To the Minister of Veterans Affairs Canada:
Dear Mr Kent Hehr,
As per my personal message on Facebook and your instructions to e-mail you.
Please be advised the Wallaceburg Veterans and Families Support Group is a group of Veterans and their families learning to deal with our PTSD from our various Tours as Soldiers.
We even have American Veterans as we are on the border with the USA.
The group was started in May of 2010 at First Baptist Church here in Wallaceburg Ontario by myself to attach and help fellow Veterans suffering from PTSD and their families. Most of the veterans have been wounded during our service as soldiers. Our families suffer along side of us. We are the only group of our kind in Southwestern Ont. Knowing that we are not alone helps each and every one of us. We help get help from Veterans Affairs Canada and in the USA for our American Veterans. We have a Padre who opened his Church to us.
The group does many acts of charity to aid Veterans to get treatment, pensions and to be there during the bad patches we all go through. We also do Salvation Army Kettles and drive for their Christmas Hampers each year. We fundraise for headstones for unmarked veterans graves and to help needy Veterans and their families.
Minister I want to bring up an important issue of overlooked people who served on UN tours with the RCMP in such places as Haiti, Bosnia, Ivory Coast. These people are provincial and municipal police officers. They faced the same dangers, witnessed the same horrors and I wish to add wear the same United Nations Medals as the RCMP. But they have not been recognised as veterans as the RCMP whom they stood beside have been. Nor do they receive the same treatments at OSI Clinics that the RCMP have access to, nor do they receive pension or disability awards like the RCMP receive. Yet they suffer the same wounds, experienced the same dangers and attacks as the RCMP. Minister I am asking on behalf of them to have them recognised and given the same rights and treatments as those RCMP’s get. This is wrong they did the same work. They operated under the umbrella as the RCMP. Minister this is the reserves all over again!
The Reserves would go on tours with the regular forces and then just dropped off at their units and left to suffer and not to receive any help what so ever. Well now those reserves do receive the same treatments, aid and pensions as the regular forces. Minister these police officers are returned to their detachments’ and nothing is done to help them to cope with the horrors they seen. They need to be recognised as veterans just like the RCMP, they need to receive treatment at the OSI Clinics just like the RCMP are and Minister they need to receive pensions and disability awards just like the RCMP do. Minister one of my group is an OPP he has done three tours of Haiti and one tour of the Ivory Coast and he suffers from it. We try to help him were we can as soldiers, but like other provincial and municipal police officers they are just dropped off at their detachments. Sadly those detachments do not how to treat them.
Minister you can fix this by recognising them for their service to Canada and the United Nations. I ask you please fix this terrible wrong to these brave men and women. Make them veterans, give them treatment at the OSI Clinics and give the same disability awards as the RCMP they stood shoulder to shoulder with overseas. They need this to happen today not a year or so down the line.
Help them Minister.
Finally Minster the group is holding a fund raising event on Jan 30 at 7 p.m. at the theatre at the Wallaceburg Museum on King St in Wallaceburg Ont. it is to raise funds to help needy veterans. We have area veterans who receive no help from VAC and have to use the local food banks. I would like to take this time to invite you to our event. There is a elevator there for your use as it is on the second floor. Also Minister you would get to meet this police officer there.
As the fundraiser is his idea. We will be showing the movie: Hyena Road the Canadians in Afghanistan.
I hope Sir that you will get back to us on these issues and about attending this worthy fundraiser for needy veterans and their families.
Thank you for taking the time to read this. I also look forward to speaking with you on veterans issues in the near future.
Respectfully,
Robert Simpson
Founder and President of The Wallaceburg Veterans and Families Support Group
– Submitted photo
