Outgoing veterans ombudsman will sue government

The Toronto Star:

The outgoing veterans ombudsman is prepared to launch a class-action lawsuit against the government over a claims process he says is wrongly denying disability benefits.

Pat Stogran, who steps down from the position Wednesday, told the Star he has been approached by a private law firm about pursuing legal action over decisions made by the Veterans Review and Appeal Board regarding disability benefits.

“I have compelling evidence that they’ve elevated the standard of proof,” Stogran said Sunday evening, adding that a potential lawsuit is in the very early stages but that he believes there could be thousands of complainants.

His comments came at the same time as federal officials vowed to quickly address mounting complaints about the lump-sum payments to seriously wounded veterans.

Conservative MP Greg Kerr, the parliamentary secretary to Veterans Affairs Minister Jean-Pierre Blackburn, said the government is planning to make the payouts “more flexible.”

While the intent was good, the 2006 switch to lump-sum payments to replace monthly disability payments has suffered from a “number of problems,” Kerr said.

“So we've listened and I think those changes will happen within the next week or two,” Kerr told CTV’s Question Period on Sunday.

Protests took place across Canada on Saturday to complain about the government’s treatment of veterans and gripes about the lump sum took centre stage. The Harper government also took heat recently for unlawfully releasing a Gulf War veteran’s medical records.

“My argument throughout this whole period of revelations such as invasion of privacy and all these other things is that the veterans have not had a fair day in court,” Stogran said.

He said the potential lawsuit would address the burden of proof in disability pension and award review hearings. Veterans are supposed to be given the benefit of the doubt even if they lack evidence for their claim, Stogran said.

“As long as you use sound logic and reasoning, if you present a case that’s plausible and it makes sense, you don’t have to prove that it’s true,” he said.

But instead, he said, adjudicators in some cases have weighed the evidence as if it were a regular trial.

The legislation around veterans’ disability claims was designed to take into account circumstances that might prevent soldiers from having documentation that completely supports their claim, Stogran said.

“You’re not going to break down in the middle of a nighttime parachute assault . . . and asked to be evacuated to the unit aid station so you can do paperwork for your sore back,” he said, adding that he considers the elevated burden of proof “a national security issue.”

“You don’t want the soldiers overseas to be looking over their shoulders and worried about generating the evidence or how they’re going to be able to prove a disability.”

Stogran said he will take a low-profile after his successor, Guy Parent, takes office on Remembrance Day. But Stogran said if he doesn’t see movement on the issue, he is prepared to move forward with the lawsuit.

“I am so committed to bringing fair treatment to the veterans and I think this is the lynch pin of the whole thing,” he said.