Veterans take on government in the continuing uranium debate

Rosanne Dornan isn’t moving until something changes.

For the past three weeks, Dornan has been sitting outside Tory Halifax MP Greg Kerr's constituency office in Yarmouth, N.S., demanding that her peacekeeping veteran husband, Steve Dornan, receive the disability pension to which he believes he is entitled.

Rosanne Dornan has given up her job to protest full time.

Dornan’s doctors believe exposure to depleted uranium as a NATO weapons inspector caused him to develop non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, which will eventually take his life.

While Canada’s Department of Veterans’ Affairs says there is “little evidence” linking depleted uranium exposure with serious health problems, some medical researchers say otherwise. The Uranium Medical Research Centre in Toronto has linked depleted uranium to bone marrow cell damage.

“When [exposed cells] leave the bone to repair something the cells can be dysfunctional…there are potentials for cancer and a whole list of symptoms over the next 18 months to several years.”

Dornan was diagnosed with lymphoma in 2002, six years after returning from Bosnia.

NATO has acknowledged using two tons of depleted uranium ammunition in Bosnia.

“Some of the sites we inspected had equipment that had been damaged in battle. We didn’t know about [the uranium] until some time later,” he says.

“We had no environmental protection. We had the Kevlar vests but no self-contained breathing apparatus or rubber gloves…In the areas where I was, the UN still finds 1000 times the acceptable levels of radiation.”

Court fight and protest

Dornan has taken his rejected appeal to the federal court level and estimates that his fight for compensation has cost him $20,000 in legal fees. Rosanne Dornan has left her job to become a full-time activist. The protest comes after a decade of fighting the system.

“I choose to sit in [Kerr’s] office because of his position [as parliamentary secretary for veterans affairs],” Dornan says. “I just go there every day from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. and I sit. The message is that I’m mad as hell and I’m not taking this anymore.”

Kerr’s office directed all comment to the Department of Veterans Affairs.

Dornan estimates that her protest has grown to include about 30 people, some of them loved ones of affected veterans.

“I think what Rosanne is doing is fantastic,” says Sue Riordon, who has joined the protest. Riordon’s husband, Capt. Terry Riordon, returned from the Persian Gulf in 1991 suffering chronic fatigue and pain, loss of motor control and memory loss. He was unable to get compensation from Veterans Affairs during his lifetime. After his death, depleted uranium was found in his lungs and bones.

Like Dornan, Pascal Lacoste believes he was also exposed to depleted uranium as a NATO peacekeeper in Bosnia.

Following his death, Veterans Affairs tested 230 peacekeepers for depleted uranium exposure and found none. However, questions surround the testing methodology.

“The two labs Canada hired admitted publicly they did not have the necessary equipment,” says Louise Richard, a former combat nurse who is affected by depleted uranium.  “People I know had to go outside of Canada to get diagnosed.”

Widespread exposure

Riordon says she knows at least 20 people who have tested positive. “There may be thousands, and there will be many more.”

Veterans Affairs has been reluctant to link Dornan’s health problems with military service. VA spokesperson Janice Summerby says veterans must provide medical evidence linking a disability with service, and the appeal board must give the veteran “the benefit of the doubt” in all cases. Dornan says in his case “they took the five medical doctors who wrote my reports and assassinated their credibility.” 

“In a war zone, you don’t have a doctor or a clerk or a photographer standing behind you,” he says. “They [Veterans’ Affairs] have to have absolute causation, and you can’t have that.”

Pascal Lacoste served in Bosnia with the Royal 22nd Regiment. He says he was exposed to depleted uranium while maintaining damaged equipment, and has received no related compensation. Medical tests revealed dangerous radioactivity levels in his body. He suffers from acute muscle and nerve pains and sometimes passes out. The former biathlete uses a wheelchair. He receives $50 per week for home care from Veterans Affairs, which he saves for the worst days.  He sold his house to finance experimental treatments in the US, but did not get enough money and is working with his MP to come up with the rest, several thousand dollars.

“They’re supposed to pay our care linked to service injuries but every time I go to physio I have to pay out of pocket,” he says. “They tell me to make the link [to service], but just try to find a normal citizen who has uranium poisoning.”

“They’re just saving government money that keeps us from having care,” Lacoste says. “It’s not my fault I fought for my country.”

“Canadians have this idea that when a soldier comes home alive they are looked after, but that is not true in all cases,” says Dornan, who has received phone calls from Kerr and Veterans’ Affairs Minister Jean-Pierre Blackburn since her protest began. “The minister has said ‘I’ve got this’…but I can’t trust that if I stop he’s going to follow through. So I’m going to sit.”