Though veterans affairs union welcomes Scheer's pledge, it comes with a but
Virginia Vaillancourt says Conservatives pledging to fix backlog party's former government helped create
The national president for the Union of Veterans Affairs Employees says she welcomes the pledge made on P.E.I. Sunday by Conservative Leader Andrew Scheer to deal with the backlog of veterans' benefits applications within two years.
But Virginia Vaillancourt also said the pledge is just a first step in helping to solve the problem that she says the Conservatives helped create.
"Staff are under-resourced and overworked and it's hard to be able to meet the standards of serving the clients when they're consistently running behind," she said.
"It stems from the cuts that the Conservatives did pre-2015 and it's been very hard for Veterans Affairs to catch up on that."
Hundreds of veterans affairs employees were let go under Stephen Harper's former Conservative government, Vaillancourt said, and nine offices were closed across the country.
She said 500 or more new staff are needed to meet the current demand, and training those people could take months.
The Liberal government reopened the nine offices the Conservatives closed, but Vaillancourt said despite all the promises being made by political parties, veterans and their families are still facing "reduced services, increased wait times and a government and political system that has consistently failed to deliver."
The union represents about 2,800 veterans affairs employees, 850 of them on P.E.I.