the root cause of the problem is that the liberal party has a twentieth or even nineteenth century view on veterans, in that it actually sees returning veterans as a potential increase in economic growth.

this is what the liberals imagine ought to happen:

1) army people get recruited.
2) army people get trained, which may or may not mean going to a post-secondary institution.
3) army people go to war.
4) army people come back from war.
5) army people use the training they received to get jobs and be good taxpayers.

and, they honestly believe that this is a workable model, that veterans can be reintegrated, and that there isn't any difference between a veteran and a non-veteran on the job market, in the end. and, this is the actual reason they're pushing back: their economic models say that veterans are not supposed to be a net drain on resources, but should actually lead to economic growth.

they see a broken system in front of them, and they blame it on the soldiers, for not pulling themselves up by their own bootstraps, rather than look at the endemic problems that exist within the system.

the previous minister was heavily criticized, before he was removed on unrelated charges. but, he was just reading the notes the party gave him. the party wants veterans to get jobs, not checks.

the only thing the liberals have ever cared about is economic growth. the reason we have all these systems in place, like universal health care, is because they're supposed to lead to growth. they often make the right decisions on social issues, but it's generally by accident - what they actually care about is growth. they just have a more academic understanding of economics than their republican cousins do - they're really more like actually smart republicans than they are like progressive democrats.

so, that is to say, that they seem to be fundamentally in denial as to the long term psychological damage that is inherent in modern warfare: they don't seem to be willing to accept that even when these veterans get sent back with all of their limbs in working condition, that that merely masks the years worth of therapy that they're going to need to go through to be reintegrated.

this is what the liberals need to actually do, here: they need to properly integrate the costs of reintegration into their war budgets. the costs of taking care of veterans from their return to their graves needs to be better integrated into war planning.

what i would say to the prime minister is this: if you didn't want to pay the costs associated with sending people into combat, you should have thought about that before you sent them into combat, in the first place. and, no, you can't blame it on other governments. as it is, these costs have already been spent, even if they weren't budgeted, and it is not acceptable for the government to blame their own poor or ideologically broken economic planning on the workers they hired to curry favour with american military and business leaders.

i'm not a veterans advocate. i would consider these people trained sociopaths, and argue they should be kept away from children. they're monsters. but, that's just the point. the government can't go around breaking people, and then sending them the bill for it, and whistling in the wind when the consequences present themselves. it's a preposterous model.

if the government is going to put people through this kind of training, and then send them to kill people, it is going to have to absorb the costs that arise as a consequence for their anti-social behaviour. and, if they don't want to incur those costs, they should stop sending people to fight wars on behalf of the empire next door - often in opposition to, and not behalf of, our own economic interests.

http://nationalpost.com/opinion/john-ivison-trudeau-in-a-fight-he-cant-win-with-veterans-and-his-frustration-shows

jagmeet singh must cut his beard