Campaigns

Despite the bitter cold––minus 25 with the windchill––more than 50 people gathered outside the Veterans Affairs Canada office in Brandon today to witness the closure of the office and the loss of face-to-face services to veterans. 

Veterans and their families have spoken out about why they need the face-to-face services these offices provide. These closures mean the loss of 90 front line workers including twenty-five Case Managers who work with high-risk veterans, and twenty-one Client Service Agents who have the expertise to help veterans access the programs and benefits for which they qualify. The offices also had administrative staff, local managers, pension officers, nurses and occupational therapists. None of these people are dispensable.

Veterans from Brandon and surrounding areas will gather outside the Veterans Affairs Canada office in Brandon this afternoon at 2:00 p.m. to witness the closure of the office and the loss of their face-to-face services.

Veterans from the Saskatoon area have joined forces with the union representing Veterans Affairs front-line workers to speak out against the closure of the Veterans Affairs office in their community.

These numbers come from information contained in the September 2013 Veterans Affairs Senior Departmental Report and from a survey of Union of Veterans Affairs Employees local presidents in December 2013

Those are strong words to come from anyone, much less decorated former members of the Canadian military. But a delegation of veterans from across Canada could no longer mince words on Wednesday, after being insulted by Veterans’ Affairs Minister Julian Fantino.

Hundreds of people braved the frigid -20 degree weather on Saturday to protest the elimination of door-to-door delivery at the Manitoba Legislative Building in Winnipeg. The Canada Post rally was one of many held across the country over the weekend.

In just two weeks, veterans in Northern Saskatchewan will be left without the face-to-face services they deserve when the federal government closes the Saskatoon Veterans Affairs Canada (VAC) office, along with seven others across the country: Charlottetown, Corner Brook, Sydney, Thunder Bay, Windsor, Brandon and Kelowna. The Prince George office closed last year.

Our answers to what the government is saying about these closures here.

With the passage of Bill C-4, the Conservative government not only “stacked the deck” in terms of collective bargaining process, but it will also eliminate the only independent federal organization that provides comparative information on the compensation of federal public service workers.