per cent.
Lawyer Don Sorochan is representing six Afghan veterans locked in a class-action lawsuit with the federal government for more than three years. The lawsuit, currently on hold until May as the veterans wait to see what the new government will do, centred on whether the New Veterans Charter fell short of the benefits offered under the old system.
“The minute the Liberals announced they’re going to return to the pensions, I basically asked people who were Liberals: ‘What do you have in mind?’ ” Sorochan said. “I don’t think they knew.”
O’Toole alleges the Liberals simply made a promise to win votes, and that they are now struggling with their promise.
“There’s fiscal realities to some of these things that have to be addressed,” he said. “And it’s irresponsible to get some veterans and some advocacy groups believing that there’s going to be some major, retroactively applying payment of some sort.”
But veterans argue the issue is one of fairness.
“Will we be given the opportunity to accept a monthly disability pension?” asked Sheldon Maerz, who received several thousand dollars for a knee injury in 2009 that he says would have paid him a few hundred dollars a month for life under the old system. “This is the key question for men and women such as myself.”
David MacLeod, who was medically released from the Canadian Army in 2010 due to chronic leg pain from a training accident, said the uncertainty has ratcheted up anxiety among veterans who did not get disability pensions.
“The minister must be clear when he states that there will be pensions for life,” said the 27-year veteran. “What does that mean: the lump sum stretched over time, some cobbled-together system that is eroded over time, or the proven Pension Act?”
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Disability Pensions versus the New Veterans Charter
Until 2006, disability pensions were offered to all Canadian veterans who sustained injuries while in the military. They received a monthly, tax-free payment based on the extent of their injuries.
Passed by all parties in 2005, and implemented by the Conservatives in 2006, the New Veterans Charter changed this. The pension was replaced with a lump-sum payment based on the extent of the injury, along with services such as rehabilitation and vocational training to help with the transition to civilian life.
The charter was heavily criticized, however, as not providing sufficient assistance to injured veterans. The Conservative government introduced improvements in 2011 and again in 2015, including an allowance beyond the age of 65. Most veterans groups have since indicated they support an improved charter. But some say it still falls far short of the benefits offered under the old pension system.
