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Letter: Where's the justice for army cadets affected by hand grenade explosion in 1974?

Feds dishing out millions in compensation to the wrong people
Sajjan tours front lines, talks rebooted training mission with Iraqis-Kurds
Minister of Defence Harjit Sajjan has apologized to the former army cadets who were injured in a hand grenade explosion in 1974. Letter-writer Simon Guillet wonders why they haven't received financial compensation. (Supplied)

In 1974, at Canadian Forces Base Val Cartier, six army cadets of 14 or 15 years of age were killed, and 65 other teen cadets were injured when a supposed “dummy” hand grenade used for training purposes, exploded in the room full of cadets and instructors.

The traumatized cadets were instructed not to talk about the incident, the military did its best to cover up the incident, and refused any sort of compensation or even an apology to the dead cadets’ families or to those maimed by the explosion caused by lack of supervisory oversight of strict safety rules.

Many of the cadets suffered mental health issues, physical problems, and several committed suicide.

After a scathing report from the Military Ombudsman and the military doing nothing for these cadets and their families for 43 years, the Minister of Defence, Harjit Sajjan, has recently issued a very tardy apology to the cadets involved, (Minister Jason Kenney also expressed regret in 2015) and has released the survivors from their oath of silence about the incident. But the federal government is only now “studying” the possibility of compensation after 43 years of hell for the survivors and their families, and the six young lives lost forever.

Funny that it didn’t take (Prime Minister Justin) Trudeau even close to 43 years to dish out $10.5 million to Omar Khadr (to which 71 per cent of Canadians objected) or, the $31.25 million paid to the three Syrians supposedly tortured in Syria.

Trudeau has also announced that he is committed to paying taxpayers' money to homosexual public servants and members of the military who lost their jobs in the past because, since it was then a Criminal Code offence, they could have been subjected to blackmail by our enemies if their sexual orientation were publicly disclosed. And it seems that there may be many other injustices to address financially in our past history.

So, for the Trudeau government, there seems to be an endless amount of money to instantly and generously compensate all sorts of purported injustices, but the compensation for killed and injured army cadets 43 years ago is only “being studied.”

Why would Canadian Army Cadets deserve less consideration than Omar Khadr or the three tortured by Syrians?

Simon Guillet
Sudbury