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Critic’s personal medical, financial details included in minister’s report

September 22, 2010

Murray Brewster

OTTAWA—Confidential medical and financial information belonging to an outspoken critic of Veterans Affairs, including part of a psychiatrist’s report, found its way into the briefing notes of a cabinet minister.

Highly personal information about Sean Bruyea was contained in a 13-page briefing note prepared by bureaucrats in 2006 for then minister Greg Thompson, a copy of which was obtained by The Canadian Press.

The note, with two annexes of detailed information, laid out in detail Bruyea’s medical and psychological condition.

The documents, for example, contain a quote from a 2005 letter from Bruyea’s psychiatrist that warned his “mental condition is deteriorating and he is now actively experiencing suicidal ideation,” a condition the doctor suggested was the result of the department’s treatment of him.

The March 20, 2006, briefing also contained references to Bruyea’s chronic fatigue syndrome, tension headaches, as well as other medical complaints.

And it divulged details about his pension and what Veterans Affairs spends on his treatment, including number of doctor appointments he had during the previous year.

The note passed through the hands of at least three senior bureaucrats.

Bruyea uncovered the documents as part of a 14,000-page Privacy Act request about himself. He asked for the information in 2007 to discover why certain medical coverage by the department was denied to him.

Among other things, he found his file had been accessed by hundreds of federal bureaucrats, including policy-makers.

Bruyea, who provided a copy of the material to The Canadian Press and gave the news agency permission to cite the contents, said the more he pored over the documents, the more alarmed he became.

“There is a culture in that department that thinks that they have the monopoly on deciding what veterans — disabled or not — and their families deserve, and they believe they do not have to take any recommendations, consultation whatsoever from the veterans,” Bruyea said in an interview.

“This arrogance, this paternalism — that they don’t have to listen to veterans in my case — has extended to the point where they believe they can manipulate medical files without the permission of the veterans and send it anywhere within the department to whomever in the department.

“They feel they’re absolutely right in doing so.”

Bruyea has filed a formal complaint with the federal privacy commissioner, whose investigation continues. He has also filed a court challenge, claiming a breach under the Charter of Rights.

His outspoken comments made him a thorn in the side of the former Liberal government beginning in 2005 when bureaucrats were drafting the New Veterans Charter and the file was later inherited by the Conservatives in 2006. Bruyea raised many concerns to Paul Martin’s government about the impact of its plan.

Those concerns, particularly about the replacement of lifetime pensions with a lump-sum payment and qualified monthly stipends, were at the centre of a recent political storm that has dogged the Conservative government.

Retired colonel Michel Drapeau, a lawyer and expert in privacy law, expressed shock on viewing the documents.

Drapeau said it was the worst breach of privacy he’d seen in decades of practising law, calling it “totally, totally illegal” under the federal Privacy Act, which allows for the collection of information for specific purposes.

“The way I read the briefing note, it clearly comes across that this is a way to impugn his reputation and to come across as someone who is less than stable, less than able to speak confidently and accurately about veteran’s issues,” Drapeau said in an interview Tuesday.

He said the private information was originally collected to determine Bruyea’s eligibility under a disability program, “not for political warfare to try to silence a critic.”

A Veterans Affairs spokeswoman said late Tuesday that the minister, Jean-Pierre Blackburn, was aware of the Canadian Press report but “will not be providing a comment this evening.”

Before the appointment of a veteran’s ombudsman in 2007, Bruyea was one of the most recognizable faces on the issue of care for injured soldiers. He also spent 14 years with the Canadian Forces.

Bruyea was a vocal critic of the Conservative government’s New Veteran’s Charter, especially before it was enacted in the spring of 2006.

According to federal documents, it was his determined opposition to the charter that raised the ire of veterans bureaucrats, who wanted nothing to interfere with the newly elected Conservative government’s implementation of the system overhaul.

In a March 13, 2006, exchange of emails, officials talked about plans to brief Thompson on Bruyea’s opposition and about his Operational Stress Injury.

Minutes from a conference call among officials show their intent was to make sure the new charter, which fundamentally overhauled the way veterans received benefits, was implemented on April 1, 2006, on schedule.

“Folks, it’s time to take the gloves off here,” wrote Darragh Morgan, a senior veterans official.

“It (is) not that this person is spreading misinformation for his own purposes(,) it is that this is ... by now creating grave doubts among soldiers who now need to know their government backs them. Snooze ya lose comes to mind. Let’s do something here.”

Bruyea said his opposition to the veterans charter had nothing to do with his battles with the department over his treatment.

On Sunday, two cabinet ministers announced an additional $2 billion to address flaws and shortfalls in the new veterans compensation system. Some of the fixes involve Bruyea’s long-standing complaints.

An analysis by the veteran’s ombudsman’s office last year determined that ordinary soldiers wounded in the line of duty, veterans with families and the most severely disabled of troops are the biggest losers under the new charter.

The privacy documents show 614 people within Veterans Affairs accessed Bruyea’s computer file between 2001 and 2010, records that are kept in a password-protected computer data base. Of those, 156 exchanged varying amounts of personal information, according to a trail of internal emails.

The material appears to have been shared with an additional 243 individuals, including both Liberal and Conservative political staffers, through briefing notes and emails during the 2006 transition between governments.

The document path even went as high as the Prime Minister’s Office when on March 21, 2006, a mid-level staffer called Bruyea and urged to him call off a news conference slated for that day where he publicly urged the Conservatives to hold off enacting the charter.

Outgoing veterans ombudsman Pat Stogran complained bitterly in the summer about federal bureaucrats who run Veterans Affairs, accusing them of being more interested in guarding the public purse than helping wounded soldiers.

Stogran said he was shocked to learn about what had been written about Bruyea. He said the security officer at the department told him around the time of his appointment in 2007 that his own file had been accessed at least 400 times.

Stogran said he thought it was just routine curiosity, but is now wondering.

“I never imagined it would be anything insidious,” said Stogran, whose had his own public spats with both Thompson and bureaucracy before the Conservatives decided not to re-appoint him.

“I know anonymous emails and Facebook entries were made trying to defame my character. I’m wondering now what was going on.”

Privacy breach at Veterans Affairs ‘struck terror in our hearts’
Bill Curry
Ottawa— From Thursday's Globe and Mail
Published Wednesday, Sep. 22, 2010 9:15PM EDT

Sean Bruyea was a rare voice of dissent when he spoke out against a new Veterans Charter at a 2005 Senate hearing.

The retired veteran of the Gulf War warned against the charter’s move to a one-time lump-sum payment of no more than $250,000 for injured soldiers – the very issue that is now at the heart of concerns being raised widely by veterans.

Within a week of his appearance, the bill became law, the debate ended and an unusual paper trail on Mr. Bruyea began.

Mr. Bruyea is now at the centre of explosive revelations that Veterans Affairs bureaucrats widely shared information from his personal medical files for briefings related to his advocacy work on veteran policies.

Records unearthed by Mr. Bruyea over several years and made public this week reveal bureaucrats highlighted the intimate details of his mental-health issues in several e-mails and briefings, including to former Conservative veterans affairs minister Greg Thompson and former Liberal veterans affairs minister Albina Guarnieri.

Current Veterans Affairs Minister Jean-Pierre Blackburn criticized the handling of Mr. Bruyea’s medical files and vowed to implement recommendations from an upcoming report into the matter by Canada’s Privacy Commissioner.

“I want to say to our veterans: This is unacceptable,” he said. “I used to be the minister of national revenue, for example. An employee cannot go [into] a file on everyone.”

Mr. Bruyea’s complaints should not come as a surprise to the Harper government, however. The documents he has obtained show a September, 2006, meeting took place at the Prime Minister’s Office – involving senior political aides Keith Beardsley and Danielle Shaw – to discuss the “alleged harassment” of Mr. Bruyea with Veterans Affairs officials.

Notes of the meeting, which was triggered by Mr. Bruyea’s letters to the PMO, reveal there was a general discussion about the effects of post-traumatic stress disorder and a specific discussion of Mr. Bruyea’s massage-therapy claims.

Mr. Bruyea alleges top bureaucrats deliberately exaggerated his post-traumatic stress condition in an attempt to discredit his public criticism of the Veterans Charter.

“Manipulation of psychiatric files has been typically associated with Stalinist regimes,” he said in an interview at his suburban home in Ottawa’s south end, where he lives with his wife. Because veterans on disability are financially dependent on Veterans Affairs, he said it can be very scary to challenge the department. He described the reaction to a 2006 phone call from the department urging him not to take his concerns to the minister.

“This struck terror into our hearts, fundamental terror,” he said.

He says his troubles date back to that one week in May, 2005.

On May 9, 2005, then-prime minister Paul Martin was flying back from the Netherlands after attending Victory in Europe celebrations. All three opposition leaders had joined him and were on board – the Conservatives’ Stephen Harper, the Bloc Québécois’ Gilles Duceppe and the NDP’s Jack Layton.

Seizing the rare opportunity to strike a deal, Ms. Guarnieri, then veterans affairs minister, managed to bring all four leaders together at the front of the plane to hammer out a plan that would see the new Charter approved within a week with virtually no debate.

With all parties on side, barely a word of concern was voiced as the legislation zoomed through Parliament.

Even though he would not be affected by the new charter, Mr. Bruyea said he felt compelled to testify.

He points to a 2005 Veterans Affairs report still on the government’s website, which explains the department’s rational for the new policy in plain language. It notes the department’s financial liability to disabled vets had grown from $5.6-billion in 2001 to $7.9-billion in 2004.

“A shift to greater use of lump sum payments combined with customized rehabilitation services would serve, over time, to regain control of an alarming future liability scenario,” states the government report.

Ms. Guarnieri, who will soon retire from politics and recently described the in-flight deal as the highlight of her career, said she remembers meeting Mr. Bruyea but does not recall seeing his personal medical information.

“I personally found that all the officials I dealt with during my tenure were very caring officials,” she said Wednesday. “So I’m finding it hard to reconcile the image that these are uncaring people.”

This is an issue that is quite disturbing. The governments response has been vague and, considering the privacy commissioners comments, lacking conviction. It is vital that justice is served, particularly for those of us who would stand up for our troops and the the veterans of this nation on November 6th.

I will start at the beginning. use these news reports as a reference. Please feel free to participate if I miss any.

Mike

This is not what I went to war for


By Sean Bruyea, Citizen Special September 25, 2010 Comments (9)



This past week, Canadians learned that federal bureaucrats at Veterans Affairs Canada freely offered up extensive amounts of my confidential medical and financial information to federal cabinet ministers without my permission. And at least 850 federal employees, political staffers and politicians exchanged and/or accessed the most intimate details of my personal life.

Why? And what can be done to make sure it never happens to another Canadian?

I am a veteran with disabilities. I, therefore, depend upon Canada for my financial security as well as funding for my extensive medical needs for the rest of my life. I am also an advocate for the rights of injured soldiers and their families.

Internal e-mails show, Veterans Affairs employees sarcastically labelled me as their "favorite client" who is "very vocal in criticisms of our efforts" and "our programs." It is exactly this bureaucratic sense of propriety over what are, in reality, veterans' programs which seems to have fuelled the desire of numerous high-ranking bureaucrats to use my private and confidential information to impugn my credibility.

You see, in May 2005, I was the first of just a handful of veterans who opposed the single most important legislation to affect veterans in almost a century. The new law took away a lifetime monthly disability payment for injuries suffered by disabled soldiers and replaced it with a one-time lump sum. The law passed in the House of Commons in less than a minute without any debate. As a recipient of the lifetime monthly payments, I could not in good conscience stand by while other soldiers suffering the same injuries would receive dramatically less than what they deserve and what I still receive.

As part of my attempts to heal from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and other physical and psychological injuries, I also started to write. As a budding journalist, my first article was a call for a veterans' ombudsman. That article became more important than I imagined. It served as the foundation for the Conservative election platform of 2006, promising to create such an office.

As the recent scandal over not renewing the current ombudsman shows, the bureaucracy did not want anyone to watch over them.

What is also clear is that the 14,000 pages of documents obtained through Privacy Act requests and held by Veterans Affairs show that my volunteer efforts to defend the rights of disabled veterans and their families angered many in the federal department. However, their emotional reaction is not my concern. That these individuals worked together to knowingly circulate my personal documents to virtually every director-level bureaucrat and above, as well as to ministers, political staffers and MPs is my concern. That these documents served as the basis of a briefing to the minister's chief of staff the day before he briefed the prime minister's office is outright disturbing.

This also needs to be the concern of every Canadian, and especially all parliamentarians.

We are all clients of the federal government at some level. Government departments in Ottawa hold vast amounts of our personal information including recipients of the Canada Pension Plan, retirement and disability, First Nations health and welfare, or the millions of immigration records replete with information which, if misused, could not only jeopardize the security and well-being of individuals in Canada but also relatives in their countries of origin. And most every adult and all Canadian business provides Ottawa with detailed tax information including social insurance numbers.

But Veterans Affairs is an odd creature located principally in Charlottetown, P.E.I. It is the only federal department with its headquarters located outside Ottawa. This is also likely part of the reason why 850 federal employees thought that they had every right to widely disseminate and/or access the most sacred knowledge about me.

Is what happened to me an exception? Col. (Ret'd) Michel Drapeau, Canada's leading expert in privacy law, knows that it is not. But my case is the most flagrant and extensive he has seen and the widespread circulation of my information should not and cannot be used "for political warfare to try to silence a critic."

How will the government ensure what happened to me will never happen to not only another veteran but to another journalist or any other Canadian for that matter?

The Privacy Commissioner has been carrying out a year-long investigation into my situation. Her findings are due soon. Supportive findings as well as clear and strong recommendations will undoubtedly help, but over the past five years, Veterans Affairs has easily and successfully resisted literally hundreds of recommendations, most by their own advisory groups. And many federal departments have shown similar arrogance in resisting the recommendations of oversight agencies and even parliamentary committees.

For that reason, Parliament must look into this and opposition parties need to call for a full public inquiry. Parliament is the only institution which has the power to stand up to our federal bureaucracy.

I went to war to defend Canada's sacred values and rights such as freedom of expression. Why is it that the government can use my most sacred information to destroy my credibility, thereby denying me that same freedom for which I and other soldiers have sacrificed so much?

What happened to my private information should have every Canadian asking whether they are next. Only a full public inquiry has the power to reassure all Canadians that they never have to ask this question.

Sean Bruyea is a freelance journalist, advocate for veterans' rights and a retired Air Force Intelligence Officer.
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