“Does not constitute an admission of liability on the part of the Crown.” That sentence is section 6 of SI/2006-134, the federal order that finally paid Canadian veterans who served as test subjects for chemical warfare agents, many of them on the grassland at Suffield.
Read the whole order and the pattern is plain. Ottawa wrote a cheque, set a short window to claim it, and made sure the paperwork said nothing about fault. Suffield chemical warfare testing began in southeastern Alberta during the Second World War, and the men who volunteered for it got an apology shaped by lawyers.
Key facts
- The Order Respecting Ex Gratia Payments to Veterans Involved in Chemical Warfare Agent Testing, SI/2006-134, was registered on Dec. 13, 2006, under P.C. 2006-1350 (Canada Gazette, Part II).
- SI/2006-134 offered a one-time payment of $24,000 to each living veteran who took part in chemical warfare agent testing between Jan. 1, 1940, and Dec. 31, 1974 (Canada Gazette, Part II).
- SI/2006-134 set an application deadline of Feb. 28, 2007, and barred any payment after March 31, 2007 (Canada Gazette, Part II).
- The National Defence and Canadian Forces Ombudsman reported in January 2004 that between 2,000 and 3,000 men were recruited for chemical agent testing between 1942 and 1945 (Office of the National Defence and Canadian Forces Ombudsman).
What happened at Suffield
The Experimental Station at Suffield was established on Aug. 26, 1941. It became the place where Canada, working with its wartime allies, tested chemical agents on open prairie, and in some trials on the soldiers who volunteered. The site carries on today as the Suffield Research Centre of Defence Research and Development Canada.
André Marin, then the National Defence and Canadian Forces Ombudsman, reported in January 2004 on what those volunteers went through. He counted “between 2000 and 3000 men recruited between 1942 and 1945” and made five recommendations. Ottawa formally recognized the volunteers on Feb. 19, 2004, and Veterans Affairs Canada marked it with a plaque.
What the 2006 order paid and to whom
Recognition came in 2004. Money took almost three more years. When it arrived, the order paid $24,000 to living volunteers tested between 1940 and 1974, and it gave them from Dec. 13, 2006, to Feb. 28, 2007, to apply. By our count that is 77 days, over Christmas, for men who were by then mostly in their eighties if they had served in the war.
An announcement on Nov. 22, 2006, widened eligibility to roughly 200 more veterans at a cost of about $5 million. That was the right call, and Ottawa deserves credit for making it.
Where the federal order falls short
Ex gratia means a payment made as a favour, with no legal obligation behind it. Section 6 makes sure nobody mistakes the favour for anything more. The Crown admits nothing, and the veteran gets a fixed sum for applying.
The bigger gap is the word living. A volunteer who breathed those agents in 1943 and died before the order was registered was outside it. So was his family.
Cabinet writes ex gratia orders this way because they are fast and cheap to defend. Speed has its place. It should not decide who gets counted.
Section 6 protects the Crown in plain words. Nothing in the order’s text speaks for the men who died before it was written.
