Sister Sage's Musings

The story of Sean Bruyea is becoming a train-wreck for the Harper government. Mr. Buryea, you might remember, is the activist-veteran who gained the — how shall we say? — the attention of the Government to the point where his private and confidential medical records were circulated, according to news reports last month, among 614 Veterans Affairs bureaucrats, 247 political staffers of various political persuasions, Liberal and Conservative alike, and three senior civil servants. Somehow — damn those slippery treacherous bureaucrats! — these records ended up in the briefing book of then Veterans Affair Minister Greg Thompson.

Mr. Bruyea was understandably annoyed and upset his private and confidential medical records were being used for political purposes by a government of which he was a tenacious critic. He complained to the Federal Privacy Commissioner, Jennifer Stoddart, who released her report on the affair yesterday.  She was not kind.

The veteran’s sensitive medical and personal information was shared [said the news release] – seemingly with no controls – among departmental officials who had no legitimate need to see it.  This personal information subsequently made its way into a ministerial briefing note about the veteran’s advocacy activities.  This was entirely inappropriate.

The investigation confirmed that the Department contravened the Privacy Act in the way it handled this veteran’s personal information.  The law requires that personal information be used only for the purposes for which it was collected or for other consistent purposes and that it be shared only on a need-to-know basis.

The investigation confirmed that two ministerial briefing notes about the complainant contained personal information that went far beyond what was necessary for the stated purpose of the briefings.  This included sensitive medical information as well as details about how the complainant interacted with the Department as a client and an advocate for veterans.

One of the notes, prepared in March 2006, was to brief the Minister on the complainant’s participation in a Parliament Hill press conference where he was critical of the Department’s handling of veterans’ issues. In addition to describing the complainant’s advocacy activities, the briefing note contained considerable sensitive medical information, including diagnosis, symptoms, prognosis, chronology of interactions with the Department as a client, amounts of financial benefits received, frequency of appointments and recommended treatment plans. [emphasis mine]

The Prime Minister, in response to this embarrassing turn of events, put on his best We-Are-Not-Amused face, and waxed indignant against a bureaucracy clearly out of control. All will be punished, he said. Oh, wait. No, he didn’t quite say that:

Prime Minister Stephen Harper placed the blame squarely on the department’s bureaucrats, saying “the fact that some in the bureaucracy have been abusing these files and not following appropriate processes is completely unacceptable.

“We will ensure that rules are followed, that the recommendations of the privacy commission are implemented [and] that if this behaviour continues, there will be strong sanctions against it,” the prime minister told reporters Thursday at an aerospace announcement in Winnipeg.

Which you will all recognize as the classic Harper response: shift the blame to a convenient (and disliked) whipping-boy. And duck. Nevertheless, a few questions unpleasantly linger. If it is “completely unacceptable” (and it is, thank you, Mr. Harper) for 614 bureaucrats in Veterans Affairs to misappropriate and misuse confidential information, isn’t Greg Thompson’s perusal of the same information equally egregious? And what about all those anonymous staffers, including one, the Toronto Star reported last month, in the PMO’s office?

Further, you have to wonder why Veterans Affairs, theoretically a modern federal department, run by all sorts of clever, intelligent people adorned with all manner of degrees and certifications, is unable to secure with any effectiveness confidential information that physicians’ offices, rural hospitals and Far North nursing outposts manage as a matter of routine. Or why, for that matter, was it acceptable practice in Veterans Affairs to pass on confidential medical records to a politician. To put this violation of privacy in some context, a physician or nurse would be disciplined by their respective professional colleges for doing as much, and might well lose their licences: failing to maintain confidentiality is a gross breach of ethics.

More disturbingly, this affair says much about the security of information that Canadians have in relation to the federal government. We all donate — willingly or no — all sorts of confidential information to the feds, and not just confidential medical records. We are reassured, or should be, by that little notice on the bottom of forms: “Protected When Completed.” But think of the information on your tax returns. Passport applications. Pensions. Employment history. Customs declarations. Maybe the fetishists who want to abolish the long-form census have a point. God help you if you incur the wrath of a Cabinet minister, or even criticize your government: your confidential records will be used as a weapon against you. In the Electronic Age, it’s a question of some urgency.

Public inquiry, anyone?

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