Soldier's family receives cheque for one cent years after his suicide

[Brannigans Law]

http://www.ctvnews.ca/canada/soldier...cide-1.1713967



Christina Commisso
Published Tuesday, March 4, 2014 5:52PM EST
Last Updated Tuesday, March 4, 2014 7:40PM EST
Defence Minister Rob Nicholson is apologizing to the family of Canadian soldier who recently received a cheque for one cent from the Canadian government, three years after the 22-year-old died of suicide.
Cpl. Justin Stark died of suicide inside Hamilton's John W. Foote VC Armouries in October 2011 months after completing a seven-month tour of Afghanistan.
Stark’s family received a cheque from the federal government – labelled as “release pay” – just days ago.
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PHOTOS
Justin Stark
Cpl. Justin Stark is pictured in this undated photo.
Nicholson called the cheque "absolutely ridiculous" and blamed it on an "insensitive bureaucratic screw up."
Speaking during daily question period in the House of Commons Tuesday, Hamilton East-Stoney Creek MP Wayne Marston said Stark's mother sat through "endless tribunals while the military decided whether or not his death was work-related."
He added: "After all his mothe


Read more: http://www.ctvnews.ca/canada/soldier...#ixzz2v3Nlf4l9

[Zulu29]

Doesn't anyone scrutinize these cheques before they head out? Unreal. What a slap in the face.

[Daradon]

Originally Posted by Zulu29

Doesn't anyone scrutinize these cheques before they head out? Unreal. What a slap in the face.

Probably not. And even if the cheque was noticed it would be unlikely they'd have the whole story about what happened to him without going through some files.

Still, brutal story.

[photon]

Just means a computer system had one left over after doing some calculations that included rounding, like if you normally would be owed $x and then some other things happened and there was other things in the system offset that by $x but the way the calculations rounded the totals ended up not offsetting when they were intended to. Super easy to do when calculating with floating point numbers in computers, programmers have to take measures to do proper cash calculations and not get this kind of thing.

Later the automatic cheque run goes ahead and the $0.01 cheque gets cut. No one goes through a cheque run one by one, that's the whole point of having an accounting system.

Calling it insensitive is a little silly since being insensitive implies some intent, when this looks just like a bug in the accounting system.

[Brannigans Law]

Originally Posted by photon

Just means a computer system had one left over after doing some calculations that included rounding, like if you normally would be owed $x and then some other things happened and there was other things in the system offset that by $x but the way the calculations rounded the totals ended up not offsetting when they were intended to. Super easy to do when calculating with floating point numbers in computers, programmers have to take measures to do proper cash calculations and not get this kind of thing.

Later the automatic cheque run goes ahead and the $0.01 cheque gets cut. No one goes through a cheque run one by one, that's the whole point of having an accounting system.

Calling it insensitive is a little silly since being insensitive implies some intent, when this looks just like a bug in the accounting system.

What? You're saying this wasn't done on purpose?

It is insensitive. 1 penny cheques shouldn't be going out to soldiers families, a check or balance clearly is missing.

[photon]

Originally Posted by Brannigans Law

It is insensitive. 1 penny cheques shouldn't be going out to soldiers families, a check or balance clearly is missing.

Well yes, I did call it a bug in the software, that would be a missing check or balance.

If it was a $0.01 cheque going out to a solder that hadn't passed it would have been funny and laughed off. I've got a cheque for a few cents from a utility before. Rounding errors happen, software has bugs sometimes, it happens. It's not insensitive because it's not reasonable to expect accounting software to take the personal lives of the people it's sending cheques to into account. An it's not reasonable to expect accounting software to have no bugs.

Or should that be programmed into the system? Every cheque below.. what, $1 has to be manually vetted to make sure there's no possible negative angle? If the cheque was $10 would that have been less "insensitive"?

Or I guess we could just raise taxes and revert back to manual accounting, but that still wouldn't have helped anything, the person manually writing the cheque for $0.01 wouldn't have known the family situation either.

What precisely should be changed in the whole accounting process to prevent this?

[Devils'Advocate]

*ponders if he's going to be asked to program an edit to check if the cheque recipient committed suicide into our run*

"Is there nobody that checks these things?" Of course not. I'm surprised we have enough people to see that the cheques go out at all. The Canadian public wants to see the civil service cut to the bone *AND* have the manpower to go through each cheque run to scrutinize each cheque going out?

[Resolute 14]

Originally Posted by photon

What precisely should be changed in the whole accounting process to prevent this?

I agree with you overall. The people who are flipping out angry at this are doing so only because it is easier to play at being angry rather than consider why it happened.

As to why it happened, the CRA doesn't cut a tax refund cheque on a value below $10. It's rather silly that it is different with other benefits cheques. But, as you say, that is merely a bug in the process. Nicholson, of course, had to apologize due to the optics of it, but other than that, meh.

[undercoverbrother]

Originally Posted by Brannigans Law

What? You're saying this wasn't done on purpose?

It is insensitive. 1 penny cheques shouldn't be going out to soldiers families, a check or balance clearly is missing.

mistakes, they happen......

[Calgary14]

Wow. I thought the gov never sent out cheques lower than $2. That must be for personal tax refunds only

[Calgary14]

Originally Posted by Resolute 14

I agree with you overall. The people who are flipping out angry at this are doing so only because it is easier to play at being angry rather than consider why it happened.

As to why it happened, the CRA doesn't cut a tax refund cheque on a value below $10. It's rather silly that it is different with other benefits cheques. But, as you say, that is merely a bug in the process. Nicholson, of course, had to apologize due to the optics of it, but other than that, meh.

The cutoff for tax refunds is $2. I have a coworker who does his returns before Feb 28 and if he has amounts owing he will make an RRSP contribution big enough to turn his amount owing into a $2 refund cheque

[CaptainCrunch]

Was it insensitive or mean spirited? I doubt it, the people that are in charge of issuing the checks probably don't know anything about the situation, the computer does and some government guy 10 levels up.

Is it a stupid policy to send out a penny check, yeah big time.

[flamesfever]

Originally Posted by photon

If it was a $0.01 cheque going out to a solder that hadn't passed it would have been funny and laughed off.

My uncle got a cheque for one cent (his last one) for serving as a pilot in WWII. He used to carry it in his wallet to show people.

[Swift]

Originally Posted by photon

What precisely should be changed in the whole accounting process to prevent this?

The government needs to hire Richard Pryor's character from Superman III. He would've made sure all these 0.01s went somewhere.