Canada: Old Vets Die, So Shrink VA

That's the take of Jean-Pierre Blackburn, minister of Canada's Veterans Affairs, who said last week since Canada's large population of World War II and Korean War vets die at the rate of 1,700 a month, it's time to shrink the size of his department.

"I'm just saying if we have [fewer] veterans, we should have [fewer] employees too," Blackburn said in an interview with the Postmedia Network.

Canada's VA has 4,200 employees who serve 155,000 WWII and Korean War veterans as well as 6,000 Afghanistan veterans who receive disability benefits.

Peter Stoffer, a member of Parliament form Nova Scotia, called this thinking short-sighted because there are hundreds of thousands of veterans from more recent conflicts "who need help but are not eligible to receive assistance from the department."

Echoing complaints from veterans on this side of the border, Stoffer said Canadian vets have to go through an "excruciating, mind-boggling" application process that can delay receipt of benefits for as long as two years.