Veterans advocate to visit local Legion for town hall meeting

Veterans with questions and concerns regarding veteran pensions, disability claims and other matters are invited to attend a free admission town hall event at Royal Canadian Legion Branch 25’s Merrifield Room at 7 p.m. Tuesday, Sept. 10.

The branch is located at 96 Great Northern Rd.

Colonel (Retired) Nishika Jardine, Veterans Ombud, will be on hand to answer questions.

“We have advertised her visit internally as well as on our social media page but there may be other veterans and service providers who may want to attend. Service providers are those who provide veterans with hearing aids, adaptive devices and other needs. The veterans will have questions and concerns about difficulties with their pensions, disability claims and medical treatments, such as who qualifies and how do they get it,” Pierre Breckenridge, Royal Canadian Legion Branch 25 president told SooToday.

“A lot of the older veterans are not used to computers and are not tech-savvy so they don't always know about the latest changes and information about veterans’ affairs. A lot of times when they come to our branch office they’re looking for information on ‘how do I apply for this, how do I access these services?’ because they're just not tech-savvy so this town hall will be helpful for them,” Breckenridge said.

Royal Canadian Legion Branch 25 can be contacted at (705) 945-8721 or by email.

The Office of the Veterans Ombud reviews complaints and challenges the policies and decisions of Veterans Affairs Canada where it finds individual or systemic unfairness and aims to be an independent source of help for veterans and their families.

Colonel (Retired) Nishika Jardine, Veterans Ombud lived in Sault Ste. Marie from the time she and her family moved to Canada from India when she was four years old and began her postsecondary education at the Royal Military College of Canada (RMC) in Kingston, Ontario in 1982.

Graduating from RMC with a Bachelor of Science (Math and Physics) in 1986, she first served with the Canadian Army as an electrical and mechanical engineering officer and rose through the ranks.

Jardine held many key leadership roles, such as Staff Officer to the Vice Chief of the Defence Staff from 2001 to 2003 and served in Afghanistan from August 2010 to July 2011.

She visited the Sault to review the 155 Borden Gray Air Cadet Squadron cadets in 2017.