Last week's decision by the federal government to reverse itself and provide compensation for about 30 Canadians affected by Agent Orange spraying in the 1960s is a case of a wrong being made right.
The reversal means those Canadians will receive payments under a program which was created to compensate soldiers and their families who were exposed to the defoliant, a mixture of herbicides which was sprayed at CFB Gagetown in 1966 and 1967 by the U.S. military, with Canada's permission. It has since been learned that exposure to those chemicals can produce skin disorders, liver problems and certain types of cancer.
The decision ends a fight for compensation waged by victims or their families against a bureaucracy that, in the view of Veterans Ombudsman Guy Parent, was being too restrictive in applying the application rules. The government will now accept the applications which were filed past the June 30, 2011 deadline, and will also loosen the rules for compensation for primary caregivers.
NDP Veterans Affairs critic Peter Stoffer said the entire compensation program was poorly handled from the start, and noted it shouldn't have required a public outcry to bring the desired results.
"They should be proactive. They just have to look at it and use some common sense and compassion," Stoffer said of the government.
Unfortunately, bureaucracy generally doesn't operate that way. It seems to follow guidelines with blinders on, focusing intently on the letter of the rules instead of considering the spirit of the rules. Often, citizens who are caught in bureaucratic machinery either give up or are forced to take their fight into the public spotlight in order to obtain their rightful outcome.
As Stoffer suggested, the people involved in this Agent Orange compensation mess shouldn't have had to resort to such actions.
"We're talking about the heroes of this country and the families of these heroes," Stoffer said in a Canadian Press story last week. "We should not put them through the wringers of bureaucracy."
While the federal government did the right thing in reversing its stance with regard to compensation for these Canadians, Parent, the Veterans Ombudsman, told the Canadian Press the fight isn't over for other citizens who are still seeking compensation outside this particular program for Agent Orange-related illnesses.
We can only hope the federal government will look into the cases of these other claimants with fairness and compassion. Canadians who have developed illnesses or received injuries as a result of government decisions of any sort have endured enough suffering without facing the added indignity of having to fight for what they deserve.
Government programs and the bureaucracies which administer them have certain guidelines that need to be followed, but they must not lose sight of the fact that there are real people at the end of these decisions, and lives are being affected, sometimes immensely.
It's people such as these who government and bureaucracy exist to serve.
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