CBC: Cdn. Supreme Court Rules Against Disabled Vets.

[CanuckAmok]

Supreme Court rules against disabled vets
Last Updated Thu, 17 Jul 2003 11:24:58
OTTAWA - The Supreme Court of Canada says the federal government will not have to pay billions in back-interest on pensions kept in trust for thousands of mentally disabled veterans.

The seven judges were unanimous in their ruling.

The class-action lawsuit involved 25,000 to 35,000 veterans whose pensions were managed by Ottawa between 1918 and 1990. They were judged unable to manage their own finances. Fewer than 1,000 are still alive.

http://www.cbc.ca/storyview/MSN/2003/07/17/veterans_scoc030717

[hang a left]

1. That is disgraceful!

[revcarol]

2. Gee, is this dumping on vets "catching?"

Please, Canada, don't do this.

[pw]

3. I'm not so sure this is a terrible thing

It appears that the government held the pension money and used it to pay the veterans' expenses because they were unable to take care of the money themselves and in many cases also fed and housed them because they were disabled, all without charging any kind of administration fee (find a private trustee who will do that), and now some of the veterans and many of their heirs were asking the court to pretend that, left to their own devices, the veterans would have invested every cent of their unused pensions in high-quality bonds for 50 years. So it's not enough that the government took care of those veterans for all those years, they should also pay over a vew billion dollars to their heirs.

That's obviously a loaded version of the story from the other side, but I can imagine that the truth is somewhere in between.