On Remembrance Day, let's remember the sacrifices of our veterans. Let's also remember the record of the Conservative government.

If there's one number that sums it up, it's 200. That's the number of military personnel who have been discharged before they reached 10 years of service, the benchmark to qualify for an indexed pension. The trend line for the last decade suggest a pattern. In 2001, 10% of soldiers were discharged prematurely. By 2011, this number had grown to 16%. 

Rick Mercer has something to say about another aspect of the Conservative record.

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It’s Veterans’ Week, and Conservative ministers have been talking up how much their government supports veterans as the country prepares to mark Remembrance Day.

Here's a comparison of what they say, and what they do:

What they say: "Our Veterans show us every day the meaning of patriotism. We remember and honour their sacrifice & service in." @MinPeterMacKay
What they do: The Conservative government is appealing a court ruling related to veterans of Canada’s war in Afghanistan. The veterans say the federal government’s new system of disability compensation for former soldiers violates the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. The payments don’t even measure up to worker’s compensation claims or civil settlements in personal injury claims.

What they say: "Our govt has worked to help returning #veterans re-establish themselves to civilian life." @JulianFantino
What they do:  Canada’s Veterans Ombudsman reported recently that the government’s much-touted New Veterans Charter is riddled with problems, including woefully inadequate funding to help soldiers transition to civilian jobs. Former soldiers have also weighed in: they’ve complained about the poorly-executed “Helmets to Hardhats” program, denouncing it as "condescending" and "an insult to the skill set of veterans."

What they say: "Our govt has reduced red tape so #veterans can access the benefits they need #cdnpoli." @JulianFantino
What they do: Announced plans to close nine Veterans Affairs offices in rural areas across Canada. That means many veterans, including those with disabilities, will have to travel long distances to access their needed benefits. And despite so-called “back office” cuts at the Department of Veterans Affairs, front lines services for veterans are affected.

What they say: "Our govt has invested almost five billion additional dollars in benefits and programs for #veterans #sft2013." @JulianFantino
What they do: Discharged over 200 injured military personnel before they reached 10 years of service, the benchmark to qualify for a pension. The trend line for the last decade suggest a pattern. In 2001, 10% of soldiers were discharged prematurely. By 2011, this number had grown to 16%. The recent report from Canada’s Veterans Ombudsman also revealed that 400 veterans live in poverty in their retirement years because of inadequate pensions.

What they say: "Our Government will always keep faith with those who have defended Canada with pride #veterans #cdnpoli." @JulianFantino
What they do:  Spent over $245,000 to remove the maple leaf rank designation on the uniforms of Canada’s highest-ranking officers. David Zimmerman, a military historian at the University of Victoria, summed up the move to abandon maple leaf badges for British stars and crowns: "just beyond belief" and "bizarre."

Photo: grovestock (sxc).

Sometimes a picture is the best rebuttal to a flawed argument — so hats off to the Grid, a weekly magazine in Toronto, for taking on the conservative movement's anti-tax campaign.

Their annotated picture of a Toronto intersection shows all the ways tax dollars are put to good use in the community. Those roads you drive on? Each lane costs $750 per metre. Manholes? $80,000 a pop. Overhead streetcar wire? $900 a metre. Street lights? $6,000 each. Fire hydrant? $7,000 each. And on and on it goes.

This isn't what right-wing think tanks like the Fraser Institute want people to imagine when they think of taxes. They want to sell a line about how Canadians are overtaxed so people get behind an aggressive tax-cutting agenda. The point is to starve the public treasury of resources needed to pay for public services.

The Fraser Institute even has a "Tax Freedom Day" every year to mark when families have paid off their tax bill (and start working for themselves). The message is simple: don't think about all those public investments paid for by taxes that benefit your family and community, just get mad at your tax bill.

And hope you never get sick and need surgery, or need paved roads for the ambulance to get you to the hospital fast, or... well, just take a look at the Grid's work (or click here for the full-size image):

Feature photo: remedy451. Used under a Creative Commons BY 2.0 licence.

Jason Kenney, Canada's employment minister, can't seem to catch a break.

Every few weeks, it seems like a new report comes out highlighting a more nuanced picture of Canada's labour force than Kenney likes to paint.

When TD Economics released a study recently throwing "cold water" on the idea of a skills shortage in Canada, Kenney surfaced to talk up a shortage and defend the controversial Temporary Foreign Worker Program.

The program, pitched by the Conservatives as a solution to an overblown problem, has been growing rapidly in the last decade amid reports of companies abusing the program and bumping domestic employees for lower-paid temporary foreign workers vulnerable to human-rights abuses.

The Institute for Research on Public Policy contributed to the debate Friday with the release of a study on how to strengthen Canada's labour market in the next decade. "Despite widespread concerns from employers about impending labour and skill shortages as baby boomers retire," author Cliff Halliwell "finds that the long-term prospects for Canada's labour supply and demand are balanced, and that ongoing shortages are unlikely."

Recommendations from Halliwell include: limiting temporary foreign worker programs "to jobs that are truly 'temporary'"; "strenghthening and formalizing the 'second-chance' system to help Canadians upgrade their education or skills, or get better jobs, over the course of their careers;" and modernizing labour market measures to "better support the needs of long-tenured workers and more effectively target the skills development and training needs of the unemployed."

Speaking of job training programs, the Conservative government surprised the provinces back in the spring when it announced the creation of a new national job training program. The glitch? The plan is to pay for the Canada Job Grant by taking $300 million from a $500 million annual transfer for provincial training programs. Needless to say, the provinces aren't happy.

A story that surfaced Friday won't help. 

The findings of an internal federal study, published in the Vancouver Sun, show Kenney's department praised the federally funded programs just 10 days before Conservative government announced it was slashing the transfer by $300 million.

There's a "strong and continuing need" for them, the internal report stated. Wonder if the report came up Friday afternoon, when Kenney met with his provincial counterparts to talk about job training.

Photo: perspective. Used under a Creative Commons BY-SA 2.0 licence.