REGINA - Jocelyn Ranger says her father, Chief Warrant Officer Robert Girouard, always wanted her to go to college but money was tight after he was killed in Afghanistan in 2006.
Ranger, 24, says college would have been nearly impossible without the help of a scholarship that is now being criticized.
"It would have been a tremendous financial burden for really any of us kids, anybody in my family to go to school," says Ranger, who is studying business at Algonquin College.
"I would have tried. Would I have been paying off debt for the next 10 years? Probably. I definitely wanted a post-secondary education and it's something that my dad wanted for us as well and I really wanted to do that."
In September 2009, Ranger got what she describes as "an incredible gift." She received the Project Hero scholarship. The program, created by retired general Rick Hillier, offers free tuition to the children of Canadian soldiers killed while serving in an active mission.
But the scholarship has been criticized by 16 University of Regina professors who say it glorifies military intervention in Afghanistan.
They sent a letter last week to the university's president saying the school should withdraw from the program. The letter says "instead of privileging the children of deceased Canadian soldiers," governments should provide funding for universal access to post-secondary education.
Garson Hunter, an associate professor with the Faculty of Social Work, said Monday that he stands by the letter despite a public outcry. He's received some angry emails since the letter became public.
"Which is understandable, you know, it's a very emotional issue and people are very passionate about it. So yes, of course I've gotten a lot of backlash about it," says Hunter.
Hunter says many people don't know that a federal program called the Children of Deceased Veterans Education Assistance Act already provides tuition, education costs and a living allowance for children of dead soldiers. That program was set up in 1953, discontinued in 1995 but reinstated in 2003. About 95 students are currently being supported, according to Veterans Affairs.
Hunter says the Project Hero founders are "sort of usurping a program that already exists."
"They're removing it from the federal government's Veterans Affairs. They're sort of claiming it as their idea and then they're asking the universities to take it out of their budgets to fund it rather than have it funded through the normal channels," says Hunter.
Hunter says he's "all in favour" of the Veterans Affairs program. He says maybe in hindsight, the professors should have included information about the federal program in their letter. But Hunter says he's still concerned about Hillier's involvement with the scholarship given his role in the Afghan mission.
"These are all the details that led us to say that Project Hero is really an attempt to glorify the Afghanistan mission," says Hunter.
Ranger says she knows there have been a lot of arguments made about the Afghanistan war and the Canadian military in general. She says she's not offended that the professors spoke out because they have that right, but she argues the scholarship is not about glorifying the war.
"One of the eligibility requirements is that you have had a parent killed on active military duty. So that could be a training exercise, that could be Afghanistan, that could be in Haiti, for example, when Canadians were down there for the Haitian relief effort," she argues.
"They say it glorifies war but would they have had the same resistance if it was a child whose parent was killed on a UN peacekeeping mission?"
There have been 141 Canadian casualties in Afghanistan, including Ranger's father.
Ranger is now married to Cpl. Eric Ranger who is based at CFB Petawawa and will deploy to Afghanistan in mid-April. The couple has a 21-month-old son, Chase. Ranger says she tries not to think about what might happen to her husband.
"Our family isn't naive any more. We always thought my father was Superman, that nothing would ever happen to him," says Ranger.
"If something happened to my husband and I tried to live off his income alone, what I'd be entitled to, my child and I wouldn't survive. The only thing that saves the worry a little bit is that because there are initiatives like this one ... it takes a little bit of the burden off me."
