Reparations 1930-1931 - Report Introduction

REPARATIONS, 1930-31

REPORT

To His Excellency, the Governor General in Council.

MAY IT PLEASE YOUR EXCELLENCY:

I have the honour to submit the following Report:

Since the date of my Supplementary Report, dated July 21, 1931, attention has been given to the large number of cases presented by former prisoners of war who claim damages caused by maltreatment. The present Report is designed to include and dispose of all such cases heard up till June 23, 1931. Decisions have been reached and recommendations are now made in 340 cases, leaving only a number of civilian cases yet to be disposed of, together with a further group of soldier cases received or heard after the date above mentioned.

In addition to the sittings referred to in my previous reports, the Commission has held sessions at Halifax, N.S., Montreal, P.Q., Ottawa, Ont., Toronto, Ont., Winnipeg, Man., Calgary, Alta., Edmonton, Alta., Vancouver, B.C., and Victoria, B.C.

These cases have entailed serious study and the work of preparing detailed recommendations in each case has been laborious. I regret that the report should be so voluminous, but I felt that each claimant was entitled to have his case fully reviewed in such detail as the facts and circumstances warranted. Many of the claims asserted should not have been advanced before this Commission, being purely pensionable in nature, and a number of the applicants erroneously regarded this Commission as a means to obtaining an initial or increased pension.

In dealing with these cases, claimants have been required to complete and file statements of claim setting out their grievances, supported by medical certificates indicating their present condition as to disability. Where possible, the medical practitioners who have furnished the certificates have been requested to attend at the hearings. Claimants themselves, in practically every case, have been heard and fully questioned. Every effort has been made to ascertain the actual facts and to measure fairly the damage sustained by each individual claimant. To hold a claimant rigorously to the full, legal proof of his claim would be as unfair as it would be to accept in their entirety the unsupported statements of claimants. Evidence such as would be required in a court of law has not been exacted but, on the other hand, stories, which have become exaggerated with the passage of time, have been carefully scrutinized and confined within the bounds of probability. In only one case (Hunter No. 1846) has the reverse side of the picture been put before the Commission, by a letter from the German Consul General, which seriously assails the accuracy of the claimant's testimony. Had this practice been more prevalent and had both sides been represented at the hearings, it would have simplified the task and facilitated the decision of cases. In the absence of this assistance, the Commission has sought to test, as best it could, the authenticity of the facts as presented in each particular case. This it has been able to do, in some measure, by checking the facts related by claiments with statements made by them (when available) upon repatriation, by their pension and medical history records and by reports, of an official or semi-official character, as to conditions prevailing in various camps, to which reports I have made reference in the annexed opinion.

Great care must be exercised in distinguishing between service disability and incapacity directly attributable to treatment received while a prisoner. Both classes of injury are, of course, pensionable, but this Commission is concerned only with cases falling under the latter category. By reference to the records of the Board of Pension Commissioners and scrutiny of the pension decisions in favour of claimants, it is hoped that there will be no confusion nor any duplication of awards. It is undesirable that any decisions of this Commission should embarrass the Board of Pension Commissioners in their consideration of claims presented by pensioners or claimants seeking pension. In many cases, of course, claimants in receipt of pension, provided they have made out a case of maltreatment, are entitled to an award from this Commission. The rights to pension and reparation are not exclusive the one of the other.

I have prepared and annexed to the present report a general summary or opinion outlining the principles upon which I have endeavoured to decide the various cases. As to a large number of the cases now under report, the Commission has had the benefit of the co-operation of Dr. J. P. S. Cathcart, Chief Psychiatrist to the Department of Pensions and National Health. Dr. Cathcart has attended most of the sessions of the Commission and I desire to record my high appreciation of his valuable assistance in advising upon the medical and disability aspects of each case. He has prepared and filed with the Commission a report, which I append hereto as indicating his appreciation of the evidence from a medical standpoint.

In arranging the material for the present report, the recommendations are presented numerically in the order in which they were heard, with an alphabetical index and a summary of the awards made. As far as possible, statements of claimants referring to other cases have been checked and verified, in order to bring to each claim all posisble[11] corroborative testimony.

A number of claims have been presented by former Imperial soldiers, who only became resident in Canada after the war. As explained in Opinion annexed to my Interim report, dealing with the scope and jurisdiction of the Commission, it was found necessary to fix a date constitutive of jurisdiction for those claimants, British subjects, who had come to Canada to live after the events complained of January 10, 1920, date of the ratification of the Treaty of Versailles, was selected. This was the date upon which, under the Treaty, Germany undertook to pay and assumed what may be regarded as a contractual obligation to make good the damage caused during the war. I see no reason to depart from this principle in dealing with the group of cases above mentioned.

In a few cases claims have been presented by dependents of deceased soldiers who died after their return to Canada. The section of the Annex to the Treaty, with which we are concerned, does not authorize awards upon the ground of dependency, as do the sections relating to civilian claimants. The claim is purely personal to the victim of the maltreatment and does not pass, upon his to his legal representatives. Moreover, in such cases it is practically impossible to adduce direct evidence of maltreatment and still more difficult to establish that the death has resulted from the treatment alleged.

In allowing interest upon the amount of the awards, I have followed the principle adopted in dealing with civilian cases and referred to in Opinion annexed to my Interim Report. Regarding the Treaty of Versailles as a specific undertaking on the part of Germany to pay, it seems reasonable to make interest run from the date of the ratification of the Treaty, viz., January 10, 1920.

The present report involves an expenditure amounting to $93,500, with $56,100 estimated interest, at the rate of 5 per cent per annum, to say, January 10, 1932 - a total of $149,600.

The Commission has accepted for hearing 932 claims, of which 730 have been heard. The present report, consisting of 340 cases, brings the total number of cases disposed of to 666. There remain 266 cases, made up of 214 military and 52 civilian claims, of which 43 military and 21 civilian have been heard since June 23, 1931.

All of which is respectfully submitted for Your Excellency's consideration.

ERROL M. McDOUGALL,

Commissioner.

OTTAWA, January 13, 1932.

(Originally printed on pages 3-6 of the report)

[1] Spelling as in original document

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