Some veterans groups say new minister still marginalizing them

If part of new Veterans Affairs Minister Erin O’Toole’s mandate was to mend the public relations fences trampled down by his predecessor Julian Fantino, he’s not off to an auspicious start.

O’Toole, who replaced the politically tone-deaf former cop on Jan. 5, slowly has been reaching out to veterans organizations, but at least a couple of the more vocal dissidents say they have a feeling they’re going to remain frozen out.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper demoted Fantino to junior defence minister last week as he prepared the Conservative government for its anticipated fall re-election campaign. Fantino’s apparent insensitivity to the concerns of disabled veterans and inability to sell policy changes by his department made him a political liability in what had become a high-profile portfolio.

O’Toole, a one-time RCAF navigator turned Toronto corporate lawyer, is supposed to reset the government’s relationship with veterans, whose problems generally get a sympathetic reception from the public.

But the Hill Times reported Monday O’Toole has told at least one veterans’ group it’s not going to have the minister’s ear unless it restructures its organization.

Canadian Veterans Advocacy (CVA) head Michael Blais got a voicemail message, in response to a tweet, from the new minister last Wednesday, two days after he was appointed.

"I actually think you and I have a decent relationship," O’Toole said in his voicemail. "But I want groups that are truly non-profit fraternal organizations that have bylaws, that have boards of directors, that have votes and annual general meetings, not just a Facebook page.

"So I’d like to hear your plan on becoming that, like a legion [Royal Canadian Legion] or an ANAVETs [Army, Navy and Air Force Veterans] or or a UN-NATO or something, where the members have a lot of say on direction of policy."

While O’Toole’s tone seems friendly, the message sounded like an ultimatum: Change or continue to be frozen out of stakeholders’ meetings.

Groups not invited to Quebec summit

CVA and some other veterans’ groups were excluded from a stakeholder summit chaired by Fantino in Quebec City last November. The list of those not invited mirrored one used by the legion to decide who could attend the twice-yearly assembly of veterans groups that it hosts.

At least some had been highly vocal critics of the government’s closure of regional veterans’ affairs offices, the implementation of a Liberal-originated policy replacing disability pensions with lump-sum payments and its inadequate response to the problem of post-traumatic stress disorder and suicide among modern vets.

On the eve of last Remembrance Day, a coalition of six dissident veterans groups announced they’d be boycotting government photo ops and news announcements until their concerns were addressed.

[ Related: As Canada remembers its fallen, are our living veterans well served? ]

[ Related: New veterans’ coalition refuses to work with government over decreased benefits ]

[ Related: Vocal veterans frozen out of Quebec meeting with Fantino, veterans’ groups ]

Blais told Yahoo Canada News it appears O’Toole’s job is less to improve service to disabled vets than to spruce up the department’s public image before the scheduled October general election.

Blais said O’Toole has tried to smear the CVA by suggesting it was backed with union donations and operating from NDP veterans affairs critic Peter Stoffer’s Ottawa office. All untrue, he said. Fantino and his predecessor, Stephen Blaney, previously accepted the organization as a legitimate veterans’ representative.

“Now we have Erin O’Toole dictating terms about our existence if we want inclusion,” Blais said, as he insisted his CVA met all the legal criteria of a non-profit organization set out by the Conservative government in 2012.

Blais said the kinds of structures the minister wants are rigid and unnecessary in a web-connected age.

“No modern veterans organization is into that crap anymore,” Blais said. “That’s why we don’t join the legion.”

O’Toole’s office would not comment, but the minister’s call was portrayed as cordial, friendly and not intended to suggest the CVA would be shut out of future discussions.

Still, representatives of disabled veterans say they’re concerned the Quebec precedent will stand.

“There’s three injured veterans that used to sit at that table,” Don Leonardo, president of the 7,600-member Veterans of Canada said. “And they’re the ones that get kicked out of the meetings.”

Leonardo was one of those disabled vets at the table. He said the last contact he had with O’Toole was in a Twitter exchange in December, before his appointment was announced. He said he’s left messages at the minister’s office and O’Toole’s constituency office.

“I have not talked to the minister yet,” he said in an interview. “All I can do is assume that I’m not included in the stakeholders anymore, even being the second-largest veterans group in Canada now.

“I’m not sure if I’m invited back or if I’m going to be louder on the outside than I am sitting at the table.”

No one speaking for modern-day injured veterans

Leonardo, who wrote an op-ed piece for Monday’s Hill Times, said at this point there is no one at the table to represent injured modern veterans. But he stopped short of criticizing O’Toole’s outreach so far.

"The fact is Minister O’Toole is a veteran and I will debate him on the issues, but I’m not going to go around and slam him. I will leave that for others.”

Veterans advocate Sean Bruyea, who regularly attended Veterans Affairs stakeholder meetings, but is also feeling the chill since he helped organize the dissident coalition last fall, said he is not surprised O’Toole has not been more conciliatory.

"I anticipated he would just be a smoother venue for the same old political rhetoric, which is we’re telling everyone we’re doing something when we’re actually doing nothing," he told Yahoo Canada News.

Bruyea said successive veterans affairs ministers have been unable to get control of the department’s entrenched bureaucracy to make it more responsive. He doubts O’Toole will have any better success.

But he’s concerned disabled veterans will be pushed further to the fringes if they’re not heeded and lose hope.

“I wouldn’t be surprised that veterans were to do harm to themselves because, face it, they gave everything for this government and if they sense the government’s not going to listen to them what options are left for them.”