A Saskatchewan farmer has raised the white flag in a longstanding battle with the Canadian military.
For the better part of 18 months, Darren Gosling of Mossbank has been fighting with military bureaucrats for compensation for financial losses he incurred as a result of a tragic crash of one of the Snowbirds aeronautics team in December 2004.
When the Tudor jet hit the ground after a mid-air collision that killed the pilot, it spewed aviation fuel over a wide area, contaminating 10,725 bushels of wheat and durum that Gosling had stored on the ground.
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federal government proposed several months ago to increase the compensation rate from 80 to 90 per cent and double the maximum payment from $3 million to $6 million
The two sides were unable to agree on a compensation payment, and eventually reached a stalemate after the department of national defence made Gosling what he described as a “take-it-or-take-us-to-court offer” in January 2006.
After numerous unsuccessful attempts to convince the DND to up its offer by a few thousands dollars, Gosling finally decided he’d had enough.
“My loans were coming due, the banks were on my case and I wasn’t in any position to go to court,” he said in an interview last week.
So he accepted the DND’s offer, a payment that he said is about $5,000 short of covering his losses.
“If I had gone to court it would have ended up costing me $10,000, so at the end of the day I had to cut my losses, I guess.”
Gosling declined to say how much he received, citing a confidentiality agreement that was part of the settlement. However, an itemized statement prepared by Gosling and sent to the DND last year claimed a loss of more than $41,000, including the value of the grain, snow removal costs, bin rental, mileage and personal time. At the time, the military was offering slightly less than $39,000.
Meanwhile, Gosling’s father Donald and brother Dwayne are still at odds with the DND over their claims for compensation.
Donald bought about 600 bushels of barley from Darren about a week after the accident, before it was officially declared contaminated by the Canadian Food Inspection Agency.
By the time that happened, some of it had already been fed and mixed into rations, so the CFIA quarantined Donald’s farm, preventing him from selling cattle until July 2005, instead of March as he had planned.
He sent a bill to the DND asking for $8,387, based on local custom feeding rates. The military responded with an offer of $2,000. Dwayne, who found himself in the same situation, asked for $4,000 and has received no other offer.
Donald said he was told there would be no negotiations on his claim until Darren’s case was settled.
“I’m hoping they will settle it now without going to court,” he said, adding he has no idea how the DND came up with its offer of $2,000 and saying he’s prepared to go to court.
Darren said the experience has left him frustrated, angry and bitter.
“I have to pay for something that wasn’t my fault and that really irks me,” he said, adding that while local military officials in Moose Jaw were sympathetic and helpful, that wasn’t true of their counterparts in Ottawa.
“They didn’t care about my situation. They were just looking at it as a number and trying to do it as cheap as possible,” he said.
