Far From The Mekong

This is the second of two writing samples that I recently completed for an application I submitted.

Far From the Mekong: Seeking Agent Orange Compensation in Canada.

By Nick Logan

Canadian Forces Base (CFB) Gagetown, in my home province of New Brunswick, may be on the opposite side of the world from Viet Nam yet these two places have a dreadful connection. No Canadian soldiers set foot on Vietnamese soil during the American-led war, but the government was active “diplomatically,” providing aid and arms to the South. Canada, itself, became famous for being a safe-haven for “draft dodgers” fleeing the United States from military conscription. Today Gagetown and Vietnam are linked by the legacy of the devastating herbicides that were sprayed over their land.

During 1966 and 1967, the U.S. government was invited to test the dioxin-containing defoliant Agent Orange, at CFB Gagetown, for a combined period of 7 days. The more lethal Agent Purple and Agent White, which does not contain dioxin, but the hazardous compound hexachloribenzene, were also released over the densely forested base. The Canadian Department of National Defense (DND) has acknowledged this testing, but did not make it publicly known that the base conducted routine clearing with these chemicals over a period of 28 years. Originally, it was claimed that only 589 litres of the herbicides were sprayed during that 7 day period, but the shocking truth became known, through declassified documents, that over 1.3 million litres of the three agents – and compounds of similar makeup -- were sprayed over this expanse of time, not to mention a further one million kilograms of dry Agent White.

As with the victims of the Viet Nam war, there is a battle for compensation being fought here, in Eastern Canada. Military personnel were not placed in the direct lines of the spraying, but many were posted on the periphery: more were involved with the preparation, transport, and application of the agents. Numerous people have come forward with diseases and conditions that have been attributed to Agent Orange exposure, such as: diabetes, chloracne, Hodgkin’s disease, and various cancers. The government has recognized these findings and agreed to a paltry settlement to a small number of claimants. This deal has yet to be finalized and will prevent further prosecution should more evidence be accepted. The admission of accountability stops there.

Local teenagers were hired, part-time, to remove the waste left behind, yet they are ineligible for benefits as they were not present during the actual operations. It has been said that the debris posed no threat. Equally troubling, is that the Gagetown and Area Fact Finding Project – which is not independent of the government -- alleges that there was no possibility of neighbouring communities being affected as a result of: the poisons drifting in the air, seeping into the soil or running off into the waterways. This is an effort to hinder compensation claims for secondary exposure. Those findings are questionable, though. Their investigation only considered the land sprayed during the seven days of American testing, not the total 181,000 acres used over 3 decades and the bordering residential areas.

We may not have seen the devastating effects to the same extent that Viet Nam has, but that is no excuse for the Canadian government to attempt to minimize the severity of the issue and to avoid paying reparations. Approximately $1.7 million (CAD) has been spent trying to debunk the claims, but public outcry is growing. Two thousand people are involved in the class-action lawsuit, seeking at least $50,000 each. The government’s complacency is not averting a payout, simply delaying it.