A Dirty Little Skirmish By David T. MacLeod, Harold Leduc

The title – A Dirty Little Skirmish – is a metaphor depicting a small dogged fight. A skirmish can broadly be explained as an episode of irregular fighting, usually occurring on the periphery of the main battle. The description is an appropriate one for veterans. Each day, individual veterans fight a bureaucracy whose culture of denial hampers veterans’ injury claims. These fights on the periphery, these skirmishes, are ugly. Access to benefits and services for veterans and their families is the underlying theme throughout the book. Denied or delayed access to a benefit is a benefit denied. Families bear the brunt of political and bureaucratic failure, families like yours: or Natasha Mohr’s. The public has come to realize that veterans are fighting for the very things that the average Canadian is concerned about and that the Harper government has undermined: access to pensions, healthcare, the application of the rule of law, and human rights. What veterans are fighting for affects Canadians directly. This is not a foreign struggle for rights and freedoms. Veterans and their families are fighting the Canadian government: it’s a dirty little skirmish.