Veteran urges Ottawa to extend the deadline for contaminated water compensation | 24CA News
A veteran is urging the federal authorities to increase the deadline to use for compensation for navy personnel who drank contaminated water coming from a Canadian forces base.
“They got caught. Now they’re playing sore loser,” stated Ed Sweeney, a former corporal who as soon as served at CFB Valcartier, a navy base north of Quebec City.
In 2020, the Quebec Court of Appeal awarded thousands and thousands of {dollars} in compensation to some residents of Shannon, Que. Among these eligible have been some present and former navy personnel and their households who lived close by at CFB Valcartier’s married quarters between 1995 and 2000.
Claimants have been eligible for as much as $1,000 for every month they lived within the small metropolis. The Supreme Court of Canada upheld that ruling.
Claimants have till Jan. 15, 2023 to use to affix the class-action settlement.
For a long time, a cancer-causing industrial degreasing agent known as trichloroethylene, or TCE, was used at Valcartier’s analysis facility and a close-by ammunition manufacturing facility. It contaminated the water in and across the base. The court docket concluded the chemical was used over an “indeterminate period” from the Fifties to the Nineties.
Evidence put earlier than the court docket pointed to an underground contamination plume extending northwest from the analysis centre and munitions manufacturing facility to the Jacques-Cartier river, passing underneath the municipality of Shannon and the navy base.
In December 2020, checks by a neighborhood public well being authority discovered TCE in lots of wells in the neighborhood. Residents have been advised to cease ingesting the water. An environmental group has mapped a number of areas the place the chemical was discovered.
An attraction court docket concluded the Canadian authorities violated space residents’ proper to safety underneath the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
“The accumulation of red flags … the knowing pursuit of an unacceptable polluting practice over a long period and the indifference of the responsible authorities to the consequences of such a practice on the population concerned leads to the conclusion that there was an unlawful and intentional interference with the right to security of the person,” says an English abstract of the Quebec Court of Appeal determination.
But because the deadline to affix the class-action attracts nearer, class-action legal professionals say they’ve struggled to get the message out to claimants that compensation is on the market. In half, they are saying, that is as a result of the navy up to now has refused to launch a whole record of present and former navy personnel eligible for compensation.
“[The Department of National Defence] contaminated a town’s water source,” Sweeney stated. He’s calling on the federal government to launch the record of eligible personnel “so that these people can make their claims.”
A Canadian veteran is looking on the Department of National Defence to make extra of an effort to contact folks entitled to compensation after ingesting tainted water on a Quebec navy base.
In a media assertion, the defence division advised CBC it publicized the compensation plan by means of the media and made a generic electronic mail accessible to present and former navy members worldwide.
“By consensus, the parties developed the claims protocol to create a rigorous, fair and efficient claims process for claimants, including a dissemination plan to inform potential class members of their rights,” says a press release from Andrée-Anne Poulin, a spokesperson for the Department of National Defence (DND).
“The Quebec Superior Court approved this plan, which has been in effect for almost eighteen months.”
Poulin stated DND additionally supplied class-action legal professionals with the names and electronic mail addresses of present navy personnel who would have been uncovered to the contaminated water. But these legal professionals advised 24CA News the division by no means launched an inventory of former navy members who would have been uncovered to the chemical.
‘The authorities gave them poison water’
One of the class-action legal professionals, Steve Clarke, stated he’s asking the federal government to not oppose a court docket request to increase the deadline to use for compensation to July 15. Clarke stated he would not consider the federal government will help altering the deadline.
“The government gave them poison water. And the government won’t let us find these people,” Clarke stated. “They’ve done everything they can to thwart us from finding clients.”
A Quebec environmental group, Société pour vaincre la air pollution in Montreal, estimates about 3,000 to 4,000 present or former navy members may very well be eligible for funds. But solely 2,500 submitted a declare in early December by means of the claims course of, the group stated.
“The Department of Defence has to understand that the enemy is not us,” stated Daniel Green, co-president of Société pour vaincre la air pollution in Montreal.
“They’re supposed to serve and protect us, not contaminate citizens living around the base and military personnel serving on a base.”
With or with out the navy’s assist, Sweeney stated, he’ll hold looking for his former comrades and their households to verify they get compensated — one electronic mail and one telephone name at a time.
“I got this inner rage going right now,” Sweeney stated. “That’s what’s fuelling my fire …”
