Kelsi Sheren 

$3.97 BILLION Cut From Veterans Affairs. Cannabis Benefits Slashed. Hypocrisy in Full Bloom.

They’re quietly dismantling the only lifeline veterans have left. The federal government just carved $3.97 billion out of Veterans Affairs Canada’s budget.
That’s not trimming fat, that’s cutting into the bone and burning the body.

And as if that weren’t disgusting enough, they’re also slashing medical cannabis reimbursements for veterans from $8.50 down to $6.00 per gram.

The same medicine that’s keeping thousands of veterans alive through PTSD, chronic pain, and TBI recovery gutted by bureaucrats who’ve never had to bury a friend who lost the battle at home.

I testified in Canada’s first veteran suicide study and I warned them. I sat in front of Parliament and told them this would happen. I told them this LAST WEEK. I told them veterans were being failed by their own government ignored, delayed, and dismissed until they broke.

The study exposed it the chronic failure of the liberal veteran system. Suicide rates among veterans were higher than the national average. VAC systems were drowning in paperwork and apathy. Those who found stability through medical cannabis were finally regaining their lives.

So what did this government do with that data?
They buried it then cut the funding anyway.

This isn’t mismanagement. It’s betrayal with a signature and a smile while they wear a poppy and pretend to smile for photo ops. Jill McKnight and Mark Carney need to be held accountable for this. Canadians will DIE. Make no mistake.

This week, cannabis providers like MyMedi.ca confirmed what Ottawa buried in bureaucratic language:

“The Federal Government released its potential new budget, which includes a proposed policy change reducing the Veterans Affairs Canada reimbursement rate for medical cannabis from $8.50 per gram to $6.00 per gram.”

That’s a 30% cut to a life-saving medicine. It forces veterans to downgrade their treatment or pay out of pocket, the empty pockets that is. Standing in food bank lines and now having to find medicine on the black market to be able to function.

To justify it, the Liberals cited “declining market prices.” Let’s get one thing straight, recreational weed is not medical cannabis.

Medical cannabis is pharmaceutical-grade regulated for purity, potency, and consistency. It’s prescribed by doctors, not dealers. It’s the difference between numbing your pain and healing from it. Cutting that is like telling a diabetic to use cheaper insulin or less of it because the government found a “better price.”

It’s criminal, make no mistake.

Every November, the liberal government stands at podiums wrapped in poppies, preaching about “honouring our heroes.”
Then, when the cameras turn off, they quietly gut the budget that keeps those heroes alive.

They say they’re increasing “overall government spending” by $141 billion over the next five years. Yet they’re carving out $4 billion from the very department that’s supposed to prevent veteran suicide.

They can find billions for consultants, media subsidies, and overseas virtue projects but not to keep veterans from killing themselves. That’s not just hypocrisy. That’s moral rot and our government needs to be dismantled, held accountable and re built.

This is what corruption looks like, it’s just in polite Canadian form. There doesn’t need to be a bribe to call it corruption. Corruption is when a government pretends to care while quietly dismantling the systems that hold lives together.

Corruption is cutting medical support for veterans, then gaslighting the public with talk of “efficiency.” Corruption is using Remembrance Day for photo ops while veterans wait years for their disability claims.

Every one of these decisions sends a message – You were useful once. Now you’re expensive.

Every dollar cut equals blood on their hands and it will be your fault.

I will tell anyone who wants to join: don’t.
They will leave you to die, and step over your body to hand an immigrant your benefits the ones you fought your whole career for. This isn’t abstract. This isn’t about numbers on a spreadsheet. Every cut means, longer delays for mental health treatment. More vets turning to opioids or alcohol.

More suicides that could have been prevented. More suicides, MORE SUICIDES, MORE SUICIDES!!!

And when those suicides happen, the same politicians will stand at the next memorial and talk about “honour” while wearing crocodile tears.

Fucking liars.

Veterans aren’t asking for charity. We’re demanding the promises that were made.

If this government truly cared, they’d fund what works, not gut it. What they just did says everything. They’d protect cannabis access, streamline claims, fund the psychedelic assisted life saving therapy and actually listen to the data from the studies they commissioned.

Instead, they’re too busy protecting their image.

This isn’t about politics anymore. It’s about integrity. A country that forgets its warriors doesn’t deserve to be called free.

We fought for this land, bled for it, and came home to a system that’s now turning its back on us. No more quiet compliance. No more polite outrage.

Somewhere in this country a country that used to look and act like Canada a veteran won’t make it to morning.

A family will lose their loved one. Children will grow up without a parent. And the void they leave will never, ever be filled.

It won’t be because they were weak. Not because they didn’t try every minute of every day just to keep breathing.

It’ll be because a country that sent them to war and keeps sending kids to wars built on lies refused to bring them all the way home.

Canadians veterans are officially being left to die.

And the liberals are holding the knife.

KELSI SHEREN

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The Macdonald Laurier Institute

By J.L. Granatstein for Inside Policy

With the new threats facing Canada and NATO, change must come quickly: Canada needs to fix the Army Reserves.

Canada’s once-proud Reserves force is fading fast – and without urgent action, it risks becoming irrelevant.

The Canadian Armed Forces Primary Reserves have an authorized strength of 30,000, but the present numbers of the Army, Navy and Air Force Reserves as of November 2024 are only 22,024. The RCN Reserves number 3,045, the RCAF 2,162, and the Army 16,817. This is frankly pathetic, all the more so as the regular forces are sadly understrength as well.

The Army Reserves have a long history, with some units dating back before Confederation. Before both world wars the Militia’s strength was roughly 50,000, generated by populations of eight million in 1914 and eleven million in 1939. Amazingly, despite a lack of training and equipment, the Militia provided many of the Army’s officers, up to and including successful division and regimental commanders, and large numbers of the senior non-commissioned officers. A century ago, even after some consolidation following the Great War, almost every town and city had an armoury and a Militia unit with a cadre of officers, good numbers of enlisted men, and some social status in their community. The factory owners, bankers, and well-off were heavily represented, and the Militia had real clout with representation in Parliament and easy access to the defence minister.

Not any longer. The armouries in most of Canada have disappeared, sold off by governments and levelled by developers, and those that still stand are in serious need of maintenance. The local elites – except for honorary colonels who donate funds for extra kit, travel, celebratory volumes, and to try to stop Ottawa from killing their regiment – are noticeably absent.

So too are the working men and women and students. As a result, there are Army Reserve units commanded by a lieutenant-colonel with three majors, half a dozen captains, ten lieutenants, a regimental sergeant major and any number of warrant officers, and under seventy in the ranks. It is a rare Reserve regiment, even those in Canada’s largest cities, which has a strength above 200, and ordinarily when a unit trains on a weeknight or a weekend only half that number turn up. Even in summer, when reservists do their serious training at Petawawa or other large bases, there will be many absentees.

And when a unit is asked to raise soldiers for an overseas posting – say for the Canadian-led brigade in Latvia – it might be able to find ten or so volunteers, but it will be highly unlikely to be able to do so when the next call comes. Reservists have families, jobs or school classes, and few are able and willing to go overseas and even fewer to do so for subsequent deployments.

Without reservists filling the ranks (and even with them providing up to 20 per cent of a battalion’s strength), the undermanned regulars must cobble together a battalion of 600 or so by seconding troops from another Regular unit. After being brought up to Regular force standards before deployment, the reservists have performed well in operations, for example, in Afghanistan.

So why can’t the Army Reserves find the men and women to join their ranks? The reasons are many and much the same as the recruitment difficulties facing the Regular Army. Sexual harassment cases have abounded, affecting the highest ranks and the lowest. Modern equipment has been and is continuing to be lacking.

Procurement is still bogged down with process, paperwork, and long timelines – for instance, approving a new pistol took a decade. And the Reserves get modern equipment only after the Regulars’ needs are met, which unfortunately means never.  Instead of a tank or a Light Armoured Vehicle, units get pickup vehicles painted in dark green and see anything more only on their rare days of training in the field.

Leaders of the Reserves have called for a separate budget for years, demanding that they decide how the funds are allocated. National Defence Headquarters has refused, rightly claiming that the underfunded Regulars have higher priority. But the Reserves point to official documents that in 2019-20 demonstrated that of $3.018 million allocated to the Reserves, only $1.3 billion reached them, the rest being unspent or re-allocated to the Regulars.

With some reason this infuriates Reservists who point to this happening every fiscal year.

So too does what they see as the condescension with which they are treated. A Reserve major is equal in rank to a Regular major, but both know that the Regular is almost always far better trained and experienced for his job and that rankles. (Many years ago, when I was a junior officer, I remember another Regular referring to “the ****ing Militia.” I know that Reserve officers reverse the compliment.)

Today with unemployment above nine per cent and with young Canadians’ unemployment rate even higher, the Reserves pay a new private a daily rate of some $125 (The Carney government recently promised a substantial pay raise). This ought to be a good option to earn some money.  The Toronto Scottish, an old and established infantry unit, for example, has a website that lists other benefits: up to $8,000 for educational expenses and up to $16,000 for full-time summer employment. The Toronto Scottish has two armouries in the western suburbs, a female Commanding Officer, but under 200 soldiers. There should be a real opportunity in the current circumstances to increase those numbers by a good advertising campaign pitched directly at young men and women in the Toronto suburbs. The same can be said for every big city.

But the small town and rural units, tiny regiments whatever their storied histories, are unlikely to be able to grow very much. National Defence Headquarters needs to set a number – say 150, 200, or 250 – above which a unit will keep its command structure. Below that standard, however, units will be stripped of their higher ranks and effectively consolidated under the Reserve brigade in their area.

Reservists have fought such suggestions for years, but if the Reserves are to become an efficient and effective force, this is a change that must come. One such experiment has combined the Princess of Wales Own Regiment in Kingston, Ontario, and the Brockville Rifles by putting the Commanding Officer of the first and the Regimental Sergeant Major of the second in charge. Unit badges can remain, but this reduces the  inflated command staffs.

In reality, these small regiments are nothing more than company-sized sub-units, and sub-units of less than a hundred simply cannot train effectively or draw enough new members from their small town and rural catchment areas. Combined they can function effectively.

The federal government will soon release an army modernization plan. Change is always difficult but with the new threats facing Canada and NATO, change must come quickly. Canada needs to fix the Army Reserves.

Historian J.L. Granatstein is a member of the Macdonald-Laurier Institute’s Research Advisory Board. A bestselling author, Granatstein was the director and CEO of the Canadian War Museum. In 1995, he served on the Special Commission on the Restructuring of the Reserves.