OTTAWA - The country's largest veterans organization is calling for the Conservative government to end what it calls discrimination against single soldiers killed in combat.
The Royal Canadian Legion is challenging the $250,000 death benefit paid to the families of married troops -- the subject of at least four separate complaints before the federal human rights commission.
Andrea Siew, the organization's service bureau director, said the benefit creates two classes of veterans and is inherently unfair to some of those who give up their lives for their country.
"It's a discriminatory practise," she said.
The Legion, with 340,0000 members, has been working behind the scenes for changes, but Veterans Affairs Canada recently rejected the those pleas in a formal response to the organization's most recent resolutions from its 2010 convention.
The department argues that the death benefit is meant to help families of married soldiers re-establish themselves in civilian life. It says single soldiers have the option of taking out extra life insurance if they want to leave something behind.
Siew said there are a whole host of other allowances associated with the New Veterans Charter to help families adjust. The death benefit, by contrast, is more about redress.
"This award is about the non-economic loss and the pain and suffering," said Siew. "Whether you are single or married, the family still experiences that loss and pain and suffering. And they should have compensation."
The group said it intends to hammer the point home to government, including at its next meeting with the responsible minister, Steven Blaney.
The father of one soldier killed in Afghanistan, Errol Cushley, said he'd like to see the Legion -- or some other veterans organization -- challenge the benefit as unconstitutional before the courts.
"Why are you putting families through this?" asked Cushley, who said he wanted to put the question directly to Prime Minister Stephen Harper.
His son, Pte. William Cushley, was killed in September 2006 during the opening phase of the landmark battle Operation Medusa.
A constitutional challenge would be expensive, but a military legal expert said that is likely where families will end up, notwithstanding the flurry of human rights complaints.
Treating two soldiers killed in the same battle equally is a moral imperative, said Michel Drapeau, a former colonel.
"This distinction (between troops) is offensive to the very thought that they are there to defend our values -- and our values in Canada are that everybody is treated equal," said Drapeau. "Whether you are married, or divorced, or single ... in death everybody should be exactly the same."
He said families as a group, or veterans groups, could petition to have the veterans charter declared unconstitutional on the basis of discrimination.
"There is a case to be made," said Drapeau, who predicted they would receive a sympathetic hearing.
A human rights tribunal was on track to decide the question of discrimination this fall when it was forced to abruptly dismiss the case filed by the parents of Cpl. Matthew Dinning.
The policy challenge had been winding its way through the system since 2007 -- including a public hearing last spring -- before the federal veterans department suddenly changed course and declared that Dinning had a spouse.
Officials dusted off a previously rejected application of the young soldier's girlfriend and, in paying her nearly $300,000, declared Dinning was no longer considered a single soldier.
The human rights commission was forced to agree and dismissed the four-year-old case.
Lincoln Dinning, Matthew's father, questioned the timing of the declaration, and said the couple had not been together for the required one year to establish a legal recognition as a common-law spouse.
But in its response to the Legion, federal bureaucrats gave a hint as to how they got around that requirement. Rules are being rewritten to recognize exceptional circumstances, said the department.
"Our Department is now implementing a new policy to recognize individuals as common-law partners in certain situations where a couple's cohabitation is interrupted because of Special Duty (military) Service, such as a deployment to Afghanistan," said the document.
Since the Dinning case was dismissed, four other families have filed human rights complaints.
