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Article Date18-01-2010
Record TYPENews
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Article TitleLiberals hold veterans forum during prorogation
Article ContentLiberals hold veterans forum during prorogation

 http://www.canada.com/news/Liberals+hold+veterans+forum+during+prorogation/2421867/story.html OTTAWA — The federal Liberals will hold a one-day forum this month on suicide, stress disorder, disability and other problems of Afghanistan war veterans.
The event is set for Jan. 28, when opposition MPs return to Ottawa in defiance of the government's shutdown of Parliament.
Canadian Forces members returning from Afghanistan face "an ambivalent society" compared to the "patriotic" embrace U.S. military personnel get when they return home, Rob Oliphant, the Toronto Liberal MP organizing the hearings, said Friday.
Oliphant said the hearing will focus on post-traumatic stress disorder and occupational stress injury, suicide, homelessness, and controversy over disability benefits and principles of the 2006 New Veterans Charter.
Oliphant is a United Church minister and the Liberal caucus veterans' affairs critic. Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff is scheduled to attend part of the hearings.
Canada's veterans ombudsman, retired Col. Patrick Stogran, who is on the Liberals' proposed witness list, said he would testify, but won't provide any partisan sound bites as the Liberals "are no better" than the Conservatives on veterans issues.
"I get a lot of anger directed at me because I'm critical of this government," Stogran said. "I'm not critical of this government. I'm critical of successive governments who have accumulated huge debts to our veterans."
"This is not a subject for political one-upmanship. I will not be used as a sound bite for any of the parties, so I'll speak to them just as honestly as I speak to my veterans and the serving members."
The hearings are aimed, in part, at showing the Liberals are interested in a military issue other than the controversy over diplomat Richard Colvin's allegations that detainees were transferred to Afghan security forces despite a high risk of torture.
The hearing will also highlight the fact that hearings on the New Veterans Charter by a House of Commons committee were shut down when the Harper government prorogued Parliament.
The government has billed the charter as the most sweeping change to veterans' benefits and services in the past 60 years.
Stogran is on a cross-country tour holding town halls on the charter, which has caused hardship and hard feelings as it provides lump sum payments to disabled veterans while veterans of the previous era were entitled to long-term pensions.
"One of the real issues that I'm discovering, and it's only anecdotal, is the Canadian context is significantly different from the American context," Oliphant said.
"The research generally used is American. When Canadian soldiers return, they return to a very different society than the American soldiers return to," Oliphant said. "Canadian return to sometimes, at best, an ambivalent society as opposed to a very patriotic society. I think we're patriotic in a different way.
"I think that that puts a different psychological pressure on soldiers and they don't get the same social and cultural support that they might get in communities in the United States."
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