HALIFAX — Grieving families should not have to battle military bureaucrats for information when a loved one is killed in the line of duty, says the ombudsman for the Canadian Forces.

Making military boards of inquiry less secretive will be a key recommendation in two of Andre Marin's upcoming reports.

"We should look at ways to make the system more open, more transparent, more accountable to family members," Marin said in an interview with The Canadian Press.

Marin is reviewing the military investigation into the death of Master Cpl. Rick Wheeler, a soldier from Nova Scotia who was accidentally run over by an armoured personnel carrier in 1992 during a training exercise in Alberta.

The ombudsman is also looking into how the Canadian Forces responds to members who say they've been exposed to toxic chemicals.

Marin said the two reviews have revealed complaints from family members, who say they have had to fight for information from the boards that investigated the incidents.

In some cases, Marin said, distraught families were forced to file requests under the federal Access to Information Act.

"They're not getting the answers to their questions," he said, noting that military boards of inquiry are "very much a closed-door" process.

"We have to ask ourselves whether it's enough for these (boards) to say, 'You'll get the information we choose to give you. If you want more, put in your five bucks (for an information request).' "

His recommendation is supported by Mary Ann Peace, whose husband died last year of a brain tumour that he claimed was the result of exposure to toxins while serving as a peacekeeper.

"We're not in the Dark Ages," said Peace, who has struggled to pry information out of the inquiry into her husband's death.

"It's time to be open with the military people who are serving this country."

A spokesman for the Defence Department's judge advocate's office in Ottawa declined to comment on Marin's suggestions.

But Lt.-Col. Vrvihar Joshi said the National Defence Act spells out the limits on boards of inquiry and any changes would require changes to the law.

That's not good enough for Peace, who lives in Fredericton.

"It's time they get with the program," she said.

Her husband, warrant officer Michael Peace, had claimed that he and his squad were exposed to toxic dust while serving in Visoko, Bosnia in the mid-1990s.

The inquiry into his death determined that the soldier's illness had nothing to do with his service in Bosnia.

The finding contradicted a ruling last year by the federal Veterans Affairs Department, which awarded the soldier's widow a full survivor's pension, saying his condition could have been caused by his duty overseas.

Mary Ann Peace has filed a number of access requests to find out how the inquiry arrived at its decision, what data it used and the scope of the investigation.

"Why should I have to fight for the information when my husband was the one who started the inquiry?" Peace asked.

She's received hundreds of documents, but many were censored.