VAC Return to Lifetime Pensions Discussion
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BDTyre
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There is some clarification in terms of who is eligible amongst those that have already received a lump-sum Disability Award:
-where the amount under the Pain and Suffering Compensation’s monthly payment option
would have been higher had this option existed at the time of your Disability Award.
So of course...we'd have to determine that. Which I imagine can't happen until after April 1.
-where the amount under the Pain and Suffering Compensation’s monthly payment option
would have been higher had this option existed at the time of your Disability Award.
So of course...we'd have to determine that. Which I imagine can't happen until after April 1.
DIRECTLY FROM THE PFL FACT SHEETS:
AM I ABLE TO CONVERT THE ADDITIONAL MONTHLY AMOUNT INTO A LUMP SUM PAYMENT?
No. The additional monthly amount is above and beyond what you would have received as a lump sum Disability Award (DA) payment. It is only available as a monthly payment for life.
This is complete bullshit....I don't need an extra 100$ a month...I need cash now...Id like to pay off my debt, my car, have a downpayment for a home...
Thanks for the extra 100$ a month....Few cases of beer for my pain and suffering...
AM I ABLE TO CONVERT THE ADDITIONAL MONTHLY AMOUNT INTO A LUMP SUM PAYMENT?
No. The additional monthly amount is above and beyond what you would have received as a lump sum Disability Award (DA) payment. It is only available as a monthly payment for life.
This is complete bullshit....I don't need an extra 100$ a month...I need cash now...Id like to pay off my debt, my car, have a downpayment for a home...
Thanks for the extra 100$ a month....Few cases of beer for my pain and suffering...
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RCR88 said:
A buddy of mine is getting between 10 -15 dollars a month. He'll be a hundredaire if he plays his cards right.
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$20-$25 is what they told me to expect.
Not even a quarter tank of gas or a box of beer.
If for some reason they decide to tax it, that'll leave about $8.00 :rofl:
It costs, probably, 5-8 times that for administrative costs. My payment of $25.00 costs the taxpayers $150, or more, to administer it. EVERY MONTH. Now, times that by the amount of Veterans getting pocket change payments? And Trudeau still expects a savings of almost $2 million back to general coffers?
Absolute total waste of time and money that helps nobody except the grit government.
How in the hell is any of this fiscally responsible?
:rofl: :waiting: :rofl: :rofl: :waiting:
rly: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :facepalm:
Not even a quarter tank of gas or a box of beer.
If for some reason they decide to tax it, that'll leave about $8.00 :rofl:
It costs, probably, 5-8 times that for administrative costs. My payment of $25.00 costs the taxpayers $150, or more, to administer it. EVERY MONTH. Now, times that by the amount of Veterans getting pocket change payments? And Trudeau still expects a savings of almost $2 million back to general coffers?
Absolute total waste of time and money that helps nobody except the grit government.
How in the hell is any of this fiscally responsible?
:rofl: :waiting: :rofl: :rofl: :waiting:
rly: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :facepalm:- Reaction score
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doomed_78 said:
It would be interesting to see the logic behind it. It is hard to see how some of the payments I've heard about will do anything to help vets. The only reason I can come up with is that they are banking on people dying prior to having to make full payments thus saving money.
HappyWithYourHacky said:
It fucking stupid. If I had the option of taking a lump sum based off me being alive until I'm 80 I would stand to get 91000$
I could use that for a downpayment and pay of debts. but now ill get 125-150$ a month....Wont even pay my cell phone bill
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I'm going to get between a case, or a case and a half of beer per month. Thanks Trudeau. :facepalm:
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RCR88 said:
Yup. It's all smoke and mirrors. It's about appearing to do something. Much like the new education benefit which looks good until you get into the weeds. 80/40 thousand (taxed) to cover tuition AND living expenses. Good luck covering life's costs with what remains after tuition is paid.
Part of the history behind the 2006 New Veterans Charter lump sum disability awards is that a lot of claims were still coming in for older retired veterans for whom a modest monthly pension would be meaningless. Guys who 'made t through' a career (or who served briefly during the war then got out) and years down the road ad things like hearing loss, etc that they finally found out they could claim. A lump sum suited many of these folks much more. and that's quite reasonable. A lump sum is going to better for a lot of people in a lot of cases. Thsoe who are older, those who are financially disciplined, those for whom writing off a major debt would be financially advantageous in saved interest, etc. The Disability Award is compensation for pain and suffering. It's 'Sorry you're hurt / sick / broken. In recognition of the fact that your life as more suck than it would have, here's money". It's not meant to be economic compensation for lost wages- that's where the other stuff (ELB, CIA, CIA-S) came in. Those in turn were to work in conjunction with rehabilitation programs to try to get people back into some sort of meaningful employment, with ELB intended to bridge some of the income gap between pre-injury and post-injury. In principle, not a terrible system. The Pension Act was 'shut up, take your money each month, go away and ensure someone tells us when you die'. It would provide a modest income scaled to severity of disability. If you could still work, great! If you couldn't, you wouldn't starve to death. This shfited to a new system that is somewhat tested against your ability to still have meaningful work.
Then basically the same time all of that happens, oh crap, we're back in a real scrap where a lot of young men and women are getting badly banged up. Immediately this new system got tested in basically every imaginable configuration of variables, and it was found lacking. ELB has a high threshold to access. The system was overwhelmed with claims and bogged down. The disability award lump sum gave massive sums of cash to guys and girls who were in possibly the worst possible circumstances to handle a large amount of money- and when it's gone, it's gone. So now we have permanently and severely disabled Canadians in their 20s and 30s. People in the prim of their lives. And the system in a lot of cases was *not* helping them. Some of it was due to the sheer bureaucratic stubborness that pervades government departments. Benefits over and over were not given the benefit of the doubt on disabilities; inappropriate standards were applied. Veterans were shoehorned into certain vocational paths that failed to take into account their own talents and realistic, reasonable aspirations. There was financial inequity with the old pension act based on accessing ELB or how it's calculated.
The approach to that over the next decade was layer after layer of bandaids. Increased DAs. ELB increased to 90% pre-release with the SISIP top up (SISIP is another stupid beast). Critical Injury Benefit. It just became more and more unwieldy and more and more stupid results crept in. The principle of separating economic and non-economic compensation is sound. A person who can still work *should* be incentivized to work. The $20k in non-clawed-back income for ELB is a good step in that direction. 90% pre-release income ELB is a good benefit if it's applied fairly and consistently.
As they stumbled and tripped in the right direction, it became clear the system needed a ground up re-write. There were too many overlapping and offsetting benefits and programs. Hence what's coming into place now.
A lot of guys are making some loud noises about some pretty small monthly checks they're going to be getting... I don't really buy that one. They already got their disability award payout. If buddy's getting a few hundred a month it's going to be on top of probably a few hundred thousand already received, plus whatever other benefits and services they've had access to. It's not like the dude who lost a leg overseas has never been treated or compensated and now they get three thousand bucks a year and have a nice life. Whatever people are now additionally getting has to be on top of what they already got.
The 'Pension for life' is basically the disability award amortized over an expected life span. People can still take the lump sum, or they can get that monthly amount for Pain and Suffering- up $1150 in raw form, potentially another $1500 a month if they face 'barriers to re-establishment', which by my reading also means it's stacking on top of the Income Replacement Benefit that is the same as ELB. So potentially a couple thousand tax free a month on top of 90% income replacement with potentially 20% of additional growth to same, all indexed to inflation. That's not bad at all. For people receiving elsser amounts for lesser injuries, presumably they can still work and there are a suite of programs to help them with that.
The loudest voices in favour of a lifetime pension basically wanted to economic and non-economic losses combined back into one benefit that would not distinguish between if someone could still earn a living or not, and wouldn't incentivize them to if they could. For a host of reasons that's bad- having some sort of meaningful employment has a great many advantages for someone's mental health and recovery. I think someone who by virtue of their disability *cannot* work *should* receive more economic compensation for that- the very nature of the term 'compensation' is that you're making up for something lost or taken away, which in that case is income. If they can still work a meaningful job they should reasonably be expected to, so long as the pain and suffering is separately recognized and compensated, which it is. That's an inherently fair notion. A restoration of the old Pension Act approach just isn't going to happen. That's been made abundantly clear, and at this point it's just tilting at windmills to think it may still be.
Most of the remaining mess is in the bridging of the two systems. Someone newly injured and coming entirely under the new system as of April will, I think, have access to a pretty reasonable suite of benefits, compensation, and services to help them to carry on with whatever their life will look like after service. It's a hell of a lot better than pre-2006 'take your money and PFO'. The key to success will be in ensuring that the benefit of the doubt is respected in favour of the veteran, that the benefits are granted consistently and compassionately, and that the barriers to reestablishment are interpreted and applied fairly and with an understanding to the impacts that serious disability truly has on a life. This is not to say that the system is perfect or ideal, however what will be in place as of April I think far better achieves the intent of the NVC as initially envisioned prior to implementation in 2006. It took them twelve years and a war to break the system in, torture test it, and fix it.
Now if they could just destroy SISIP for service related disability...
Then basically the same time all of that happens, oh crap, we're back in a real scrap where a lot of young men and women are getting badly banged up. Immediately this new system got tested in basically every imaginable configuration of variables, and it was found lacking. ELB has a high threshold to access. The system was overwhelmed with claims and bogged down. The disability award lump sum gave massive sums of cash to guys and girls who were in possibly the worst possible circumstances to handle a large amount of money- and when it's gone, it's gone. So now we have permanently and severely disabled Canadians in their 20s and 30s. People in the prim of their lives. And the system in a lot of cases was *not* helping them. Some of it was due to the sheer bureaucratic stubborness that pervades government departments. Benefits over and over were not given the benefit of the doubt on disabilities; inappropriate standards were applied. Veterans were shoehorned into certain vocational paths that failed to take into account their own talents and realistic, reasonable aspirations. There was financial inequity with the old pension act based on accessing ELB or how it's calculated.
The approach to that over the next decade was layer after layer of bandaids. Increased DAs. ELB increased to 90% pre-release with the SISIP top up (SISIP is another stupid beast). Critical Injury Benefit. It just became more and more unwieldy and more and more stupid results crept in. The principle of separating economic and non-economic compensation is sound. A person who can still work *should* be incentivized to work. The $20k in non-clawed-back income for ELB is a good step in that direction. 90% pre-release income ELB is a good benefit if it's applied fairly and consistently.
As they stumbled and tripped in the right direction, it became clear the system needed a ground up re-write. There were too many overlapping and offsetting benefits and programs. Hence what's coming into place now.
A lot of guys are making some loud noises about some pretty small monthly checks they're going to be getting... I don't really buy that one. They already got their disability award payout. If buddy's getting a few hundred a month it's going to be on top of probably a few hundred thousand already received, plus whatever other benefits and services they've had access to. It's not like the dude who lost a leg overseas has never been treated or compensated and now they get three thousand bucks a year and have a nice life. Whatever people are now additionally getting has to be on top of what they already got.
The 'Pension for life' is basically the disability award amortized over an expected life span. People can still take the lump sum, or they can get that monthly amount for Pain and Suffering- up $1150 in raw form, potentially another $1500 a month if they face 'barriers to re-establishment', which by my reading also means it's stacking on top of the Income Replacement Benefit that is the same as ELB. So potentially a couple thousand tax free a month on top of 90% income replacement with potentially 20% of additional growth to same, all indexed to inflation. That's not bad at all. For people receiving elsser amounts for lesser injuries, presumably they can still work and there are a suite of programs to help them with that.
The loudest voices in favour of a lifetime pension basically wanted to economic and non-economic losses combined back into one benefit that would not distinguish between if someone could still earn a living or not, and wouldn't incentivize them to if they could. For a host of reasons that's bad- having some sort of meaningful employment has a great many advantages for someone's mental health and recovery. I think someone who by virtue of their disability *cannot* work *should* receive more economic compensation for that- the very nature of the term 'compensation' is that you're making up for something lost or taken away, which in that case is income. If they can still work a meaningful job they should reasonably be expected to, so long as the pain and suffering is separately recognized and compensated, which it is. That's an inherently fair notion. A restoration of the old Pension Act approach just isn't going to happen. That's been made abundantly clear, and at this point it's just tilting at windmills to think it may still be.
Most of the remaining mess is in the bridging of the two systems. Someone newly injured and coming entirely under the new system as of April will, I think, have access to a pretty reasonable suite of benefits, compensation, and services to help them to carry on with whatever their life will look like after service. It's a hell of a lot better than pre-2006 'take your money and PFO'. The key to success will be in ensuring that the benefit of the doubt is respected in favour of the veteran, that the benefits are granted consistently and compassionately, and that the barriers to reestablishment are interpreted and applied fairly and with an understanding to the impacts that serious disability truly has on a life. This is not to say that the system is perfect or ideal, however what will be in place as of April I think far better achieves the intent of the NVC as initially envisioned prior to implementation in 2006. It took them twelve years and a war to break the system in, torture test it, and fix it.
Now if they could just destroy SISIP for service related disability...
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