armed forces
We can do more than just remember. Let’s actually support those who serve.
From the MacDonald Laurier Institute
By Richard Shimooka
Many veterans transition to civilian life feeling rudderless and alone and missing necessary support structures
Remembrance Day is the one time in the year that the lives and issues facing soldiers and veterans intrude into the public consciousness in any substantial way. Yet the image that is evoked is heavily based on the Second World War and Korean War experiences—conflicts that have directly affected a dwindling generation of individuals. Meanwhile, the lives and challenges of our current generation of soldiers and veterans are very different and not well understood.
The reality can be grim. A 2014 Statistics Canada Study showed that 48 percent of Canadian Armed Forces (CAF) members will experience a major mental health condition or alcoholic abuse in their lifetime. While currently serving personnel do not see an increase in suicide rates relative to the population, the suicide rate for male veterans after their release is 50 percent higher than the general population, 200 percent higher for female veterans, and 250 percent higher for male veterans under the age of 25.
These sorts of statistics, backed up by anecdotal evidence, cast a dour light on their overall military experience. I think the problem can be distilled down to a series of lies that exist at the heart of Canada’s relationship with its military members.
The government asks members of the Canadian Armed Forces for unlimited liability, and in return, CAF members trust the government to provide them with the tools to do their jobs and the policies and systems to take care of them in their most vulnerable times. This social contract is at the core of military service—and the government is essentially lying when it claims that it is upholding its side of the agreement. And due to that failure, soldiers often suffer a lifetime moral injury as a result.
First, it is fairly evident that military personnel are not being provided the resources required to carry out their jobs properly. In procurement, for example, considerations such as “social license” and “industrial and technical benefits” edge out the needs of soldiers, often leaving them with inadequate capabilities to achieve their missions. It often leaves soldiers across the CAF feeling disrespected despite their ongoing sacrifices,
But this is only one part of the issue. The CAF and Veterans Affairs Canada’s (VAC) personnel policies towards current and former military members are simply inadequate. It takes a certain type of person to join the CAF and remain in service for any length of time. In most cases, those very skills, knowledge, and work habits that are in demand within the CAF today are also highly sought after in the Canadian workforce—and often at significantly higher pay scales than what is offered within the military. CAF members are often shuttled to remote bases in places like Cold Lake, Shilo, or Oromucto, then sent on months-long deployments abroad. The continued outsourcing of key military benefits, such as housing and movement grants, and the inability to have a credible grievance mechanism, have produced a military experience that varies wildly from soldier to soldier in an already complex and stressful job.
Furthermore, spouses and families often bear the brunt of the challenging military lifestyle. Many of Canada’s bases are located far from major metropoles. Remember, with the CAF requiring more highly trained soldiers, it is likely that their spouses also have similar educational and employment skill sets—ones that cannot be met in remote military towns. While official statistics are scarce, there is some evidence suggesting that divorce rates for current and former military members are significantly higher than in the general population.
Most destructive is just how inept the government’s personnel management policies are. First, systems for overseeing current members and veterans employ antiquated data management systems, which creates barriers to accessing services.
This brings us to a broader point: the relationship between the bureaucracy and soldiers and veterans is not a harmonious one. At best it can be described as adversarial. At every step, current and former military members have to prove their eligibility for programs to skeptical public servants and/or contractors. They must become records packrats as they never know when a key piece of information will become critical to proving the validity of their claim.
The focus of the “system” seems like it is less there to assist individuals in need and more there to prevent the almost minuscule possibility that fraud may occur. This lack of trust manifests itself in so many different ways, altering health benefits for dependents, even for the widows/widowers of soldiers and veterans, cost of living rebates, and more.
Furthermore, even the programs and policy alternatives that are available are deliberately left unpublicized, perhaps in a misguided effort to keep departmental costs down. It is often through word of mouth or online communities that the existence of these policies (and how to access them) is disseminated amongst veterans or serving members. This illustrates the reality of the situation and the lie that the government is doing its best to help current and former military members. Rather, it actively works against them in some important instances.
Despite all of this, it can be surprising that so many members choose to remain in service to their country. Certainly, the higher calling that comes with public service is an important motivator: they strive hard to uphold their side of the social contract.
Another issue, though, is that there is also a “big lie” that current soldiers and veterans tell themselves to make it through: that everything is alright.
I can’t tell you how many allied personnel will rave about the relentless resourcefulness of Canadian military personnel. This is colloquially referred to as the “can-do” attitude. A culture of essentially getting things done regardless of the risk.
But there is more to it than that. Certainly, there was an element of masculinity that has inhibited soldiers from seeking help. Furthermore, the fears exist among personnel that acknowledging mental defects could impact their future service progression. The failure to repeal or mitigate Paragraph 98 (c) of the National Defence Act, which criminalizes self-harm, is one of several policies that stigmatizes those who suffer mental health episodes.
At its root, the broader CAF culture explains some of the relationship dynamics between superiors and subordinates. If soldiers are conditioned to not express how they feel, it makes it difficult for them to then turn around and be effective at dealing with the issues within their organization. We can laud the perceptive leaders who intrinsically understand the corrosive effect these issues have on their subordinates’ lives and try to rectify them, but it is a challenge for many in command positions because they have been conditioned within this culture to avoid these questions.
Moreover, there’s the pervasive reality that the CAF requires a unique culture to undertake its primary task of providing for the security and defence of Canada and its interests. As I mentioned in a previous column, the CAF’s culture is the glue that holds the force together in extremely difficult operations. Yet that focus on conformity can also result in destructive effects on some members’ psyche.
Given all of these considerations, it is not at all surprising that soldiers essentially lie to themselves about their situation in order to get through each day. Fortunately, they have a clear sense of purpose while serving their country; often, however, veterans do not. Many transition to civilian life feeling rudderless and alone, without the support structures that allowed them to operate at high levels while in the service. Even worse, some veterans are deliberately made to feel the burden of a system that was created to treat service-related injuries.
In the end, usurping these lies is not insurmountable, but it will require dedicated time, effort, and resources to overcome them. In short, robust political support across all parties has been lacking for many decades. Overhauling the relationship will have practical benefits that will go far beyond just meeting the needs of soldiers and their families. It will go a long way in addressing the retention and potentially the recruitment crisis that has deeply affected the CAF for the past decade.
But aside from that, it is just the morally right thing to do, and that really should be the guiding position for any policy in this area. Beyond just taking the time to remember their sacrifices for one day once a year, providing tangible improvements to the lives and working conditions of soldiers and veterans would be a meaningful way to thank them for their service.
Richard Shimooka is a Hub contributing writer and a senior fellow at the Macdonald-Laurier Institute who writes on defence policy.
From LifeSiteNews
Associate Judge Catherine Coughlan rejected a lawsuit from more than 300 past and current members of the Canadian military who lost their jobs or were put on leave for not taking the experimental, dangerous COVID shots.
A Canadian federal judge has thrown out a lawsuit filed on behalf of some 330 past and current members of the nation’s military who lost their jobs or were placed on leave for refusing the experimental COVID shots, because she alleged that their lawsuit lacked “evidence” that the jabs were harmful.
The Canadian Armed Forces (CAF) members had sought some $1.3 million in damages from the government for having their charter rights violated due to the military’s 2021 COVID mandates, according to their lawsuit.
In a November 13 ruling, Edmonton-based Associate Judge Catherine Coughlan ruled in favor of the Trudeau government, and thus military’s COVID jab mandate, to strike down the case. Coughlan remarked that the plaintiffs’ case lacked “material facts” along with “evidence” and was filled with “vexatious language.”
READ: Canadian father files $35 million lawsuit against Pfizer over son’s jab-related death
“The only indications of bad faith are found when the pleadings baldly assert that, among other claims, Canada failed to carry out safety and efficacy testing for the vaccines, and that the Directives were premature and ‘promoted the fraudulent use of the biologics’,” she wrote, overlooking reports of thousands of injuries due to the shots in Canada alone.
As a result of the lawsuit being tossed, all plaintiffs are now on the hook to pay some $5,040 out of pocket in legal costs.
As reported by LifeSiteNews in June, documents obtained by LifeSiteNews show that the number of jab injuries in the CAF rose over 800 percent in 2021, with the most being credited to Moderna’s experimental COVID shot.
The CAF members’ lawsuit was filed in June of 2023 and overall sought some $1 million in damages, along with an extra $350,000 in general damages. The lawsuit also had a condition that there be a declaration made that mandating the COVID shots for military members was a violation of their charter rights.
READ: Israeli boy featured in COVID vaccine campaign dies of heart attack at age 8
LifeSiteNews reported in July that a member of Canada’s military who was injured after taking the experimental mRNA COVID jabs has been denied compensation from the nation’s Veterans Affairs department.
Under the CAF’s mandate, hundreds of military members were fired, or one could say, purged for not getting the COVID shots. This is in addition to the thousands of public servants fired for not agreeing to take the COVID shots.
The CAF eventually ended its COVID mandate in October 2022, which was months after the federal mandate was lifted, but members are still “strongly encouraged” to take the experimental shot.
The federal government under Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced that its federal COVID shot workplace mandate would be dropped in June 2022, as would the mandate requiring domestic travelers have the shot to board planes and trains.
In November of 2023, a CAF member who spoke to LifeSiteNews under the condition of anonymity observed that the military considers members who refuse the COVID jab “a piece of garbage.”
READ: COVID shots have 200-times higher risk of brain clots than other jabs: new report
In March, LifeSiteNews reported on large personnel losses causing the CAF to consider dropping its remaining requirements altogether.
Although Canada has a Vaccine Injury Support Program (VISP) program, active members of the CAF, as well as veterans, are not eligible for the civilian program. According to Christensen, this leaves many COVID jab-injured CAF members and veterans with no recourse other than Veterans Affairs Canada.
COVID shot mandates, which came from provincial governments with the support of Trudeau’s federal government, split Canadian society. The mRNA shots themselves have been linked to a multitude of negative and often severe side effects, such as heart diseases, stroke, and death, including in children.
The shots also have connections to cell lines derived from aborted babies. As a result, many Catholics and other Christians refused to take them.
From the Frontier Centre for Public Policy
By Gerry Bowler
There is a grave on a riverbank near Batoche, Saskatchewan. It contains the remains of a soldier from Ontario who died in 1885 under General Middleton during the last battle of the Northwest Rebellion. It has been tended for almost 150 years by the Métis families whose ancestors had fought against him. His name was Gunner William Phillips and he was 19 years old.
Up a dirt road in the Boshof District of Free State, South Africa is a memorial garden in which are buried the 34 bodies of Canadians killed at the Battle of Paardeberg in 1900. They fell driving a Boer kommando off the heights where they had been dug in and inflicting severe casualties on the British forces below. Private Zachary Richard Edmond Lewis of the Royal Canadian Regiment lies there. He was the son of Millicent Lewis and was 27 years old.
On April 22, 1915 the German army launched its first poison gas attack on Allied trenches near Ypres, Belgium during the First World War. When French troops on their flanks broke and ran, the 1st Canadian Division stood fast amid the chlorine cloud and repelled their attackers, suffering 2,000 casualties in the process. On the grave of Private Arthur Ernest Williams of the 8th Battalion are the words “Remember, He Who Yields His Life is a Soldier and a Man.” Private Williams was 16 years old.
When the Japanese invaded Hong Kong in December 1941, Canadian troops from the Winnipeg Grenadiers were there to resist them. Among them was Sergeant-Major J.R. Osborn whose men were surrounded and subject to grenade attacks. Osborn caught several of these and flung them back but when one could not be retrieved in time he threw himself on the grenade as it exploded trying to save his men. His body was never found after the battle but his name is inscribed on a monument in Sai Wan Bay War Cemetery.
In the hills south of Algiers is Dely Ibrahim Cemetery. This is where they buried the body of RCAF Pilot Officer John Michael Quinlan after the crash of his Wellington bomber in March, 1944. He was a movie-star handsome student from Prince Albert, Saskatchewan and my father’s best friend in the squadron. I carry his family name as my middle name as does my little grand-daughter.
The Kandahar Cenotaph in the Afghanistan Memorial Hall at National Defence Headquarters in Ottawa honours those Canadians who died fighting Islamic terrorists. 158 stones are bearing the faces of the soldiers who were repatriated from where they fell and now are buried in graves in their home communities across the country. One of those stones commemorates Warrant Officer Gaétan Joseph Francis Maxime Roberge of the Royal 22nd Regiment who is buried in a cemetery in Sudbury. He was 45 when he was killed by a bomb. He left behind a wife, an 11-year-old daughter and twin 6-year-old girls.
On November 11, we pause to remember the 118,000 Canadian men and women who died fighting, among others, Fenian invaders, Islamic jihadis in Sudan, the armies of Kaiser Wilhelm, Benito Mussolini, and Imperial Japan, Nazi SS Panzer regiments, Chinese and North Korean forces, ethnic warlords in the Balkans, and the Taliban. They died in North Atlantic convoys, in French trenches, in primitive field hospitals, on beaches in Normandy, in the air over England, on frozen hills in Korea, in jungle POW camps, on peace-keeping duty in Cyprus, in the Medak Pocket in Croatia, and in the mountain passes of Afghanistan. We also remember the hundreds of thousands more who returned home alive, but mutilated, shattered in body and mind, the families deprived of sons, fathers, and brothers, and the communities who lost teachers, hockey players, volunteers, pastors, nurses, and neighbours.
We remember them because in honouring their memory we honour the values on which Canada was built. They did not die to create a Canadian empire, acquire foreign territory or satisfy some ruler’s grandiosity; they fought and suffered to protect parliamentary democracy, freedom of expression and religion, a tolerant society, and the right to live in peace.
On November 11, let us be clear that the prosperity and tranquility enjoyed today by North Americans, Europeans, South Koreans, Japanese, Indians, Malaysians, Singaporeans, Filipinos, etc., etc., were purchased with the blood of heavily-armed men in military uniform, many of them with maple leaf patches on their shoulders. A country which is contemptuous towards its duty to maintain its armed forces, where schools forbid personnel in service dress from attending remembrance assemblies lest their presence makes children and parents “feel unsafe,” or where Forces chaplains are instructed to avoid religious language or symbols in services commemorating our dead, is a nation lost to its memories and unlikely to have much of a future.
KILLED IN ACTION. BELOVED DAUGHTER OF ANGUS & MARY MAUD MACDONALD,
Nursing Sister Katherine MacDonald, Canadian Army Nursing Service, May 19th 1918
HE WOULD GIVE HIS DINNER TO A HUNGRY DOG AND GO WITHOUT HIMSELF.
Gunner Charles Douglas Moore, Canadian Anti-Aircraft Battery, September 19th 1917
BREAK, DAY OF GOD, SWEET DAY OF PEACE, AND BID THE SHOUT OF WARRIORS CEASE.
Sergeant Wellesley Seymour Taylor, 14th Battalion, May 1st 1916
Gerry Bowler, historian, is a Senior Fellow at the Frontier Centre for Public Policy
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