You can tell that there is something drastically wrong within the Canadian Armed Forces by the sheer number of Class Action Lawsuits that have been brought against the military over the years.
Contrary to popular belief, class action lawsuits are not a “get-rich-quick” scheme.
As can be seen from the settlement in the LifeLabs class action, the more class members that come forward, the less each member of the class receives.
As I had been a client of LifeLab since the early 2000’s I was eligible for a settlement.
The settlement I received from LifeLabs was a whopping:
Not all class actions pay out this little. It’s just that when a class action has over 100,000 members, the pool gets spread out a little thin.
So, what’s the benefit of a class action?
Members such as myself get to take on entities that I would never stand a chance against.
And so far as organizations that are untouchable, the Canadian Armed Forces and the Department of National Defence rank up there pretty high.
How many class actions has the Canadian Armed Forces faced recently?
In addition to mine:
There’s one for Mental Health:
The CAF have a long and storied history of mistreatment of mental health issues. I should know. I endured mistreatment at the hands of Captain Terry Totzke.
There’s a class action for sexual misconduct:
There’s a class action for racism:
There’s a class action related to the LGBT purge.
This purge mentality affected the kids living in the military communities as well. This is why Captain Totzke was hellbent to make sure that I understood that I was to blame for being sexually abused. My father, being both a full time member of the regular forces and subordinate to the captain would have had to go along with Captain Totzke’s treatment plan for me.
Then there’s also the other issues that kinda got settled on the low-down by ex-gratia payments.
There was the 1974 CFB Valcartier Grenade incident in which an officer of the Canadian Armed Forces was in charge of a group of 12 to 18 year old army cadets and allowed the cadets to play with a live M56 grenade. The grenade went boom. Killed numerous cadets and physically and mentally injured numerous more cadets. The Canadian Armed Forces and the Department of National Defence fought compensation of these victims all the way up to 2011 when the Minister of National Defence on advice of the Canadian Forces Ombudsman offered each survivor and the families of the deceased up to $250,000.00 each.
There was also the Agent Orange matter.
Beeshive 