:
Thank you, ladies and gentlemen.
I appreciate the fact that we've once again been invited to appear before this committee.
I'm happy to say that since we were here last, a number of developments have arisen that are to our advantage. Perhaps the most significant thing is--if you'll bear with me for a little history--that for about 15 years we were concerned about the fact that many of our career veterans were suffering from pulmonary diseases, respiratory diseases, and a number of ailments we seem to suffer to a greater extent than the general public. We had one individual--I think I mentioned him last time, a chap named Carter--and just about every organ in his body was ineffective.
We were concerned because in Korea we were exposed a lot to DDT and a number of other harmful chemicals.
We took our concerns to Veterans Affairs. We did a study ourselves and we found that certainly there was a much higher rate of these disorders among Korea veterans than there was elsewhere.
The only problem was, we did a study they didn't like to accept because we sent out a random sample study with about twice as many participants as we needed, to be on the safe side. But when we sent the study to the units, our units decided they wanted to prove they were suffering, so instead of giving out the samples of the questionnaires at random, they gave them to people they knew were suffering from various ailments. So this tended to flaw our study a little.
We've been discussing this with Veterans Affairs, and one of the things they decided to do was sponsor a Canadian study. We even got as far as having a study team appointed and funds allocated. And then came an election, a change of government; we had changes of deputy ministers, and the thing was more or less on hold.
We've been dealing quite a lot with veterans associations throughout the world. We're part of an international group, and we found out the Australians had commissioned a study on the effects of Korean War service. We think their living standards are pretty much the same as ours, their diets are the same as ours, their income is the same as ours, their work is pretty much the same as ours, so what applies to Australia would probably apply to Canada. We spoke to a number of people from Veterans Affairs, and they accepted this.
I'm not going to give you the whole thing to read, but there are three studies. One is a cancer incidence study, one is a mortality study, and the other is a health study. I'm not going to read the whole thing to you, so you can relax.
These were studied by Veterans Affairs, and Veterans Affairs originally agreed to accept the findings in the cancer study. One of the things they found was that in at least eight forms of cancer, the casualty rate or the sickness rate in Korea veterans was significantly higher than in the general population. I think the overall average was about 23% higher than the equivalent.
Veterans Affairs accepted eight of the major causes of cancer--the ones that have the biggest difference--and they decided they would accept Korea service as a prima facie cause of the cancer. In other words, we thought this was a breakthrough, because instead of the veteran having to prove his ailment was caused by Korea service, now it was accepted it would be unless it was proven otherwise.
For instance, we had a few people who worked at Chalk River, so this could have been a little questionable.
This was fine, and as a result I'm happy to say that about six or seven months ago I had reports that well over 500 people who previously either hadn't applied for a pension because they felt they couldn't prove the cause or they had been turned down for a pension.... Over 500 veterans are now in receipt of pensions and treatment for these eight forms of cancer.
This is one thing, but we're still a little concerned, because as I mentioned, we had chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, or COPD, and heart problems, which a lot of our people seem to have at a much higher rate than the general public. We went back, and the same study team took a look at this and looked at the other Australian study, which dealt with ailments other than cancer. As a result, we now have a policy, and when your material comes around you'll be getting a copy of the press release that went out.
During the last year, it was decided that if any veteran is suffering from chronic obstructive lung disease, as they put it, which includes chronic bronchitis and emphysema, or from arterial sclerosis and related ailments, once again, if they served in Korea during the period 1950 to 1956, that would be accepted as a cause, unless proven otherwise.
This is the one we won. We're rather pleased with that one. I must give credit to the team in Veterans Affairs. If you want names, the guy who did the study was a gentleman by the name of Dave Pedlar. They are the people who really worked on it, and they saw it our way. As I said, I think Veterans Affairs deserves credit. They get a lot of blame—people say they're trying to take our pensions away and trying to deprive us—but in this case I think they went out of their way and devoted a lot of time to seeing that our veterans got what was due.
Those are the two that we won.
The next point that rather concerns me is that, surprisingly enough, veterans complain that they're not getting service from Veterans Affairs: we still have complaints about time of service and complaints about decisions. But one of the things that Veterans Affairs have actually been complaining to us about is that we're not having enough of our veterans apply for PTSD, post-traumatic stress disorder. They feel that many more of them should be claiming it.
We've put it down to the fact that in our generation from back in the 1950s, if you have sleepless nights or become an alcoholic or are nervous, you live with it. You're macho about it; you don't like to admit it. They sense it as a form of weakness to apply for a pension and for treatment for it. We're trying to educate our people on that one, and hopefully we will. Again, as I have it here, it's a proud bunch, and we hate to admit that our nerves have been affected by our experience.
Those are the concerns we have that are particular to our Korean War veterans.
I would point out that we are a member association of the National Council of Veterans Associations. Cliff Chadderton heads the group, of course. As a form of unity, and because they are in a way acting on our behalf, we support a lot of the initiatives they're coming out with. You may or may not know, but the NCVAC parliamentary submissions include possible medals for prisoners of war, people who were wounded, and at least a medal or a bar or some recognition for people who served at Dieppe and those who were in Hong Kong.
Among other issues we've been dealing with, one of the items that has been suggested, without too much substance, is that perhaps Veterans Affairs should have a separate department dealing with widows or widowers. In particular nowadays, we have more and more widows who are eligible for pensions or for VIP and who have a lot of concerns. It was the contention of many of the NCVAC groups that perhaps Veterans Affairs should give a thought to a widows branch, widows directorate, or something like that to look specifically at the concerns of widows.
In conclusion, I'd like to mention that like most war veterans, most old war veterans--we used to be the young fellows and they were the old guys--our numbers are gradually decreasing. The Korea Veterans Association has moved down from almost 5,000 to something like 2,400. The number of Korea veterans in Canada is hard to guess. Some of them are veterans of other wars, and the only ones we can really keep track of are the clients of Veterans Affairs. But we estimate that there are now between 12,000 and 15,000 of us left, out of the almost 28,000 who went to Korea.
That is all I have. As I said, I will be attaching the new policy that I mentioned, on the pulmonary and heart functions, together with a brief summary of what I've just said.
:
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Thanks again, Mr. Peate, not only for your service to our country but also to your fellow veterans.
One of our concerns, sir, of course, is that being a veterans committee, we interlope a lot on defence issues when it comes to soldiers returning to their families and on some issues facing veterans and their spouses, issues that really are under the auspices of DND. For example, there's the marriage after 60 clause, which you're aware of. We've spoken about it before. It's actually a DND technicality. The amount of money a veteran leaves his spouse when he passes on is 50%. Many groups have been asking for that to be increased a bit, because a lot of the time their wives will be pushed into—or, at least, in some cases—pretty dire poverty. So those are some of the hurdles we need to look at.
In your experience—because you were in the reserves as well, if I'm not mistaken—of going from DND to DVA for your hearing aids, and everything else, how did you find that transfer? Were there delays in some of your processes, or was it fairly smooth, in your opinion, when you transferred?
:
It should be. The only thing is, of course, they lost mine. Usually, as you probably know—I'm probably telling everybody something they know well—in the service, if anybody is injured, a board of inquiry is convened, an incident report is created, and that sort of thing. These are the things our veterans go back to.
I had one case, for instance, where this was lost. The guy injured his back on a parachute jump. But being a macho guy, he never reported sick, because he had done four jumps and had two more to do to qualify. We had a heck of a job proving this guy's back injury, which deteriorated as he got out of the service and he was unable to do the job he wanted. We had no record of it. This was when our association really got in touch with his buddies. If you read Legion Magazine, for instance, you'll often see in the lost trails, “Did anybody know Private Jones who fell off a truck in Germany? Evidence is needed to support a pension claim.” This is really the connection. In other words, let's say DND provides the evidence, Veterans Affairs provides the assessment, and presumably the pension is triggered.
A few years ago we came up with a group called the Centre. Some of you may know it. This was a joint DND and Veterans Affairs operation. It was just around the corner from here, as a matter of fact. This is when they were staffed by both, and this enabled things to move faster. One of the things they did that never really happened is they set up four centres to test people for the effects of DDT. We thought this was great because this was our biggest problem. Could we use it? Certainly it was open to all veterans. Well, apparently the Centre either shut, moved, or didn't open. We never really did get much out of it.
To this extent, we do cooperate with Veterans Affairs and DND, but they have a distinct role to play. DND provides the evidence and Veterans Affairs then assesses it and determines what pension or treatment the person could have. This may be changing, of course, in light of the Afghan situation.
:
Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
Good afternoon, sir. It's a pleasure to listen to you this afternoon.
I'm new on the committee and I'm learning as we go through some of the issues that are of importance to you and your colleagues.
You wrote a book, The War That Wasn't: Canadians in Korea, according to my notes. I have not read it, but I'm definitely going to have to read it because--
A voice: He could sell you one now.
Mr. Todd Russell: He could probably sell me one now. I'll have to go down to Chapters and get one.
There are also notes here that say it is a forgotten war. I'm reflecting on that a little bit, because I believe it's absolutely true, even with my own experience. We hear so much about other conflicts we've been involved in. With some of my colleagues around the table and many other Canadians, I've had the opportunity to celebrate some of our victories in Europe during World War I. There was the 90th anniversary at Beaumont-Hamel, which was a very moving experience, and I can relate when you talk about some of your own remembrance experiences as well.
This may not be directly related, but I think it is: why is it that you entitled your book The War That Wasn't, and why is it that we call it the forgotten war? It's important in your struggle to achieve equality of benefits for people who served in the Korean War.
:
Well, the title was based on the fact that it wasn't until I think something like 1998 that the Canadian government accepted the fact that the Korean War was a war. It was a police action; it was a United Nations operation. We felt that when you're shooting somebody and they're shooting you, it's a war. It took us about 45 years from the end of the war to get the war recognized as an actual war.
There are a number of reasons for that. I think one of the things was the timing. The Korean War broke out in 1950. People were war-weary. They'd had a world war that ended five years before, and now they had another one. And really, in comparison with the scope of the Second World War, obviously Korea was, as far as Canada was concerned, at least, a sideshow.
Then on top of that came the next major war or the next major operation--we like to call it--when the Americans moved into Vietnam. This was a massive operation again, and it was covered. Every day you saw the war on TV. It was fresh in everybody's memory. It got lots and lots of news and all that sort of thing. So we were more or less sandwiched in between the two major events.
As an example, one of the papers--I think it was the Vancouver Province--just to see what happened, printed the same communiqué from Canadian headquarters three days in a row to see if anybody noticed it. Nobody did.
Today, as an example, a soldier gets killed in Afghanistan. God knows we don't want to lose anybody in Afghanistan or anywhere. He gets a full page of the paper. You get TV showing him going on the plane in Kabul. You get more TV showing the ceremony at Trenton. You probably get something in the national press. Fine, he deserved it. As far as I'm concerned, any soldier who gives his or her life for the country—and I say “her” because we have a lady right now in our cemetery, as you know, at Beechwood--deserves everything they get. In our day, the most you would get in the national press would be a list of casualties. You might get a couple of paragraphs in the local paper, perhaps a photograph, if they had one, and that was it.
So people did feel forgotten. And this is why it's unfortunate. I don't think it's deliberate; I think it's just the way events happen. As I said, we called it “the war that wasn't” because it took 40 years to get it recognized as a war.
:
Let's use the political reason first of all, if we may. People often ask why it was necessary. I hate to give everybody a history lesson and waste your time, but I don't think many people here were around in 1936.
In 1936, Italy invaded Abyssinia—Ethiopia, as it is now. Abyssinia applied to the then-League of Nations, saying, “Help, help, help!” The League of Nations did nothing. The only concession they made was that Britain wouldn't let the Italians put troop ships through the Suez Canal.
What happened? You had Mussolini, you had Hitler, you had Tojo. These people were encouraged. They saw they could get away with this sort of thing, and they did, and eventually we had World War II.
Now look at 1950. The same thing happened. You had a bullying nation starting to throw its weight around, and South Korea appealed to the United Nations for help. This time they didn't sit back. They sent troops and medical people from 21 nations, who served in Korea to push the North Koreans out.
This was a time when there was a great deal of communist aggression: they were pushing into Europe; China was getting antsy. Who knows what might have happened if we hadn't stood firm and said enough is enough, and that's it? This is why I think the Korean War was important.
I don't look upon myself as a knight in shining armour and a saviour of democracy; nevertheless, it could have been.... That's one reason why it was different.
Secondly, as far as Canadians were concerned, it was different because of where we served. People have served in hot countries; people have served in cold countries. Korea had extremes of climate, massive rain storms; the climate was terrible, and the country itself was terrible. I heard an Australian say that if Australia were looking for the worst place in the world to send their troops to fight, Korea would have been it.
As an example of why we have ailments, the ground had been fertilized with human excrement for centuries. These are the places that our troops were digging into. You dug a hole in it and you lived in a hole there. Is it any wonder that Korea veterans are suffering? Of course, to counteract the effects of this, we had the ubiquitous DDT. I think the cure was probably worse than the problem.
This is why we felt this was important.
Thirdly, the first troops we sent to Korea.... We had very few troops left. We disbanded after World War II. All we had were three infantry battalions, nothing left to defend Canada. We had to rush out and recruit a special force from volunteers, and they did it in no time. The first troops to go to Korea were all volunteers. They did it in such a rush that amongst other people they enlisted a man with one leg, a 70-year-old, and heaven knows how many 14-year-old boys.
But they did it. They volunteered, and they got them out in a rush, in a matter of weeks. This is one of the things that makes it different.
I'm not sure I expressed my question very well last time, but we just travelled to some bases and we're looking forward to visiting a couple more very quickly--I think Valcartier and Petawawa. You mentioned incident reports and how vital they are to us--tracking medical records and making sure we can provide veterans with the coverage they need, pensions, and everything else.
I was surprised that at the base I visited last summer it was totally the opposite to what we saw last fall. Last fall they stressed incident reporting. Everything had to be written down and documented. You've been through a whole life of this, so you know how important that is.
When I was on the base, reservists were being trained, and a lot of them were sent to Afghanistan after that. You mentioned your sergeant yelling at you. I experienced that firsthand. There was no way that anybody who was hurt in this whole group we were with was ever going to report anything. The lieutenant was adamant that if you got hurt you shut your mouth and did not say anything to anybody. I was surprised at that because, being reservists, these people wouldn't have had that background on how important the incident thing was. I think it's something we have to standardize through all levels of the military. Whatever service they're in, they have to document that.
I just want your comments on that. Have you noticed, throughout your long experience, different levels of tracking systems and service?
:
Yes. In some cases, records get lost or burned. These things happen.
The other thing that's interesting is if you're sick in the service now, you go to the medical officer and he gives you some pills. It wasn't done that way in Korea or World War II. If you were sick you went on what they referred to as sick parade. You had to dress up in your best uniform, your full kit. You were inspected. If the sergeant who was inspecting you didn't think your cap badge was shiny enough or your webbing was blancoed well enough, you'd be on the charge. Then you'd go along and eventually get to see the medical officer. If you were lucky, you got treatment; if you weren't....
I can give you an example. When I was in the Canadian Forces I brought two people to the medical inspection room. The MO said, “I'm going home now. The first person who's ready for me I'll give excused duty. The second person will get M and D.” That meant medicine and duty, or, in other words, they gave you a pill and sent you back. One poor guy had blisters on his feet and had to take his boots and socks off. The other guy had a sore throat. So guess what happened? That was literally how some of these things happened.
I noticed that my hearing was going when I was on a French language course. I went to the medical officer and said, “I think I'm losing my hearing.” So he got his glasses out and starting tapping on the glasses case and said, “What am I doing?” I said, “You're tapping on your glasses case.” He said, “Oh, that's all right. You can hear me.” I said, “I can't hear you; I can see you right out of the corner of my eye.” Nevertheless, no sick report was made out. When I applied for a hearing pension many years later when I was on another French course with the public service and couldn't hear the tape recorder, they found no record at all of my reporting that problem in the first instance. They do those things.
They get lost and misplaced. Sometimes rather than go through all this stuff on sick parade--maybe someone sprained his ankle or something like that--a guy would just stay and hope it went away in a couple of days.
There are a lot of problems with any system of documentation. I was with another government department and we lost people's records; we lost documents. I was with unemployment insurance and we sometimes lost a person's record of employment. The poor individual had to wait months before getting UI. So it happens. It's a way of life that documents get lost.
:
Was there a Korea War service medal? There are actually three, or four, if you like.
First of all, there's the Commonwealth service medal. This is the one that all members of the Commonwealth got. Canada's is slightly different. Mine is a British one. It's made of copper and nickel. Canadians are, obviously, much more wealthy, as we found out on parade in Korea, and theirs are made of silver. This is a medal with a yellow and blue-striped ribbon.
Then the United Nations gave you a United Nations Service Medal, which was awarded to people who served in Korea and afterwards and also to people who served in Japan. To get the Korea War medal, you had to have served in Korea during the actual war; to get the United Nations medal you had to have served in the theatre up until I think 1954, or a year after the ceasefire.
Apparently that wasn't enough for some people. They decided that we didn't have a distinct Canadian medal. So I think about 15 years ago.... Do you remember when your assistant actually received a medal, because I think I got one of the first ones?
A voice: Wow.
Mr. Les Peate: Anyway, this was a Canadian Volunteer Service Medal for Korea.
So in fact there are three medals.
There was also a medal that was awarded by the president of South Korea, Syngman Rhee. Unfortunately, Syngman Rhee and Winston Churchill, who was Prime Minister of Britain at the time, were not the greatest of friends. Churchill refused to accept it, and he persuaded the other Commonwealth nations not to accept it either.
We found that we were entitled to it. For about, oh, maybe 10 or 15 years, we tried to persuade the government house chancellery to allow us to wear that as an approved foreign decoration, because it was legitimately awarded by a foreign government, but they kept saying no. And finally we decided, well, three medals is enough for one war anyway, so we gave up.
So there were, in fact, medals for the Korean War. Then, of course, there'd be the gallantry medals people get.
:
I think, really, we have done all we can.
Veterans Affairs, as you know, puts out a bulletin from time to time, Salute!, I think it's called, which goes to all veterans who are receiving pensions. It's in there. As I said, I keep bugging people in my magazine. The Legion puts it in their magazine to Legion members.
The trouble is that out of the 12,000 or so Korean veterans, about 2,500 belong to our association. Maybe half of them belong to the Legion. There are still probably about 5,000 or 6,000 Korean veterans out there who don't even know we exist, who don't even know what we've got, who don't even know about the medal that came out last year, who don't even know about PTSD, and who don't know about the benefits as a result of this study.
There's not a lot we can do. They put out a press release, one of which I'm giving you. So Veterans Affairs puts out a press release. Are they going to pick it up? I don't know. Maybe some Hollywood starlet's going to have twins or something and everything will be bumped off anyway. One never knows.
I think they're doing all they can, really. They're using every avenue they can think of. I think it's just a matter of people not reading it. We still have 6,000 veterans, at least, out there. We would love to have them in our association, but they don't even know we exist. They don't even know there is a Korea Veterans Association.
So it's hard to get at people. A lot of people get away from the forces and they want to forget about it. They don't even read articles in the paper about it.
The only thing I can suggest is that they keep up the publicity campaign and put out the announcements. Whether the media will accept them, I don't know, but certainly Veterans Affairs lets them know.