OTTAWA — A recently retired Canadian soldier and national veterans’ advocate has quit the Conservative party over what he says is the federal government’s lack of respect and “spectre of indifference” towards veterans.

Retired Sgt. Major Barry Westholm, director of Armed Forces Engagement for Canadian Veterans Advocacy and a vocal advocate for ill and injured soldiers, also returned his Reform Party membership card signed in 1996 by former party leader Preston Manning to his Member of Parliament, Conservative Cheryl Gallant, along with a letter bitterly criticizing both the MP and her government.

Heading into a week when veterans groups are planning to exert more pressure on the government, the public departure of a veterans’ advocate and core party supporter might prove to be more than one person’s symbolic political gesture.

While emphasizing that his decision to leave the party is an individual one, Westholm, 50, says he has received messages of support and anger through social media over the public row last week between veterans and Veterans Affairs Minister Julian Fantino and Gallant’s statements in the House of Commons.

“There are so many red flags flapping across the country,” Westholm told the Citizen Sunday, “but the government doesn’t appear to see them.”

In his letter to Gallant and copied to other Conservatives, Westholm says he is severing his ties with the Conservatives with “great regret — regret not for my actions, but regret in that the CPC has strayed so far from the path of reason and respect regarding our veterans. Your Party has achieved great things in many areas, but they are now overshadowed by the spectre of indifference and moral usury toward our veterans.

“All Canadians know,” he adds, “the foundation and ultimate success of this country is built upon our veterans and not any political party and/or policy.”

Westholm, who has met Gallant numerous times and worked at her request with senior citizens in her Renfrew-Nipissing-Pembroke riding, said he was incensed last week when her heard her refer to “self stigma” in mentally injured soldiers — a relatively new concept from senior Canadian military that soldiers with mental injury aren’t getting help they need because they choose not to and not because the help isn’t available.

“Your recent statements regarding injured and ill soldiers having to confront issues that are ‘in their minds’ and supporting the new, and stark, CPC catchphrase ‘self-stigma’ have prompted me to remove my support from the CPC,” says Westholm in his letter. “So you’re aware, many of my former peers in the Canadian Armed Forces refer to the sidewalk leading to the Warrior Support Centre (where mental injuries are treated) as ‘the Walk of Shame’ — this is the true stigma that faces our injured veterans.

“When you spoke before Parliament recently to chide our veterans and promote a dysfunctional organization (the JPSU), I was left in shock, disillusioned and most certainly dismayed.”

The JPSU, or Joint Personnel Support Unit is an umbrella unit for a network of support units for ill and injured veterans has been widely criticized — including in a report by the military ombudsman — for being ineffective, understaffed and unable to cope with a growing number of clients.