Canada's Shameful saga

While ordinary Canadians honour our fallen soldiers and surviving veterans in this special week of VE-Day remembrance, Paul Martin's government has turned its back on a group of frail and bewildered military widows.

Day after day, 3,600 young Canadian recruits were doused in warfare chemicals until their skin peeled, jammed into narrow dirt trenches saturated with mustard gas, forced to breathe toxic poisons until their lungs bled.These young Canadian recruits were repeatedly gassed in the fields of Alberta and in the laboratories of Ottawa as thousands of human guinea pigs in a secret, government-run program of chemical warfare testing.

Yet, for over 60 years, successive governments did nothing to help these men who suffered a range of serious health problems for the remainder of their lives. Finally, on the eve of last year's federal election and barely pre-empting the release of a damning report on the issue, Paul Martin's government announced it was finally "setting things right."