2,750 contaminated sites: veterans, families call for better access to make claims for exposure related illness, CBC reports

A claim pursued during illness

Hakan Haytaoglu served as a Canadian Armed Forces pilot for 35 years, including on secret missions. After he was diagnosed with an aggressive cancer, his medical claim to Veterans Affairs Canada was denied.

His wife, Maura-Jo Haytaoglu, spent months seeking evidence to connect his illness to his work. Haytaoglu died in July 2025, a few weeks before his case was to be heard by the Veterans Review and Appeal Board in August.

“It was the hardest day of my entire life,” Maura-Jo Haytaoglu said, describing the appeal date and her husband’s death. His claim was ultimately successful, and she said the information is now helping surviving service members who worked with him on a secret mission about 30 years ago.

Calls for clearer records

A non-profit that helps veterans with cancer build medical claims says records about historical exposure can be missing or difficult to locate. Its documented cases include veterans who could not find the evidence needed in their military service records.

The group says veterans are left filing access to information requests and searching government records across multiple databases to establish the risks they faced while serving. A House of Commons national defence committee report released in October recommends making evidence more accessible to support medical claims. It states that Canada had 2,750 contaminated Department of National Defence and Canadian Armed Forces sites as of June 2026.

Zimmerman’s experience

Erin Zimmerman, a 48-year-old mother of four, has a rare form of early-onset Parkinson’s disease. She worked at CFB Moose Jaw in areas now part of an active contamination site, including during one of her pregnancies.

Zimmerman said her research experience as a civil servant helped in her search for answers. Some of her testimony to the committee appeared in its final report, and she welcomed its calls for greater transparency. “We’re in a crisis,” Zimmerman said. “But this crisis is an invisible demographic.”

Response from authorities

CBC News contacted Veterans Affairs Canada and the Canadian Armed Forces for comment on calls for better access to information. Neither had responded by publication time.