Canadian Government Minister Backs Military Reservist Re-Integration Programs

On Friday, the Honorable Jean-Pierre Blackburn, Canadian Minister of Labor and Minister of the Economic Development Agency of Canada for the Regions of Quebec, visited Prince Edward Island in order to pursue a national dialogue about ensuring that Canadian military reservists are successfully reintegrated into the Canadian work force.

The government of Prince Edward Island is one of the first Canadian provinces to adopt legislation giving reservists a guaranteed right to return to a position with their employer. Similar measures are already in force in Nova Scotia, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba.

Addressing members of the Greater Charlottetown Area Chamber of Commerce and members of the naval reserve HMCS Queen Charlotte, Minister Blackburn announced that that the Canadian government will invest in excess of $3.8 million in projects to help people on Prince Edward Island gain work experience, explore career options, and find work.

There are more than 33,000 reservists living in hundreds of communities across Canada. Approximately 2500 of these reservists are on active duty at any given time, protecting Canada's interests at home and abroad by contributing to international peace, stability, and human security throughout the world.

"Let's do everything we can to ensure that no one who wears our military uniform should ever have to go directly from the front line to the unemployment line," stated Minister Blackburn.

The initiative comes at a time when many war veterans of Canada's southern neighbor are reporting mental illness, emotional disorders, or behavioral problems after returning home from tours of duty. Many experts are, more and more, blaming these problems on a very poor re-integration system in place in the United States for veterans of overseas combat or tours of duty-a system which all too often fails to guarantee Americans gone for soldiers the ability to return to work or student life.

What's more, they say there is little in the way of competent methods for giving war veterans the personal understanding and respect for their combat experiences that they need in order to become fully reintegrated into the peaceable world.

Some commentators blame a contemporary culture that simply does not want to think about the realities of war's alarms and rumors of wars and relies for its thought-base on slogans like "Make love, not war" and "What if they gave a war and nobody showed up?" Although the civilian attitude toward American war veterans is vastly more respectful and compassionate than it was in the times when those slogans were coined, it is still a far cry from the deep understanding that veterans need from friends, family, and their places of work.

Many say that Americans no longer have the attention span to sustain comprehension of warfare or why it gets entered into, and the result is that Americans do not cultivate an understanding of the subject but, instead, "wish it away" in their minds. This leaves them ill equipped to give the support and understanding to returning veterans that they need.

Original Newswire:
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