AFP/AAC Newsletter #28 - Bilingual/Bilingue

3 Issue #28 • November 2017 Armed Forces Pensioners’ / Annuitants’ Association of Canada C anada’s newMinister of Veter- ans Affairs, Seamus O”Regan, received essentially the same mandate letter from the Prime Min- ister as his predecessor. It was, for the most part, a reiteration of the 2015 Liberal election promises. Some of those promises have been fulfilled but we have seen no deliberate action on three of those promises that AFP/ AAC has been promoting for a long time, namely: • Deliver a higher standard of service and care and ensure that a “one veteran, one standard” approach is upheld. • Increase the veteran survivor’s pension amount from 50 percent to 70 percent. • Eliminate the “marriage after 60” claw-back clause, so that surviv- ing spouses of Veterans receive appropriate pension and health benefits. (You can read the entire letter at: http://pm.gc.ca/eng/minister- veterans-affairs-and-associate- minister-national-defence- mandate-letter ) The “one veteran, one standard” issue is an important one because Veterans Affairs Canada (VAC) currently applies three distinct sets of standards when dealing with dis- abled veterans, depending on when he or she served: o “Traditional veteran” – who served in World War Two, and/or the Korean War until the Korean Armistice on 31 October 1953; o “CAF veteran” – who served in the CAF after 31 October 1953 and whose service disabilities are managed by VAC under the provisions of the ‘Pension Act R.S.C., 1985, c. P-6’ (short title ‘Pension Act’); and o “Modern day veteran” - who served in the CAF after 31 October 1953 but whose ser- vice disabilities are managed by VAC under the provisions of the ‘Canadian Forces Members and Veterans Re-establishment and Compensation Act S.C. 2005, c. 21’ (short title the ‘New Veterans Charter’ or NVC). Regrettably, the disability bene- fits provided a veteran by VAC for a service-related injury or disease vary substantially between these three “classes” of veterans. For example, prior to 1 April 2006, a serving member or veteran of the CAF who was awarded a disability benefit from VAC received that benefit under the Pension Act in the form of a pension for life along with a pension for his/her survi- vor. However, a disability benefit awarded after 1 April 2006 under the New Veterans Charter is in the form of a lump-sum payment with no pension and no survivor benefit. Thus, depending on the particular circumstances, the modern day vet- eran could receive much less in the monetary value of his NVC benefits than the Pension Act veteran. During the 2015 election cam- paign, the promise to increase the veteran survivor’s pension amount from 50 percent to 70 percent sounded like little more than elec- tion rhetoric. Today it still sounds like that! Aside from a mention in the mandate letter to Minister O’Regan, there is no evidence that anyone in DND is aggressively working on this file. And finally, the ‘marriage after 60’ issue, which AFP/AAC has been trying to fix for more than two decades, continues. The fix is quite simple, delete the single clause which is Section 31 of the CFSA: 31. (1) Subject to section 25.1 but notwithstanding any other provision of this Act, the survivor of a con- tributor is not entitled to an annual allowance in respect of the contribu- tor under this Part if at the time the contributor married the survivor or began to cohabit with the survivor in a relationship of a conjugal nature, the contributor had attained the age of sixty years. While in Opposition, represen- tatives of our three main federal political parties have overwhelm- ingly supported AFP/AAC request to remove Section 31. Those same representatives, when their party rises to power, invariably “need to study the issue more”. Although the survivor benefit and the marriage-after-60 both fall un- der the DND/CFSA, Minister O’Re- gan is double-hatted as the Associate Minister of National Defence. This should facilitate the execution of two of the tasks which the Prime Min- ister gave him in his mandate letter – to increase the survivor benefit to 70% and eliminate the marriage-af- ter-60 clause in the CFSA. Our federal government is now two years into its mandate. While the “one veteran, one standard” issue is somewhat complicated, the other two issues described above are relatively simple. Let’s see if Min- ister O’Regan can get them fixed before the next federal election. Will Minister O’Regan follow through on election platform commitments? Volunteers The executive members of this Association are all volunteers. We are in desperate need of additional volunteers to help us identify and re- search the issues that concern our members and to research and write the articles to address such issues. We also need translators to work on the articles in the newsletter – a task performed for many years by BGen (Ret’d) Al Geddry to whom we are most grateful. If you are interested in CAF pension and/or Veterans Affairs Canada services, we would love to have you on board. There is very little time or travel involved – what meetings we hold are by teleconfer- ence – and most of our correspon- dence is via Internet. No training or experience needed – just enthusi- asm for veterans’ matters.