Michael McNeil still has the helmet he was wearing in Afghanistan in November 2009 when an improvised explosive device (IED) went off close by, caving part of it inwards.
“What I remember was the IED going off,” he says, “seeing the shockwave go out, and then nothing. I wake up, puking dust up in my mouth. I was out of it, like stuttering. I couldn’t walk, I couldn’t stand. It was like that for weeks.”
McNeil was rushed to a medical unit for treatment. Seven days later, he was back on another mission.
But the symptoms continued. After he returned to Canada in 2010, he was eventually diagnosed with both traumatic brain injury and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and suffers severe seizures, headaches, and chronic pain.
He’s filed multiple applications for Canada’s Critical Injury Benefit (CIB), which have collectively taken nine years between processing and appeals.
But he says all of them have been denied by Veterans Affairs Canada (VAC), because he reported back for duty soon after the explosion.
“I was blown up, by the Taliban, outside the wire, did 190 missions — you can’t deny it, I suffered an injury,” he says.
“Their criteria for it is so ridiculous, and so strong, and every time you think you’re going to get it, they just reword it,” he adds, speaking to Global News from his Burton, N.B., home.
Created in 2015, Canada’s critical injury benefit is a tax-free lump sum payment currently set at $87,992.30.
Criteria include, “severe and traumatic injuries” from a “sudden and single incident”… that “immediately caused a severe impairment.”
The traumatic injury can include physical damage such as head injury and damage to internal organs, along with “disordered emotions or behaviour.”
According to the policy, “severe impairment” includes amputation, legal blindness, paralysis, loss of urinary or bowel function for at least 84 consecutive days, admission to intensive care for at least five days, to acute care for at least 84 days.
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McNeil isn’t the only veteran speaking out to Global News about the program’s approval process.
Royal Canadian Navy veteran Michael Mahoney thought he had a clear case based on psychological injury when he first applied in 2022, after another Maritimer, Fabian Henry, won a lengthy appeal to claim the benefit based on PTSD.
But the Nova Scotia veteran was rejected, receiving his decision after 416 days.
“It was crushing, it really was,” says Mahoney.
Mahoney spent almost two decades in the navy and faced several potential attacks on a seven-month deployment after the 9/11 attacks.
In one incident, he had to prepare to fire upon a foreign fighter jet in a tense encounter. In another, he witnessed migrants drifting at sea in the Gulf of Oman, crews unable to rescue them.
Struggles with major anxiety and depression followed him once he returned to Halifax, and he was eventually relieved from ship duties as a result.
Then in 2014, he says he attempted suicide. Records show he was hospitalized for five days.
“I woke up out of a coma, several days later in the ICU, with the nurse asking me if I wanted the tube out of my throat,” he recalls. He says he suffered an infection because of intubation and now has lung problems.
In its decision, Veterans Affairs Canada acknowledges he suffered “severe impairment ” because of his service. But it also ruled a single incident wasn’t the cause.
Mahoney disagrees and feels his suicide attempt should meet the policy’s criteria.
“My physical health and my mental health suffered because of one critical incident,” he says. “Had that one critical incident not occurred, I would probably still have a career in the Canadian Forces.”
Across the country in Alberta, veteran Carl Dionne also says his application was denied.
Dionne served in both Bosnia and Afghanistan and experienced numerous live fire incidents
On one occasion, he says he faced the barrel of a gun in a tense miscommunication with members of the Afghanistan army.
He also witnessed the killing of a fellow member by a suicide bomber.
Dionne says he was diagnosed with severe PTSD in 2009 and was medically released from service.
He says his VAC case manager recommended he apply for the benefit. But his rejection came in the mail 401 days after his initial application.
Like Mahoney’s case, Dionne says VAC ruled his condition was not due to a single, sudden event.
“I have a permanent disability,” he says, “I can’t work, I’m seeking therapy, (how can it be) more clear than that?”
“But unfortunately, we have to fight, not only overseas,” he adds, “but we have to fight in our own home.”
Veterans Affairs Canada declined an interview request from Global News.
But it did provide figures relating to the benefit, indicating the department typically anticipates issuing 25 CIB payments every year, “given the severity of these incidents,” although it also acknowledged over the past five years there have been an average of 14 per year.
It also stated its “average processing time” is 28 weeks (or 196 days).
The department also confirmed three people have received the benefit for mental health reasons, and it conducted an internal review of the criteria after the Veterans Review and Appeal Board overturned a 2022 decision related to psychological injury,
Former Member of Parliament and veterans’ advocate Peter Stoffer, now board chair of the Veterans Legal Assistance Foundation, says the system isn’t working.
“You don’t need to compound their injuries with bureaucratic nonsense,” he says. “If you have a TBI and PTSD that has been medically documented by professionals, you should be awarded the critical benefit.”
Veterans say they’re not done pushing for the financial benefit in the name of all veterans severely affected by their service.
“When I was in my moment of most need, the Canadian Forces turned their back on me,” says Mahoney.
“The medical community turned their back on me, and now Veterans Affairs is in turn, turning (its) back on me, without looking at all the evidence and adjudicating this fairly.”
“Stop bullsh—ing veterans, and start working,” adds Dionne.
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