The Decibel - Toxic truths about Agent Orange in Canadian military base

Episode Date: March 8, 2024

A recent legislative commission in Maine has questioned the 2006 Canadian investigation on the spraying of herbicides that took place in a New Brunswick military base. The latest report says the Canadian government downplayed the effects of Agent Orange on military veterans and their families.Lindsay Jones is The Globe’s Atlantic reporter. In this episode, she tells us more about the investigations into the use of Agent Orange in Canada, and the fight for compensation and answers for those exposed to the toxic chemicals.Questions? Comments? Ideas? E-mail us at [e-mail].

You've probably heard of Agent Orange. It was a toxic herbicide used in the Vietnam War and had serious impacts on people exposed to it. It's known to cause diseases, including various kinds of cancer. But Agent Orange was also tested here, in Canada, at the Canadian Forces base called Gagetown in New Brunswick. And a new report says the Canadian government downplayed the severity of people's exposure to it. Lindsay Jones is The Globe's Atlantic reporter. She'll tell us about the investigations into Agent Orange exposure in Canada and the fight for compensation for those exposed to the toxin.

I'm Maina Karaman-Wilms, and this is The Decibel from The Globe and Mail. Lindsay, thank you for being here. Thanks for having me. So, Lindsay, let's just start really basically here. What exactly is Agent Orange? So Agent Orange is an herbicide mixture that was used by the U.S. military during the Vietnam War. And it produces a chemical contaminant called a dioxin, otherwise known as a toxin, the harmful byproduct that can affect human health.

Okay. And so you said it's an herbicide. So I guess what was it designed to do? So it was designed to defoliate the landscape. Here in Canada, it has been used to chemically remove brush and trees from the landscape where members of the military trained in New Brunswick. So CFB Gagetown is the largest training base in Canada. And there's a lot of vegetation there and they needed to get rid of it. Okay, so it's a herbicide. That's what it does to plants and vegetation. Lindsay, do we know what it does to people? Agent Orange is highly carcinogenic

and it's been linked to 14 diseases, including a multitude of cancers, lung cancer, prostate cancer, bladder cancer. Before it was used in Vietnam, Agent Orange was tested at CFB Gagetown, as you mentioned, Lindsay. Can you tell me about that? When was it tested? What happened there? We know information based on what the federal government has revealed through its fact-finding investigation. So Canadians learned back in 2006, when this investigation came out, that Agent Orange, along with Agent White and Agent Purple... These are other herbicides, basically. Yeah, they're generally referred to as rainbow herbicides.

And that name was coined during the Vietnam War. So we learned in 2006 that Agent Orange, Agent Purple, and Agent White had been sprayed in 66 and 67 at CFB Gagetown. And that's as much as the federal government says has ever been sprayed there. The investigation acknowledged there were also poor documentation of spraying programs at the base over the years. So 1966, 1967, Agent Orange and other herbicides were sprayed at CFPG H-10 in New Brunswick. Why did that happen? The Canadian government permitted the U.S. to test these chemicals there. Do we know, was Agent Orange used anywhere else in Canada?

So yes, Agent Orange was sprayed in other jurisdictions in Canada. In my research, I did see that the Canadian government had included in its fact-finding investigation a look into the use of Agent Orange in defoliating some of the power cuts in Ontario. Is Agent Orange still being used today? Agent Orange was banned in Canada and the United States in 1985. So no, it is not used here anymore. Okay, so in 2006, decades after it was sprayed, the Canadian federal government did an investigation on the use of Agent Orange in Gagetown. What did this investigation find? The investigation concluded that chemicals were not at levels that would harm the health of most people who lived and worked around the base. It found that only those directly exposed were at greater risk of developing health

outcomes. Their investigation did find dioxins in the soil, but they said the levels pose no risk to human health. Water sampling didn't exceed government safety guidelines, they said. And the tissue tests of fish and freshwater clams didn't reveal high doses, didn't reveal lethal doses of dioxins. OK, so they said only people directly exposed. So this would have been people like actually handling the Agent Orange that would only see the health effects then? People handling it, people training on the ground. Some soldiers were, you know, using the grounds that were freshly sprayed to train on. And those people are presumably the ones who would have been at greater risk of developing adverse health outcomes. Now, of course, we're talking about this now because last year, the state of Maine established its own commission to look at if U.S. military veterans were exposed to Agent Orange while training at CFB Gagetown. This is so many decades after, Lindsay. Do we know why the Maine commission happened? What was the reason behind that one?

Agent Orange has been a big topic in Maine for years. And members of the National Guard do not have the same access to benefits as veterans in the U.S. And so those members have been petitioning for health benefits because a lot of them have been suffering from the same diseases that are linked to Agent Orange. And so it's been something people have talked about for decades there. And finally, after a series of bills, the commission went ahead to look into the impacts of exposure to chemicals at Gagetown on U.S. service people who trained there. And that final report was released last month. What did they find? They made several recommendations. The first one was to petition the U.S. government to provide access to medical benefits to members of the National Guard who trained at Gagetown and who have been diagnosed with an illness associated with exposure to herbicides.

And the second one is what, of course, interested me as a Canadian, as the Atlantic reporter. They said in the final report that the commission finds that the data and analysis within the Canadian government's fact-finding investigation is incorrect, biased, and based upon, in some cases, incomplete data and poor study design, at times exacerbated by the rapid period in which these reports were required to be conducted and issued. And I found that quite alarming, you know, to hear that perspective on something that has been relied upon to provide benefits and compensation to Canadian veterans. And, and also this Canadian fact finding report has been relied on by the US government as well. And the findings of the Canadian government's fact finding investigation were relied on to provide benefits to US veterans who trained there. So there's a lot of potential repercussions

from what I would describe as an early finding of this commission. So this commission out of Maine is saying the previous Canadian investigation didn't look at the full facts there. So, you know, the conclusions that they came to that, you know, most people should be fine. Maybe that needs to be questioned then. Well, it certainly raised questions for many of the veterans who have been following this commission in Maine and people who have been suggesting for years that this study played down the harmful impacts of the spraying of herbicides at Gagetown. If we're talking about inaccuracies or kind of biased data, is there something specific that the Maine Commission looked at that we can talk about? Well, the one thing that stood out to me in the testimony was from Canadian biomedical engineer Meg Sears. She's chair of the advocacy group Prevent Cancer Now, and she testified.

We can see evidence of the manipulation of data of inappropriate scientific methods in the final and only study done by Canada that actually looked at levels of contamination on site. She mentioned a number of things, but the one thing that really stood out was the fish study. She says the data was manipulated and that her own analysis of the same data revealed that fish downstream of the base had two to four times the reported dioxin levels. And she also took issue with the fact that the skin of the fish had been removed for part of the test. And that is where toxins accumulate. That seems like a pretty important point. Yeah. She believes it's an important point. Yes. And the commission agreed with her.

Hmm. Do we know how, like, has anyone from the Canadian investigation, the Canadian government responded to this, to basically the main investigation saying that this study wasn't done properly? Well, I did send the report to the Canadian government and asked for their response to it. person Magli Dusing said the 2006 investigation ordered by her department along with Veterans Affairs Canada and Health Canada was intense and fulsome. She added that an additional inquiry is not planned at this time. One of the other criticisms that was pointed out about the Canadian government was their failure to produce their studies online and to provide the public with the data. And so Dr. Sears had obtained the data on her own and did her analysis. So the Canadian government, when shown this report, also told me that they're working now

to provide this data and analysis to the Maine Commission. We'll be back in a minute. So, Lindsay, a big part of this is about the people, right, at Gagedown who were or may have been exposed to Agent Orange. And I know you've spoken with a number of people here during your reporting. A number of people have since gotten sick. What did they tell you about what they're going through? Well, I spoke with Jan McComb, who was a commission member in Maine,

and she was appointed to the panel as a family member of a Canadian veteran exposed to Agent Orange in Gagetown. And the story about her husband, Jay Lumiere, is very sad, and it touched a lot of people at this commission. We need to look at our own country and what's been going on with some honesty. If there's something to hide, why not? Her husband applied for the $20,000 excretia payment, which the Canadian government offered. Excretia is basically just a payment without legal ramifications or things.

Exactly. So it was a payment to acknowledge the potential exposure, but not to admit any legal wrongdoing. He was working at the base at the time Agent Orange was sprayed. Jay had a form of heart disease that is linked to Agent Orange exposure. So her husband heard about this payment at a time when they were living in England. And he went through eight different appeals with Veterans Affairs Canada and was told that he'd missed the cutoff date. And then over the course of eight years, the couple moved back to Canada. He was denied. And throughout that time, he had lung cancer, it metastasized, it spread to other parts of his body. And he died on the same day that Jan received

a letter in the mail advising him of the amount of compensation he would receive. Wow. I know you spoke to someone called Gary Good as well. Can you tell me about him, Lindsay? Yeah. So Gary is the chair of Brats in the Battlefield, and it's a Canadian veterans advocacy group that is very much focused on getting justice for survivors who've been exposed to Agent Orange. And Gary is a cancer survivor. He lost one of his lungs. He received the exgracia payment, but he believes that veterans at CFB Gagetown and their families were exposed to many more harmful chemicals there than the Canadian government has ever acknowledged. And so he's been pushing for public inquiry for many years. He doesn't believe that

the fact-finding investigation was rigorous enough. He believes a lot of things were swept under the rug in that study. And he's hoping that change is going to come in Canada as a result of what's happening in Maine. We mentioned compensation a little bit there. Who exactly qualifies for compensation from the government? The excretia payment was provided to about 5,000 veterans and between 2008 and 2012. From my understanding, from talking to veterans, they're no longer eligible for that excretia payment anymore. Okay. And that was a payment of $20,000, I believe, for each person? Yes, $20,000. Okay. So this is specifically for veterans then. But when we're talking about other

people who are living at the base, you know, people around that area, were they ever eligible for compensation? I mean, no. There were, you know, the Canadian government did provide compensation to some people when the wind caught herbicides, you know, in 64, for instance, and crops were damaged, crops were ruined, people were provided with money at the time. There's been some instances of that, but that is the extent of it. This raises an interesting point, though, Lindsay, because we've been talking about Agent Orange in the 60s, but there were other compounds, pesticides near CFB Gagetown. Things were tested there as well over the decades. What do we know about that? So the Canadian military also had its own defoliant spraying program, which took place from 1956 to 2004 at Gagetown. And according to their own studies, the military applied 24 different herbicides, which are made up of 14 ingredients. And many of them have the known manufacturing impurities of dioxin and hexachlorobenzene. So there were other toxic chemicals that were also sprayed at Gagetown. And, you know, this is also the concern of Gary Good,

who, you know, believes the focus shouldn't just be on Agent Orange, but on the totality of the herbicide spraying program. So Lindsay, now that this U.S. inquiry has come out saying the Canadian study was incorrect, was biased, what happens now? Could the Canadian government maybe reopen things? My personal opinion is it's going to take a lot of political will to do anything at this late of a stage. It's been many years since the federal government's fact-finding investigation. What's next is the commission is going to continue its work in Maine. What they find when they reanalyze or perhaps launch their own study is going to be informative for Canadians and veterans advocates. I think that people will be watching that very carefully. And the advocates that you've spoken to,

that you've heard from, what are they looking for here? The advocates would like to see an inquiry because they believe that the Canadian fact-finding investigation, as the main commission has found, is biased and it is not accurate. And they would like something that they consider to be more independent done, looking into the impacts of herbicide spraying at CFB Gagetown. But it seems like if that's going to happen, it's still a bit of a question mark then. It's probably a long shot. I mean, people have been calling for a public inquiry about this for many years leading up to this fact-finding investigation.

And that was when there was a lot of political pressure. And here we are now, all these years later, so many of these veterans have passed away and more and more of them are dying off. So, you know, it may peter out. Just lastly here then, Lindsay, so after Agent Orange in the 60s, other pesticides as well at CFP Gagetown, this base is still functioning, right? I guess, do we know really how safe Gagetown is now? Well, Dr. Sears has said in her testimony that she believes the base is still highly contaminated with dioxins. These are 100-year chemicals. They stay in the land, they stay in the soil, in the water. Lindsay, thank you so much for your work and for being here today.

Thank you. That's it for today. I'm Mainika Raman-Wilms. Nagin Nia produced this episode. Our intern is Manjot Singh. Our producers are Madeline White, Cheryl Sutherland, and Rachel Levy-McLaughlin. David Crosby edits the show. Adrienne Chung is our senior producer, and Angela Pachenza is our executive editor. Thanks so much for listening, and I'll talk to you next week.