A Winnipeg veteran says it’s time for Veterans Affairs to get their affairs in order before what he calls chronic understaffing leads to someone getting sick – or worse.
“My father was in the military and I followed him in,” said Daniel Holden.
“I was injured on my right knee and SOS-ed out of the service because of that. They gave me a small pension, I was in my twenties at the time.”
Holden, now 67, lives in Winnipeg, having received multiple doctorates after leaving the military and getting into education administration.
But he has been living with the pain of severe arthritis resulting from the injury he suffered during a training exercise.
He recently applied to have his pension re-visited in hopes of getting an increase, and though he was declined, that’s not what most angered him.
“I went to see Veterans Affairs, the medical officer put in her report, and she said it would take about eight weeks,” Holden explained.
“After 12 weeks, I called, and they said they’d make a note. I never heard anything back. After 24 weeks, I called again.”
“They said they would find somebody in the ministry that would answer my question, and I asked if I could speak to the minister, if possible.”
Flash forward to 36 weeks later, when Holden finally got an answer from an assistant to Veterans Affairs Minister Seamus O’Regan.
“He said that they just don’t have the staff. What if there was an emergency, a veteran needed the money to live by or to get prescriptions?” Holden said.
“I was basically told by this guy that there was nothing they could do about that because it would take the eight weeks. Immediately, I thought the eight week turns into 36 so by that time the guy has had a heart attack or whatever and died.”
Global News broke the story Monday that the Liberal government has left hundreds of millions of dollars earmarked for veterans unspent. This does not sit well with Holden.
“I couldn’t believe that, after all the things that the Liberal government said about improving things for veterans, it had actually gotten worse. If they’ve got all that extra money, why don’t they just hire people to handle this instead of leaving veterans waiting for months and months and months?”
Holden’s next step is getting an advocate through the department to help figure out why his case took as long as it did, and why his request was declined despite his condition worsening. He has trouble with stairs and needs handholds in the washroom.
He’s the first to admit that there are many who are in worse shape than he is, so for himself and all of Canada’s veterans, he’s calling on the federal government to make a change.
“You’ve got all these veterans coming back, they’re missing limbs, have post-traumatic stress, and they’re being put on the back-burner because they don’t have enough staff. We’ve been put on the side for long enough. Why would anybody want to go and fight for this country if they’re going to be treated like that afterwards?”
O’Regan defended the Liberals’ record, saying there has been “no stealing” from veterans under Justin Trudeau’s leadership.
Global News has reached out to Veterans Affairs for comment on Holden’s story.
WATCH: Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s Liberal government are doing what they damned Stephen Harper’s Conservatives for doing: leaving hundreds millions of dollars unspent at the Department of Veterans Affairs. David Akin reports.