Mike Salway joined the Canadian Armed Forces when he was 18 years old. In time, he was sent overseas, including Kosovo during Canada's peacekeeping mission.

"We were the first ones in to cleanup," remembers Salway. "And it wasn't a nice cleanup."

Salway returned home a changed man. He couldn't sleep, couldn't work.

He couldn't bear to even look at pictures of his military service.

Diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder, he's lived on a disability pension ever since. And that led him to his current battle.

"All I know is, I owe a pile of money," he said.

Salway is one of thousands of military veterans who took part in a successful class action lawsuit against the federal government. For decades, Ottawa was clawing back soldiers’ pensions based on the disability payments they received.

The settlement in 2013 included millions of dollars in retro-active payments to veterans like Salway.

"And then, all of a sudden, I'm getting money coming from every direction," says Salway. "I don't even have any paperwork telling me where it's from."

Then earlier this month, he did receive some paperwork from Manulife saying he'd been overpaid.

"I owe 10 thousand plus," he said.

In a statement to CTV News, Manulife writes in part that judging a claim involves the veteran, insurer, government and doctors.

"We assess all group benefits claims carefully and do our very best to both adhere to our obligations as an insurer and make these decisions in a fair and timely manner."

Peter Driscoll, who was one of the lead attorneys in the class action lawsuit, says his firm hears regularly from veterans about overpayments.

"We've looked at this issue very closely," said Driscoll. "And we've tried to come up with a way to obtain legal redress for such an offset, and overpayments. But we've been unable to come up with a legal fix or a legal solution."

Instead, Driscoll feels a legislative fix will be necessary to address the problem.

In the meantime, Salway has been given a choice: pay the money in full or $500 will be deducted from his monthly benefits. But he wants the debt forgiven.

"Because it's not my fault they overpaid me," said Salway. "I didn't even know what I was supposed to be getting in the first place."

Salway says he's already endured much for our country. And if he must, he'll go into survival mode to get through this too.