Canadian veterans across the country took their battle over benefit changes to Parliament Hill and in some cases to the constituency offices of their local MPs on Saturday.
The turnouts varied. A reported 150 people held a quiet, peaceful protest in front of Parliament Hill in Ottawa.
About 100 veterans and supporters applauded speaker after speaker at the war memorial in St. John's while roughly 50 attended a rally at the war memorial in Halifax. Only a handful of people turned out to a rally in Toronto.
The veterans have a number of grievances, but high on the list is the New Veterans Charter brought in by the Conservative government in 2006. It replaced life-time pensions to wounded and injured veterans with a combination of lump sum payments and income support.
They say it gives less money to soldiers wounded in Afghanistan compared to what veterans from previous wars have been entitled to.
Protest organizer Mike Blais said the government must scrap the lump-sum payment and return to the previous lifetime pain and suffering pension plan.
"We have veterans that are being very very seriously injured in Afghanistan. The concept of an improvised explosive device, by its very definition, says that people are going to be maimed and wounded...for the rest of their life," Mr. Blais said.
"Our veterans deserve a lifetime - when they're critically disabled -of care and understanding and compassion. The New Veterans Charter does not...provide that...There's no difference between the veterans of today and...those who fought in Dieppe."
Other protesters complained about departmental red tape.
Halifax organizer Gary Zwicker, a 48-year-old veteran of the navy, said the current system tends to be adversarial toward veterans and it needs an overhaul.
"It's a broken system that is falling apart in many different areas. It's run by bureaucrats that don't care and the adjudicators for pension disputes have no experience with veterans," he said.
Veterans Affairs Minister Jean-Pierre Blackburn issued a statement in response to the protests. It says the government has brought in changes that are "targeting our most severely injured and vulnerable veterans and their families."
He said the most severely injured veterans will receive up to $58,000 each year, and added that the government has recently allowed veterans suffering from ALS to be eligible for benefits.
Both the Liberals and Bloc Quebecois grilled Mr. Blackburn on Tuesday over leaked documents obtained by The Canadian Press, which show Ottawa set out in 2006 to save up to $40 million a year through an overhaul of veterans' benefits.
The charter, which replaced a series of benefits dating back to the Second World War, was introduced by Paul Martin's Liberal government in the spring of 2005 and passed with all-party support. It was enacted by the Conservative government the following April.