Veteran Affairs And Pensions
{I think I know this guy.... but nuf said}
Wounds cut deep in soldiers' pension battle
By Jack Knox, Times Colonist March 13, 2010 Comments (22)
Six months spent retrieving human remains from the wreckage of the Swissair disaster left navy diver Chuck Pelletier pretty messed up.
"It was bad," the Victoria man says of the aftermath of the 1998 plane crash off Nova Scotia. "It was really bad. I still can't walk past a meat counter in a grocery store."
He became an angry man after the Swissair mission, drinking and fighting. His marriage fell apart. Diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder, he was kept around by the military until 2003, then sent packing with a medical-disability pension.
Already feeling betrayed and abandoned, he was really bugged when the federal government clawed back his pension income.
So now the 44-year-old is one of some 4,000-6,000 veterans awaiting the outcome of a class-action suit working its way through the courts.
At the heart of the matter is the pension Veterans Affairs Canada pays military members who suffer life-changing illness or injury. Soldiers who, say, ruin their knees jumping out of helicopters get the payments -- compensation for pain and suffering -- even if continuing to serve and earn their regular salary.
But if they are discharged under the Canadian Forces' separate long-term disability program, their benefits -- equalling 75 per cent of their salary -- are reduced by the amount of the Veterans Affairs pension.
The government says it doesn't want to say too much about a case that is before the courts. But its essential argument is that to receive both the long-term disability payments and pain-and-suffering payments would be "stacking" -- getting two federal government pensions for the same injury, which is against the rules.
No way, reply the disabled veterans. They equate the Veterans Affairs benefits to the insurance settlement you would receive if hurt in a car crash. Deducting the pain-and-suffering money from the disability program pension is like deducting your ICBC payout from your company pension, they say. One should have nothing to do with the other.
The veterans have some support. The Department of National Defence ombudsman labelled the deductions "profoundly unfair." The Royal Canadian Legion has weighed in, too. When in Opposition, Conservatives hammered the Liberals over the practice, too. Yet the clawbacks continue -- though clawback might be the wrong word, as there never was a time when veterans received both long-term disability and Veterans Affairs pensions.
Pelletier acknowledges living comfortably enough even after the deductions, which he estimates cost him about $1,000 a month. What bugs him is the perceived double standard, other pensioners not having their payments reduced in the same way. "It's an absolute betrayal."
Pelletier was 16 when he joined the reserves, was straight out of high school when he enlisted in the regular forces. Ended up driving tanks for the army for 10 years before becoming a navy clearance diver.
Then came the Swissair crash -- which killed all 229 on board -- the nightmare recovery mission and the troubles that followed Pelletier thereafter. In 2000, he was transferred from Nova Scotia to CFB Esquimalt, where he says he was dogged by the labels that come with post-traumatic stress.
Ushered out the door in 2003, he wanted to show the navy that it had made a mistake in discarding him, so volunteered for work at a United Nations camp in the strife-torn Democratic Republic of Congo.
It was there that he won his 15 minutes of fame -- as well as Canada's Medal of Bravery -- for using himself as a human shield while rescuing 42 people from a firefight in the city of Bukavu in 2004. Among those he saved were the members of the band Sum 41, in the Congo as part of a documentary being filmed by the aid agency War Child Canada. The band members were so grateful that they named their album Chuck in his honour.
In retrospect, Pelletier says, he shouldn't have tackled the Congo work that soon. As with other divers, he still had too many issues rooted in Swissair. "I got busted up pretty good," he says.
As for the class-action suit, launched by a Nova Scotia man in 2007, it is bogged down in legal issues. The substance of the arguments has yet to be addressed.
jknox@tc.canwest.com
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