FREDERICTON - A New Brunswick widow who lost her husband to cancer six years ago is praising a decision by the federal government that will allow more people to qualify for Agent Orange payments.

Bette Hudson, whose husband Ralph died of bone cancer after two decades in the military, said Wednesday that Ottawa finally got it right in loosening the rules on who can get a $20,000 ex gratia payout.

Veterans Affairs Minister Jean-Pierre Blackburn announced in Fredericton that the government is removing a controversial condition that required applicants to be alive on Feb. 6, 2006 -- the date the federal Conservatives came to power.

"It makes me feel as if my husband is worthy," she said at the announcement, moments after Blackburn outlined the changes.

"We were left out of this from the beginning. Now I feel as if he was worth something and I'm happy because we have fought a hard fight."

Hudson, 72, is one of more than 100 spouses from CFB Gagetown in New Brunswick who had applied to receive the special tax-free payments, but were denied because they didn't meet the criteria.

She and other women in the group Widows on the Warpath have lobbied the federal government to change the payment rules, which they have said are unfair, exclusionary and politically motivated.

Blackburn said the decision was made to expand the criteria and extend the deadline after finding there was roughly $24 million that had been allotted for the program, but not yet spent.

"We realized that if we agreed with the widows' comments that they have told us so many times, we thought it was possible with this amount of money that we didn't spend to deliver this ex gratia payment to them," he said in an interview.

He said officials will go through files that had been rejected and send out payments in the new year if they fit the criteria.

Carol Brown Parker, co-president of Agent Orange Association of Canada Inc., also commended the government for removing the 2006 requirement.

"I believe that we are moving in the right direction in supporting our veterans and civilians who were exposed to Agent Orange and other toxic herbicides at CFB Base Gagetown," she said in a statement.

"But we also must continue to work together."

Parker lived on the base from 1956 until 1973 since her dad was in the Forces, and played in the streams and fields that were sprayed with unregistered U.S. military herbicides, including Agent Orange, Agent Purple and Agent White in 1966 and 1967.

She also wants the government to expand the time frame people had to be living in the area to qualify.

Ottawa has said applicants must be diagnosed with a medical condition listed in the U.S. National Academy of Sciences' Institute of Medicine update from 2004. They must have worked at, trained at, been posted to or lived within five kilometres of CFB Gagetown when Agent Orange was tested in 1966 and 1967.

But Parker wants that to go from 1956 to 1984.

Blackburn also extended the deadline for applying for the payment to next June 30, which he said should allow just over 1,100 additional people to qualify for the $20,000 lump-sum payment.

Blackburn said that will allow more caregivers and widowers to apply on behalf of someone who died before the ex gratia payment came into place.

In 2007, Ottawa made the payments available to people whose health may have been harmed by the spraying of Agent Orange at the base in Oromocto, N.B.

So far, just over 3,100 applicants have received the payment, for a total payout of $62.7 million.