Friday, September 12, 2003
More on Hughes from Whig
“Cadets who lose court martial don’t have to pay”
By Jennifer Pritchett
Friday, September 12, 2003 - 07:00
Local News - Jimmy Hughes might have been better off had he been kicked out of Royal Military College for committing a crime.
The Defence Department has billed the former officer cadet $64,000 for his RMC education after college brass released him from the military just 68 days before he was to graduate last May.
Hughes was caught plagiarizing, drinking and committing a variety of other infractions of rules governing cadet conduct.
His public criticism of the military has exposed a puzzling contradiction in the treatment of troublesome cadets at the storied institution, Canada’s only military university.
The Prince Edward Island native is fighting the government because he says it isn’t fair that he has to foot the bill when cadets who have been kicked out for committing more serious offences – including sexual assault and common assault – have not been forced to pay for their RMC education.
Taxpayers pay for the education of officer cadets at the college in Kingston, including paying them an annual salary and covering the cost of their room and board.
Capt. Bernard Dionne, a spokesman for RMC, said the total cost to the taxpayer of a cadet’s military education is not readily available.
Hughes, who admits he was no model cadet, was released after a trouble-plagued career at RMC where he regularly got into hot water. He has never been charged criminally.
He said military officials are using him as a whipping boy, an example to demonstrate what happens to cadets who misbehave.
But if Hughes had committed a criminal offence and had been released from the military as a result of a court martial decision, he probably would not have been ordered to pay the $64,000 bill.
Col. Claude Wauthier of the director general of military careers in Ottawa said he’s never heard of a single case where a cadet who has been released from the military as a result of a court martial has been billed for their education.
“We don’t see those cases for people who are released as a result of court martial so that tells me that if we don’t see the case, then there is no request for payment for education,” he told The Whig-Standard in an interview yesterday.
“There was not a single case that came through here. I know that for a fact because the director general of military careers is the authority for payback so that the case would have to be referred here.”
Wauthier acknowledged that the current practice may seem unfair to some.
“It certainly sends a mixed signal,” he said.
Cadets who are released as a result of a court martial have often committed criminal offences and have been released from the military as punishment for their crime.
Over the past three years, there have been several cadets who have been kicked out after a court martial decision found them guilty of an offence.
Former second lieutenant Darin Short was convicted in April 2002 of two counts of disgraceful behaviour, violations of the National Defence Act, for secretly videotaping a civilian woman having sex with him. He later showed the exploitive homemade pornographic video at parties around CFB Kingston.
At his court martial, a military judge told Short he was unfit to wear the Forces’ uniform and fined him $2,000.
Former officer cadet Jeff Kickham was convicted of assault causing bodily harm in January 2002 after he struck a fellow cadet three times in the face. Drunk and in a jealous rage over a female cadet, Kickham struck the cadet so hard that the victim required several stitches over his left eye.
Kickham was discharged from the Forces and denied his degree just days before he was to graduate.
But the directorate of military careers, the branch of the military that officially bills the cadets for their RMC education, has no record of any cadet who has been released as a result of a court-martial decision having been billed.
It means taxpayers likely never recovered the money they shelled out to pay for the unsuccessful military education of Short and Kickham.
RMC’s commandant, Brig.-Gen. Jean Leclerc, who makes recommendations to Ottawa about which cadets are billed and which ones aren’t, was not available for comment yesterday.
RMC spokesman Dionne issued a statement to the newspaper.
“RMC cadets are given an excellent university education at a significant cost to the taxpayer, in return for which they sign a contract agreeing to serve as an officer in the Canadian Forces for five years,” he said in the statement.
“When RMC releases a cadet from the CF for not living up to their contractual obligations, and further recommends all or some of the costs of the cadet’s subsidized education be recovered, it does so in order to exercise proper stewardship of the taxpayer’s dollar.”