Letters - Misleading about veterans?

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Published on Monday, March 12, 2018

Submitted
Neepawa Banner & Press

For a couple of weeks, Mr. Waddell has mentioned the totally unacceptable answer that Trudeau gave to a veteran at a town hall meeting. The answer, to put it mildly, was stupid. However, in fairness, I feel obliged to point out that our former P.M. would never have made such a blunder because he would never have appeared at a meeting with unscripted questions and unchoreographed answers.

Then on Mar. 2, our M.P. Robert Sopuck blathered mightily about the Conservatives unwavering  support for veterans. Whoa, there!

Back in 2011, the Harper government reduced the Veterans Affairs Dept. Budget by $226,000,000, And asked for a further reduction of 5 per cent annually thereafter.

Just for comparison, in 2010, Australia had about 300,000 veterans and a Veterans Affairs budget of $12 billion, Canada, with about 600,000 vets, had a budget of less than $4 billion. And Harper with the blessing of our M.P. Mr. Sopuck, slashed that grossly insufficient budget mercilessly. The current problems faced by our veterans traces directly to the previous Conservative government.

Please Mr. Sopuck, stick to subjects that are less easily verified if you wish to mislead us.

Leonard Paramor, Arden, MB

Editors Note: According to Stats Canada we had in 2017 58,100 WW II and Korean War Vets and 600,300 regular and primary reserved veterans for a total of 658,400.