Next week, on November 11, veterans will get only two minutes of recognition — if people stop to reflect at all — while the rest of the year their sacrifice is forgotten.

If Canada’s mission in Afghanistan does end in 2011, 35,000 men and women will have served in that theatre — 133 have been killed thus far — and the Canadian Forces’ (CF) low estimate is that as many as 2,000 could be returning home with an Operational Stress Injury (OSI) such as PTSD.

These soldiers will return home with, among other things, an OSI or plagued by survivor’s guilt and the pressure to do good by their dead friends; first they bury them and then they bury their own feelings. As the saying goes: Survivors die twice.

Massacre at Fort Hood

The problems the U.S. military would prefer to hide violently surged to the public’s attention when Major Nidal Malik Hasan, a 39-year-old U.S. Army psychiatrist, allegedly opened fire yesterday afternoon at Fort Hood, Texas. He is accused of killing 13 people and wounding 30.

A New York Times article features an interview with Hasan’s cousin, who states that he expressed deep concern about being sent to Iraq or Afghanistan; the cousin also notes that Hasan’s job was to counsel returning soldiers suffering with PTSD which gave him an intimate window into the horrors of war. This made him fearful of deploying to either theatre. His cousin also claims he was having second thoughts about his military career a few years ago after other soldiers harassed him for being a Muslim.

Bringing the war home

After the battle’s over, some scars are more visible than others. But they can’t stay hidden forever, and like tiny landmines they will eventually explode. Nor should they be a hidden shame. Refusing to acknowledge the challenges faced by active duty, reservists or veterans is as insulting as refusing to properly acknowledge the dead; and one presidential visit to inspect a standing army of coffins isn’t enough.

This is the horror of war that society and — too often — the anti-war community fail to acknowledge. We cry and lament for the civilian casualties and too often hate the individual soldiers who we insist are cold hearted bastards who enlisted to kill, ignoring the reality of military recruitment tactics that purposefully target young vulnerable teenagers and young adults often from poor and disadvantaged urban centers, rural communities and First Nation reserves with the promise of medallion glory and video-game thrills; or, more simply, the promise of a large sign-up bonus and free healthcare.

The damage done by war

The damage from war and our society’s treatment of these heroes is damning. The statistics are explosive.
Exposure to war time violence can cause Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) — the Canadian government uses the term Operation Stress Injury (OSI) instead of the DSM-IV diagnosis of PTSD since apparently soldiers who “cannot cope” with the reality of war are just “stressed.”

The impact and fallout on troops can be devastating on the soldier and their family. Symptoms of PTSD (or shell shock as it was once called) include persistent frightening thoughts and memories of their ordeal, emotionally numbness, especially with people with whom they were once close. Sufferers may also experience sleep problems or be easily startled.

The Harper government’s military policy paper, ‘The Canada First Defence Strategy,’ proposes spending $490 billion on the military over the next 20 years. Instead of spending tax payers money on bombs and bullets, money should be invested in veteran specific health care needs, especially better access to mental health services.

Canada’s Chief of Defence Staff, General Walter Natynchuk, has pledged to do more to assist soldiers suffering from OSI, but is quick to blame the military’s warrior culture without acknowledging the systemic refusal to acknowledge how deep the problem runs.
One bright light in the darkness is a new program offered by Veterans Affairs Canada called Operational Stress Injury Support Services (OSISS), which began offering peer-support counseling to returning soldiers of all rank, bars and stripes, including active-duty, reservists and veterans.

In a 2002 NOW Magazine article Terry Allan interviewed Lt.-Gen. Romeo Dallaire (Ret.’d) about the long-term consequences of his war experiences. “Eight years after Rwanda, in daylight and in dreams, Dallaire still hears the cries of wounded children, the weeping of survivors, the voice of the man who died at the other end of a phone line as the general listened. He still can’t escape the smell of death, the memories of hacked-off limbs scattered on the ground, and worst of all, he says, the ‘thousands upon thousands of sets of eyes in the night, in the dark, just floating and looking back’ at him in anger, accusation, or eternal pleading.”

Now a Senator, Dallaire has estimated, “about 20 per cent of troops and humanitarian workers on missions like his suffer much the same thing, as do 5 to 10 percent of diplomats. ‘They are casualties … High suicide rates, booze, drugs, pornography, finding themselves on skid row.’

Whisper the word Rwanda and everyone knows the horror you’re referencing, the horror that Dallaire and other Canadian peacekeepers lived through in 1994 while thousands and thousands of the people they were UN mandated to protect did not.
“Ultimately PTSD leads to suicide,” he said. “I tried to kill myself four times.” To suggest that Dallaire, who has been open about his battles with PTSD, is weak-minded or weak willed is an insult to every one of Canada’s heroes.

Glass soldiers

Soldiers like to believe they are invinsible, that they are steel warriors. Sure, Kevlar helmets and Molle vests protect the body, but what about the mind and the pride that soldiers often carry that prevents them from seeking help even when their lives are falling apart? Along with mental health issues, returning soldiers often face social and personal problems such as rising incarceration rates.

According to a November 2008 report, 4,000 new cases of PTSD in the UK were reported last year and service personnel on operations are nine times more likely to suffer than those not posted. It also found that women were more vulnerable to the condition, with an eight out of 1,000 chance rather than the four out of 1,000 chance for men.

A UK National Association of Probation Officers report, issued September 25, 2009, stated, “Depression, post-traumatic stress disorder and substance abuse are behind an alarming rise in the number of former British soldiers ending up in prison, a report says — and more veterans have had tangles with the law than there are British troops in Afghanistan. It also noted that most veterans don’t receive adequate counseling or support when they leave the armed forces.”

The statistics are hauntingly similar for Canadian soldiers. Our heroes are dying, with suicide rates more than double those of the general population.

These statistics only include active duty service personnel and do not include reservists or veterans, as the Department of National Defense (DND) does not currently track overall suicide rates despite calls for greater transparency from the public, the media and Canadian politicians like Senator Dellaire.

A Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) investigation found that the suicide rate among Canada’s soldiers doubled from 2006 to 2007.  Last year, the number of suicides among regular and reserve members of the Canadian Forces rose to its highest point in more than a decade. Veterans Affairs says that the number of vets experiencing some kind of operational stress injury, such as PTSD, has tripled in the past five years, and they expect it to continue rising with Canada’s mission in Afghanistan likely to last until 2011. It has also recently pledged to review the way the Department of Defence tracks suicide rates. (For the U.S., the month of January 2009 brought the highest rate of suicide among all branches of the U.S. military and had the highest rates since 1980.

Killing overseas and killing our own

If the Department of National Defense and Veterans Affairs Canada are speaking the truth regarding wanting to break the stigma of mental health issues within military, than nothing less than full disclosure and transparency, as opposed to secrecy and shame, regarding suicide statistics is necessary for healing to begin.

Senator Dallaire, in an exclusive interview with the CBC, said, “I mean there are regiments who won’t recognize that one of their soldiers who’s committed suicide, you know, a year or so after a mission, should go on the list of those who are a casualty of the mission. If you’re killed in operation, your name is on the Honour List. But if you kill yourself due to the injury of that operation, then you’re not recognized.”

In regards to the military structure, Dallaire blames the middle level functionaries for stalling the disclosure. It is they “who feel that they’ve got the responsibility of the purses of the government, who feel they’ve got the responsibilities of not setting up precedents and of applying the rules and so on. They’re the ones both in DND and in Veterans Affairs, they are the ones who are making it more difficult,” he said.

If the military demands loyalty from its troops, then the troops should expect loyalty in return, loyalty in good times as in bad, during victory parades and when a soldier breaks down.

Canadians cannot have it both ways; a hero-honouring culture that does not honour its heroes. Neither can the anti-war movement rail against the treatment of civilians, foreign combatants and detainees — the war overseas — while ignoring the challenges facing soldiers and veterans who have brought the war home. All are casualties. This is where a new peace keeping effort must begin.

krystalline kraus is a Toronto-based writer.

Read Part I of this article: http://www.rabble.ca/news/2009/10/soldiering-human-cost-war

In the public policy debates over climate change, critics of strong action to mitigate global warming have often described proponents as “religious zealots”, and vice-versa. Moreover, since the concern over global warming has entered the mainstream consciousness, religious groups have been increasingly drawn to the discussion. Now, in the UK, a recent decision by an employment tribunal has actually equivocated belief in global warming with religious belief, for the purposes of workplace discrimination.

The case centers around Tim Nicholson, whose position as Head of Sustainability at Grainger, plc was terminated over what he claims was “contempt” for his beliefs about anthropogenic global warming. Nicholson alleged that his termination was due to his beliefs – which he argued should be protected from discrimination by the UK’s Employment Equality (Religion or Belief) Regulations of 2003.

In its decision this week, the employment tribunal ruled Nicholson would be allowed to bring his discrimination claim because Nicholson’s beliefs in global warming passed the tests for “philosophical belief” under the regulations.

Tests for philosophical beliefs:
• The belief must be genuinely held.
• It must be a belief and not an opinion or view based on the present state of information available.
• It must be a belief as to a weighty and substantial aspect of human life.
• It must attain a certain level of cogency, seriousness, cohesion and importance.
• It must be worthy of respect in a democratic society, not incompatible with human dignity and not conflict with the fundamental rights of others.

In no way could this ever be taken out of context by anybody on either side of the larger debate…

The temp worker program lets employers select employees abroad if the federal labour officials certify a worker shortage in the employer’s industry. Today, most foreign workers go to farms, oil fields and into other low-skilled jobs, and many eventually end up in the underground economy. The current government in particular has let an unprecedented number of low-skilled migrants in Canada. Ottawa essentially acts as a giant recruitment agency that sizes up clients’ labour needs and fills them with people from foreign countries on condition that they go back home after two years. Foreign workers can’t switch jobs without the government’s permission. In Ontario and Alberta seasonal agricultural workers can’t join unions. And low-skilled workers can’t easily apply for permanent residence in Canada. After all, the idea is to bring in cyclical labour.

And cyclical labour they bring. Farms needs crop gatherers. Fast food joints need burger flippers. Energy companies need oil-sand workers. There are so many people in the world willing to work for much less than Canadians. Cheap labour, like any other cheap resource, can translate into lower costs across the production chain and lead to lower prices, economic growth, and general happiness. And the conventional wisdom goes that Canadians don’t want to do those jobs anyway. Temporary workers are also not supposed to strain our health care because they don’t grow old here. We have a constant supply of fresh, young, cheap labour thanks to the federal super recruiters in Ottawa. Right?

Wrong. The Toronto Star investigation revealed a widespread abuse of temporary foreign workers. Some employers take advantage of their weak bargaining power. Some employers refuse to pay their wages. Some pay much less than promised. Some fire workers without regard to their labour rights. Foreign workers often come from poor countries after borrowing thousands of dollars for the trip and middlemen’s fees. They feed their families who stayed behind. The law doesn’t let them switch employers easily.  It’s not exactly a position of power in negotiating your job conditions. The Toronto Star report shows how many workers end up underground. They are the real queue jumpers, but who dare blame these abused people? Where they jump is not permanent residence in Canada but permanent limbo. They jump to a life of fear of authorities and working underground. Debts, hungry families overseas, and false hopes stop them from leaving.

They form a massive underclass—desperate and without rights—pushing many of them into crime. We have traditionally had two classes of people who lived in Canada: citizens and permanent residents. Their rights are similar but permanent residents lack some important rights that all citizens enjoy. Today we are adding a third class and even a fourth class way down the social ladder: the temporary workers with few rights and the temporary workers gone illegal—with almost no rights. Economic cycles come and go, but marginalized migrants will stay.

The government should get out of the labour supply business. If a job is low-paid, it doesn’t mean that Canadians don’t want to do it. It means the job must be better paid. And the market will take care of it without Ottawa’s bureaucrats crunching numbers in their spreadsheets. By importing massive cheap labour the federal government discourages higher productivity and wages. Unless a job involves killing people, there is hardly a qualified Canadian who wouldn’t take it for a fair wage. And if there are no takers, the job doesn’t belong in Canada.

The immigration policy should target the real issue instead of tampering with the labour market. And the real issue is the population growth. We desperately need more people in Canada, and the only realistic source is immigration. But we need immigrants with full rights, who are proud and secure and who understand and value the Canadian society. About 900,000 of potential permanent residents and future citizens are languishing in the huge backlog. In the meantime, Ottawa tempts hundreds of thousands of the world’s vulnerable to jump the queue and end up as marginalized migrants in Canada’s cities.

By Pulat Yunusov

Ms. Towle, a resident of Kamloops, B.C., was somehow declared dead by Human Resources and Skills Development Canada in September. “This is an unfortunate situation, which we are diligently working to resolve,” said Melissa Hart, a spokeswoman for the government branch. “We have been in direct contact with the affected individual and have let them know that the mistake has been fixed. We have issued a letter of apology and have initiated a detailed internal review of the situation.”

This raises the sticky point about covering the field.  It is one thing to ask the SCC if the federal government has the authority to regulate securities (and this is an empty exercise — few legal scholars doubt that the federal government can do so).  It is another thing to ask the SCC to hand ALL authority to regulate everything associated with securities over to the federal government.  This would be an enormous restructuring of the balance between national concerns and property & civil rights.   There are political ramifications to such a ruling and no doubt the Court would prefer that such an invasive move be made through negotiations between governments rather than via a reference to the SCC.

It should be noted that securities regulation in Canada grew up under a provincial head of power.  As a result, it is written in the language of property and civil rights.   I have no idea if this is significant with respect to “federalizing” the laws, but I wonder.  If the SCC decides that some securities transactions are federal and some are not, then the language of the laws could become significant.  A ground-up rethinking and rewording might be in order.

The take-home point:  The transition to a single Federal securities regulator seems quite simple at first blush, but it is not.

Peter Small writes for the Toronto Star:

In a scene worthy of movie-of-the-week witness box confessions, the former boyfriend of a woman charged with fatally beating her 2-year-old daughter testified Wednesday he was the killer.

His testimony cannot be used “against him in other proceedings except prosecutions for perjury or giving contradictory evidence.”

While defence attorney Joanne Cuccia addresses the judge, the officer can be seen rifling through her file on the defence table. He then calls over another officer – again, still while Cuccia’s back is turned – to whom he passes a document from the file. Amazingly, this happens with neither Cuccia’s knowledge nor the judge’s, until the defendant himself speaks up!

As Cuccia attempts to assert her attorney-client privilege, the judge appears to want to defer to the officer’s discretion as to the extent of his duties. As reported by Heat City, the officer justified his search of the file and the taking of the document by the presence of certain “keywords” that led him to believe the defendant was a security risk. In a hearing that continues this week, the judge deciding the matter, has refused to consider potential contempt of court charges against the officers unless the contents of the document are revealed to evaluate any “keyword” – i.e. unless the defendant waives attorney-client privilege. The very privilege the officers are accused of violating. Bailiffs behaving badly? Attorney-client catch-22? In Maricopa County, Arizona I guess we’ll find out this week…

Lack of oversight by the federal government has allowed foreign workers to be abused by their employers, Auditor General Sheila Fraser says in a scathing report on Canada’s immigration program.

Fraser said federal authorities do not follow up on job offers for foreign workers to see if the jobs offered are real, if the employer can afford promised wages and if there is a real need for the worker.

Jennifer Yang writes:

Kidnapping and weapons charges were dropped this morning against a shopkeeper who was arrested for detaining a suspected shoplifter.

My thoughts on what looks, basically, like gatekeeping: The first comment has it right, the Law Society is not addressing the fact that putting someone like Mukhtiar Dahiya in an organization will do little to nothing to reduce the barriers homeless people have to accessing legal services. Here is an experienced lawyer, late in his career, who wishes to provide free legal services to a population that very few others want to/can provide counsel for. Put another way, he is contributing value to the legal profession. Especially as many in the field make grand pronouncements about social responsibility, a large basis upon which the profession itself seeks to maintain legitimacy. Mr. Dahiya has suggested the assistance/supervision of a mentor provided by the Law Society, effectively trying to accomodate their concerns — how about a little vice versa?