New announcement: Service Dogs Making a Difference

Service Dogs Making a Difference

Ottawa – October 4, 2013

I had the good fortune last week to meet Médric Cousineau, his wife Jocelyn, and his service dog Thai. This highly decorated External link, Opens in a new window Veteran has just completed a walk across four provinces to help raise awareness about the potential benefits of service dogs for Veterans coping with mental health issues. He is also raising funds to procure some of these highly trained animals to help other Veterans. I was pleased to learn that the Royal Canadian Legion has offered support to Médric's "Paws Fur Thought External link, Opens in a new window" campaign and that it is committed to assisting in the future.

Médric's initiative caused me to 'pause for thought' on the effects that animals have on our well-being. After chatting with Médric, I now clearly understand the difference between a therapy animal that provides companionship and a service animal that has special skills oriented towards providing more focused assistance to its master.

In the case of Thai, he easily qualifies as a four-pawed caregiver. Since acquiring him, Médric has reduced his dependence on medications by half and lost over 170 pounds. In addition, Jocelyn says that the best thing since getting Thai is that they both now get to sleep at night. During my visit, I also learned about the case of a diabetic Veteran in the Ottawa area who was recently matched with a service dog trained to monitor his diabetic condition and alert him when his blood sugar level is too low.

Access to a service dog is not a choice made by a Veteran alone. There must be a prescription from the attending caregiver and an agreement from the health care team before proceeding. There also needs to be a big commitment on the part of a Veteran who must accept that because the service dog will accompany him everywhere, invisible injuries will now be visible.

I was pleased to see that the Minister of Veterans Affairs met with Médric recently and has announced funding for research on service dogs to be undertaken by our own Canadian Military and Veterans Health Institution. Since the research will focus on Canadian Veterans, hopefully Veterans who have experienced significant change in their lives after being matched with service dogs will be interviewed.

Last year the US Army Medical Department Journal External link, Opens in a new window devoted an entire issue to exploring relevant research on service dogs. In the introduction, Major General Rubenstein wrote: "Although attempts to systematically quantify and scientifically evaluate the results of animal-assisted therapy have been and will continue to be made, for now the anecdotal evidence of its overwhelmingly positive impact is not only encouraging, but also substantial enough to support its continuation."

Therefore, while we wait for the research to be conducted, let us not lose sight of the fact that service dogs are having a positive effect on the lives of Veterans today. One only has to look at the Cousineau family to see that. I believe that if the evidence is showing a demonstrable positive impact then the government should support this initiative.

On behalf of our Veterans and their families, thank you Médric, Jocelyn and Thai.

Guy

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Regards,
The Canadian Veterans Advocacy Team.

New announcement: Grim week for veterans and their families. Conservatives leaving veterans behind

2013 10 04

Grim week for veterans and their families. Conservatives leaving veterans behind

http://www.ndp.ca/news/grim-week-veterans-and-their-families

HALIFAX – Official Opposition Veterans Affairs critic Peter Stoffer (Sackville – Eastern Shore) says the federal government has completely failed in its treatment of Canadian Forces and RCMP veterans and their families.

"It was one of the worst weeks for veterans and their families ever," said Stoffer. "On the heels of a very damning report by the Veterans Ombudsman, this Conservative government announced they will appeal a class action lawsuit launched by veterans group Equitas Society who are fighting for improved compensation and care under the New Veterans Charter (NVC).

"It is outrageous for the government to say that they will launch a review of the NVC while, at the same time, they are fighting veterans in court over the same issue."

Stoffer also underlined the fact that the government is moving ahead with its plan to shut down nine Veterans Affairs district offices across the country and is continuing its legal fight with injured RCMP veterans over disability pension benefits.

"If these offices close, veterans' and their families will be forced to travel long distances to reach an office or use the phone or computers" said Official Opposition Veterans Affairs Deputy Critic Sylvain Chicoine (Châteauguay – Saint-Constant), "which is a huge barrier for many disabled veterans. Veterans can count on the NDP to fight to keep those offices open."

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Regards,
The Canadian Veterans Advocacy Team.

New announcement: Veterans traveling to Ottawa to oppose cuts to frontline services (Live Webcast)

Veterans traveling to Ottawa to oppose cuts to frontline services

Tune into a live webcast to hear what they have to say

Canada's veterans will be in Ottawa Thursday, October 3rd to talk about why the federal government must not close Veterans Affairs offices they rely on.
The office in Prince George has already been shut down and the government says that by February, offices in Corner Brook, Charlottetown, Sydney, Thunder Bay, Windsor, Brandon, Saskatoon and Kelowna will be closing their doors to veterans too.

These are the offices that both traditional and younger veterans – including those with serious physical and mental disabilities – depend on for face-to-face frontline services. If the Sydney, Cape Breton office closes, for example, approximately 4,200 veterans and their family members will be forced to drive seven and a half hours to Halifax for frontline services. Many say they can't because of their age or ailments.

PSAC's members include the workers at Veterans Affairs who provide these frontline services. These workers – who are speaking at this event too – are worried about what will happen to their clients.

Tune in to hear why veterans and PSAC members say the government should reverse its decision to shut down these offices and to find out how you can help. You can start by sharing the YouTube video being launched at the event.
WATCH THE LAUNCH LIVE at 11:00 am EST on Thursday, October 3.

www.psac.com/webcast

Share this event on Facebook, Twitter and through all of your networks.
Help veterans stop the closures!
-------------------------------
Suppression des services de première ligne : d'anciens combattants se mobilisent

Écoutez en direct la webémission pour entendre leurs témoignages.

D'anciens combattants canadiens se réuniront à Ottawa le jeudi 3 octobre. Leur mission : expliquer pourquoi le gouvernement ne doit pas fermer les bureaux du ministère des Anciens Combattants, qui sont essentiels pour eux.

Le gouvernement a déjà mis la clé dans la porte du bureau de Prince George et compte en faire autant d'ici février avec les bureaux de Corner Brook, Charlottetown, Saskatoon, Sydney, Thunder Bay, Windsor, Brandon et Kelowna.

Ces bureaux offrent des services de première ligne aux anciens combattants, jeunes et moins jeunes, certains ayant des incapacités physiques ou mentales. Par exemple, si le bureau de Sydney, au Cap-Breton, fermait, quelque 4 200 anciens combattants et leur famille seraient forcés de conduire pendant sept heures et demie pour se rendre au bureau de Halifax afin d'obtenir des services de première ligne. Et plusieurs en sont incapables, que ce soit en raison de leur âge ou de problèmes de santé.

Les travailleuses et les travailleurs qui offrent ces services de première ligne sont des membres de l'AFPC. Et ils sont très inquiets du sort réservé à leurs clients. Ils se feront d'ailleurs entendre à cet événement.

Branchez-vous pour entendre les témoignages d'anciens combattants et de membres de l'AFPC, qui demandent au gouvernement de revenir sur sa décision de fermer ces bureaux. Et vous pouvez les aider! D'abord en partageant la vidéo YouTube qui sera lancée lors de l'événement.
ASSISTEZ EN DIRECT AU LANCEMENT, à 11 h HNE, le jeudi 3 octobre.

http://www.psac-afpc.com/webdiffusion/

Soyez nombreux à partager cet événement sur Facebook, Twitter et dans tous vos réseaux.
Aidez les anciens combattants à mettre fin à ces fermetures!

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Regards,
The Canadian Veterans Advocacy Team.

New announcement: OVO: Improving the New Veterans Charter: the Report

http://ombudsman-veterans.gc.ca/pdfs/rep-rap-04-2013-eng.pdf

http://ombudsman-veterans.gc.ca/pdfs/rep-rap-04-2013-eng.pdf

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The Canadian Veterans Advocacy Team.

New announcement: Wife of former navy man fighting Veterans Affairs for compensation

Wife of former navy man fighting Veterans Affairs for compensation

September 29, 2013 - 6:54pm By DAN ARSENAULT Staff Reporter

http://thechronicleherald.ca/metro/1157504-widow-seeks-justice

Her husband, a former Royal Canadian Navy member, has been dead for more than a year and Dawn Collins lost in her third attempt to secure compensation from Veterans Affairs Canada this summer.

"I think they owe Wayne something," the Beaver Bank native said in a recent interview.

"I have no money to legally fight it."

Wayne Collins, her husband of 47 years, was a stoker in the engine room of several ships during a five-year stint in the navy in the 1960s. He later went into the grocery business, managing a Halifax Superstore and then running the Foodland in Chester.

He got sick in 2001 and the couple believe that his multiple system atrophy, or MSA, arose from his time in the navy, when he used carbon tetrachloride as a degreasing agent.

Because of his illness, the couple had to give up their Foodland business and spent $30,000 on a stem-cell treatment in Germany in 2009. It provided him increased mobility for a year.

He eventually became confined to a wheelchair, unable to speak. In January 2012, pneumonia put him in hospital for months. He didn't have coverage for that $99-a-day stay in hospital, but Dawn said she could not care for him at home alone.

He was able to go home five weeks before his death at age 69 in July 2012.

"He was glad" to be home, she said, adding it meant he could be with his dog and other comforts.

She has paperwork from Veterans Affairs that offers to cover his expenses for that home care, but claims she hasn't received any of that money yet. She hasn't started paying for his hospital stay yet and doesn't want to.

She believes her husband is due compensation through a special pension because of how he became sick. Now that he's gone, she thinks she should have those pension benefits extended to her. She currently receives a pension of $160 a month because of the hearing loss he suffered while in the navy.

Collins said she is a low-income earner, working at a nearby Walmart.

"I'm angry because I think Wayne would still be alive if he didn't serve his country. I feel ripped off. Wayne got this disease and I honestly, in my heart, believe that it was from exposure to the chemicals."

She takes issue with Veterans Affairs' dismissal of her claim. In essence, they argue there is no record to show her husband was exposed to carbon tetrachloride and there is no evidence to prove that is what made him sick.

She said paperwork from the decommissioning of the ships claims that dangerous chemicals were found. Also, a recent court decision in England accepted that someone there had come down with MSA because of exposure to carbon tetrachloride. She also says that her friend's stepfather contacted MSA from carbon tetrachloride use.

And she argues that members of the Veterans Affairs appeals board didn't have medical experience.

Halifax lawyer Ray Wagner has been monitoring Collins' attempts to win compensation. He said Veterans Affairs provided counsel to the family free of charge.

He agrees that proving Wayne Collins was exposed to carbon tetrachloride and proving it led to MSA is very challenging.

In addition, it is difficult to get the federal government to work hard to find their own records, which would confirm carbon tetrachloride usage.

"The records, sometimes, are not available," he said. "Compassion is not the law."

Losing three Veterans Affairs appeals essentially ends that part of the legal battle and Wagner thinks a civil suit is unlikely because of the costs involved and the unlikely chance for success.

He thinks a civil suit would need experts, such as epidemiologists and toxicologists, and could cost up to $150,000.

The best plan would be to find other people who worked alongside Wayne Collins and can support the claim that he was around carbon tetrachloride. Another big help would be to find people who suffered from MSA because exposure to the chemical.

Wagner and Collins have been in touch with one former navy man who supports her claim that carbon tetrachloride was used on ships.

Now 74, Ron Laronde lives near Saint Andrews, N.B.

He was in the navy in the late '50s and worked as a stoker in an engine room. He contacted the Beaver Bank couple after seeing them on a television news show once.

Back in his navy days, he said one of his first duties in the morning was to grab a scrub bucket, pour out a half gallon of solvent, take some scrubbing brushes and go to work. He said he'd get the chemical all over his hands and breathed it in without a second thought.

He's sure it was carbon tetrachloride. "They had a big sign right over the barrels."

His health isn't very good, but he can't be sure if it has anything to do with his time in the navy. He went on to other seafaring work, much of which involved the use of chemicals.

"We had it in aerosol cans. We used to spray it for cleaning motors and things."

(darsenault@herald.ca)

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New announcement: Severely disabled vets at risk in old-age. OVO Leaked Report

Severely disabled vets at risk in old-age

By Murray Brewster The Canadian Press

http://globalnews.ca/news/870985/severely-disabled-vets-at-risk-in-old-age/

OTTAWA – Some of the country's most severely disabled soldiers will take a major financial hit once they hit old age and risk living out their final years in near-poverty, Canada's veterans ombudsman has concluded.

A report and a painstaking actuarial analysis by Guy Parent's office are due to be released on Tuesday, but copies were obtained by The Canadian Press.

The study compares the old system of compensating veterans under the Pension Act with the New Veterans Charter, marquee legislation championed by the Harper government since it was enacted in 2006.

It shows that roughly 406 severely disabled veterans, mostly from Afghanistan and recent peacekeeping missions, will be left out in the cold because they don't receive certain allowances — or a Canadian Forces pension.

"It is simply not acceptable to let veterans who have sacrificed the most for their country — those who are totally and permanently incapacitated — live their lives with unmet financial needs," said a leaked copy of the report.

Almost a full one-third of the nearly 1,500 soldiers, who have thus far been declared permanently disabled, could also be a risk, depending upon their circumstances. Many of them receive only small allowances and pension entitlements.

The report, which was four years in the making, shows families of veterans who've passed away also take an old age hit because "the cash flow going to survivors ceases when the veteran reaches the age of 65," whereas it continued under the previous pension system.

Compensation for pain-and-suffering awards was also found to be lacking, and Parent noted that specific "improvements are required" only two years after the Conservatives completed the first overhaul of the charter.

Officials in Parent's office and a spokesman for veterans minister Julian Fantino were both not immediately available for comment.

The Harper government, which has had a copy of the report all summer, tried to avoid some of the political fallout last week by preemptively announcing it supported a planned, legislated review of the charter by a House of Commons committee.

Indeed, Parent said he prepared the twin reports to guide the committee and to help separate fact from fiction.

Since its inception, many veterans have criticized the charter as being less generous than the previous system. The notion is at the centre of a lawsuit by Afghan war veterans.

The actuarial report shows ex-soldiers end up with more money in their pockets up front and to the age of retirement than with the checkerboard of pensions it replaced.

But awards for so-called non-economic benefits, such as payments for lost limbs and trauma, pale in comparison to what was given out before when pensions are stretched over a lifetime.

The lump sum payments don't even equal what are handed out by Canadian courts in personal injury cases.

Parent is expected to recommend that the maximum payout be increased to $342,000 from the current $285,000, but the report says the government must engage in a meaningful dialogue to determine what is "fair compensation" for injuries.

The lump sum has been a lightning rod issue because its structure is similar to the provincial workers compensation system, something many in uniform have said is inappropriate for those called upon to risk down their lives for the country.

Many soldiers have said they'd like to see it abolished.

Mike Blais, president of Canadian Veterans Advocacy, said a happy medium exists.

His group has called on the federal government to make changes that would see veterans without pensions given some other kind of life-time compensation, either through an extension of the current earnings loss benefit — or some other mechanism.

He has also pushed for a substantial increase in lump sum awards that would make it equal to what ex-soldiers received under the old pension system.

"Nobody can accept a lump sum award that is completely inadequate," he said on Sunday. "All veterans from all eras deserve to have (the country's) sacred obligation to them honoured until end-of-life."

© The Canadian Press, 2013

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New announcement: Canadian Psychiatric Association Brings Together Military and Veteran Psychiatry

Canadian Psychiatric Association Brings Together Military and Veteran Psychiatry

Read more: http://www.digitaljournal.com/pr/1495363#ixzz2gJKO0zCI

Canada NewsWire

OTTAWA, Sept. 29, 2013

OTTAWA, Sept. 29, 2013 /CNW/ - Yesterday the Canadian Psychiatric Association held the first meeting of the newly formed CPA Military and Veterans Section, bringing together Canada's foremost experts in the field to network, collaborate, and foster evidence-based care and research. The Section is a unique opportunity for researchers and clinicians working with the military, veterans and their families to share knowledge and best practices in treating a population with distinctive needs that are not well understood by fellow psychiatrists, family physicians, and members of the public.

"Not only can networks such as the CPA Military and Veteran's Section foster new knowledge it can also reduce the lag time between finding out what works and putting that new knowledge into practice to support military members, veterans and families. " says the President of the Canadian Psychiatric Association, Dr. Suzane Renaud.

"PTSD and other operational stress injuries affect everyone," adds past CPA president Dr. Fiona McGregor.. "Over the last 10 years, the Canadian Armed Forces have implemented a strong, evidence-based and multidisciplinary mental health program and are leaders in the area of PTSD and other operational stress injuries. By bringing together military and civilian psychiatrists who treat who treat members of the military, veterans and their families, the section offers a unique forum for mutual knowledge exchange and collaboration to also improve services to military spouses and children."

"On behalf of everyone in the Canadian Armed Forces who benefit from their tireless work, I would like to sincerely thank the Canadian Psychiatric Association for being a champion in the area of military members' and veteran's mental health, and for bringing together the nation's top psychiatrists in the field to help support current and former military members and their families," said General Tom Lawson, Chief of the Defence Staff. "With the establishment of this new section, the CPA is continuing to demonstrate their commitment to the health of our military members, and to ensuring that lessons learned through research and best practices in the military mental health community are shared in order to benefit other populations such as police, firefighters, industry and the general public."

Founding Co-Chairs, Dr. Don Richardson, a consultant psychiatrist with the Parkwood Operational Stress Injury Clinic who works with veterans, and Colonel Rakesh Jetly, a Canadian Armed Forces psychiatrist and the Senior Mental Health Clinical Advisor to the Surgeon General, agreed that there is a need for a continuum of care that supports reservists and CF members throughout their careers with the military, and as they make the transition to civilian life.

"We are excited to help launch the CPA Military and Veterans Section," said Jetly and Richardson, "We think there's a lot of potential in bringing this kind of expertise together in one group."

The Canadian Psychiatric Association is the national voice for Canada's 4,500 psychiatrists and more than 600 psychiatric residents. Founded in 1951, the CPA is dedicated to promoting an environment that fosters excellence in the provision of clinical care, education and research.

SOURCE Canadian Psychiatric Association

Read more: http://www.digitaljournal.com/pr/1495363#ixzz2gJKGHXfJ

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