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“We’re just trying to provide the facts right now,” said Carl Gannon, national president of the PSAC-affiliated Union of Veterans Affairs Employees. “We’re obviously not trying to tell anyone who to vote for right now. But we feel we have a duty to get as much information out there as we can.”

A statement from Veterans Affairs Minister Erin O’Toole’s office said the minister listens “to all veteran voices and the public service unions like PSAC.” It added that some recent changes to veterans’ services and benefits, such as plans to hire 100 front-line case managers “reflect input from all of them.”

Three of the four videos produced by PSAC feature veterans arguing that the office closures have made it more difficult to access support and services. A Veterans Affairs employee echoes that message in the fourth video.

“When the Veterans Affairs office was open, I was able to go have a face-to-face conversation with a client service agent,” veteran and PTSD sufferer Robert Cutbush says of the Thunder Bay office in one video. “Now you want me to open up about my inner trauma that I’m dealing with to someone over the phone?”

In another video, veteran Vincent Rigby credits staff at the office in Sydney, N.S., with saving his life. “I was on the verge of committing suicide,” says Rigby, who served in Bosnia and Croatia before being medically released in 2002 because of PTSD.

The Conservative government closed the Veterans Affairs regional offices in Thunder Bay and Sydney as well as in Charlottetown, Corner Brook, N.L., Windsor, Ont., Brandon, Man., Saskatoon and Kelowna, B.C., last year.