The government has rescheduled a vote on an NDP motion to stop the closure of eight Veterans Affairs offices for Monday -- after they are shuttered -- in a move the Official Opposition called “cynical.”
Offices in Kelowna, B.C., Saskatoon, Brandon, Man., Thunder Bay, Ont., Windsor, Ont., Sydney N.S., Charlottetown and Corner Brook, N.L., are scheduled to close Friday. The government is moving to offer more services online, as well as at Service Canada locations, a decision that has raised the ire of veterans across the country who say that will leave them without easy access to services they need.
"By Monday, it will be too late for parliament to save veterans' offices and Conservatives know this," NDP MP Sylvain Chicoine, sponsor of the motion, said in a statement released late Thursday afternoon.
"The Conservatives are shutting down these offices tomorrow and they won't even stand in their place and take responsibility for their actions."
Protests against the closures were planned for Thursday and Friday. At the Sydney office, veterans and their supporters are planning a black ribbon ceremony on Friday if the doors are locked for good.
Conservative MP Erin O’Toole said that in the case of the Sydney office, a case worker will be retained and moved to the nearest Service Canada office. However, he noted, the Veterans Affairs offices “are not being utilized like they once were.”
“Whenever a veteran is upset and feels disrespected, as a veteran myself, that’s a bad day for me and a bad day for Parliament,” O’Toole told CTV’s Power Play. “But the real issue here is about services for our veterans now and in the future.”
On Wednesday, the federal government had suggested that the veterans were being manipulated by the Public Service Alliance of Canada, the union that represents employees affected by the closures.
On Thursday, NDP MP Craig Scott said it is the veterans that are speaking out about services that will be lost with the closures.
“So the government doesn’t seem to engage on what those service centres are still doing for the veterans who’ve come to rely on them and what the Service Canada centres cannot provide,” he told Power Play.
Green Party Leader Elizabeth May said the accusation “is just one more heap of abuse on men who have medals all over their chest for their service to this country.”
Opposition accused of 'fear-mongering'
Earlier Thursday, Veterans Affairs Minister Julian Fantino insisted that services to veterans will not be adversely affected by the closures.
During question period, NDP Leader Tom Mulcair accused the federal government of misleading Canadians on the issue when it claims, for example, that veterans who need them will still receive home visits from case managers.
“Does the prime minister realize that from Corner Brook, one of the offices being closed, to St. John’s it’s an eight-hour drive in good weather?” Mulcair asked.
“That it’s not true that there will be home visits for all of these veterans, and that it is grossly unacceptable to be shutting down services to our veterans when we’ve lost eight of them to suicide in the last two months?”
Prime Minister Stephen Harper was not in question period Thursday. However, Fantino answered Mulcair’s questions, saying it is “flatly unfair” to connect recent soldier suicides with the upcoming office closures.
“We do intend to keep on working on these issues to ensure that veterans, whether they need service and be visited by a case worker that that continues to be, as well as their opportunity to access a local, very, very close by service centre office,” Fantino said.
“Very, very close by,” Mulcair replied. “Sixteen-hour return trip.”
After Mulcair asked why the government has made veterans feel as though they are fighting a war against their own government, Fantino accused the NDP leader of “fear-mongering,” saying veterans that do not receive services at home can visit one of 650 Service Canada locations, “some of them right in the very building where the office was that is now being closed.”
Fantino did not directly answer Mulcair when he asked if the prime minister would meet with veterans, saying only that he is “committed to having an open dialogue” with service men and women and veterans.
On Wednesday, Fantino was forced to stand in the House and apologize for being “very late” to a meeting with a group of veterans who travelled to Ottawa to fight the closures. The veterans said Fantino showed up late, answered a few questions and left. They later called for him to resign.
Fantino blamed a cabinet meeting “that ran long,” and apologized “for how this was handled.”
The incident spurred both Mulcair and Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau to call for Fantino to be fired. Fantino said Thursday he is not going anywhere.
Veteran Ronald Clarke, who utilizes the Sydney office, said that although the meeting didn’t go as he had hoped, “it’s not the end of the war.”
