Sean Bruyea testifies on Veterans Charter (Second Appearance)

Sean Bruyea

Sean Bruyea is a decorated veteran of the 1990 Gulf War as well as a journalist and advocate for the rights of disabled veterans and their families. In his second appearance before the committee he rebuts the testimony given by Veterans Affairs officials at the previous meeting.

Bruyea also provides more details regarding the reprisals taken against him by VAC officials – as well as the VAC Ombudsman – as they sought to silence and discredit him.

Perhaps the most revealing illustration of their mindset is what the Ombudsman wrote to his colleagues about Bruyea: "In battle, it’s better to hold off on a counter-attack as long as the enemy is busy destroying himself." (emphasis added)

Bruyea's wife Carolina also testifies and uses a business model analogy to explain why Veteran's Affairs' failings must be addressed by this committee.

This is the second of two appearances by the Bruyeas before the committee in April / May 2010.

Standing Committee on Veterans Affairs – May 11, 2010

Mr. Sean Bruyea (Retired Captain (Air Force), Advocate and Journalist, As an Individual):

Good Morning Chair, Ladies and Gentlemen,
Thank you for inviting me back to testify. More importantly, thank you for continuing your extensive study into the New Veterans Charter and the well-being of disabled CF members, veterans and the families of all. I am grateful to the Committee members for ensuring that my initial report and 40 accompanying recommendations on the New Veterans Charter and Veterans Affairs in general has been officially tabled and entered into Parliamentary Records. I have also provided an additional 15 recommendations in a separate document for tabling.  

Today in the audience I would like to acknowledge David Hutton, Executive Director of FAIR Whistleblower as well as Ian Bron and Alan Cutler. All are brave advocates for effective Whistleblower protection from public service reprisals.  

For the record, it is important that the Committee understand that I am not a participant in the programs of the New Veterans Charter. I am here advocating on behalf of those CF members, veterans and their families, who do not have the health to defend themselves.  

Reading through the testimonies of your many esteemed witnesses, I am encouraged by the passion, enthusiasm and expertise they all bring to the table. I am also pleased to see the impressive unanimity of almost all witnesses calling for not just tweaking of the New Veterans Charter but a complete rethinking of how we treat disabled soldiers and veterans and the families who stand by them through thick and thin. Alone in resisting fundamental let alone any substantial change are the non-veteran employees of Veterans Affairs Canada who are the architects of the New Veterans Charter.  

It is a sad coincidence that exactly five years ago today on May 11, 2005, the one and only Parliamentary committee hearing was held on the New Veterans Charter before it was rushed to royal assent two days later. Harold Leduc, Louise Richard and I were the only voices permitted to offer insight into the design flaws of the Charter.

However, now is the time to answer some important questions:  

1. Why have the individuals and organizations who have thus far testified not been integrated into VAC’s policy making process rather than at best, standing on the sidelines so that VAC can mostly reject or ignore the input of such expertise? 
2. Why are the ultimate experts of disabilities, that is, passionate and skilled disabled veterans and family members not making the decisions and designing policy for their peers? 
3. As occurred five years ago, why are all of these stakeholders excluded from directly participating in the redesign and rewriting of the New Veterans Charter as is unanimously called for outside of VAC?

Perhaps it is because VAC remains isolated both geographically and professionally from the disabled veterans it serves and the frontline employees who serve veterans. As most witnesses have pointed out, including the Veterans Ombudsman, Veterans Affairs requires a significant and fundamental cultural shift. How will that shift occur if VAC is allowed to continue with the status quo of working isolated in Charlottetown while employing few if any veterans? I am pleased to hear the Veterans Ombudsman’s office staff consists of 30% veterans. This is exactly the minimum proportion of veterans I recommend for employment in VAC and it is the proportion of veterans working in the United States Department of Veterans Affairs.  

The Veterans Ombudsman testified that “quotas of any sort are counterproductive”. Interesting, since quotas have ensured that visible minorities, aboriginals, females and the disabled are reflected in all levels of government. Without quotas, how would the opportunity for employing underrepresented populations come to be in a timely manner?  

Besides, I am recommending quotas not merely to adhere to principles of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms which likely justifies such quotas nor am I recommending quotas as a favour to veterans, although they deserve it. I am recommending quotas as part of a comprehensive and sound business model. As the ombudsman testified, veterans offer credibility. More importantly, the raison d’etre of Veterans Affairs Canada is veterans and their families. Therefore, the department must designate a significant number of positions as veteran, disabled veteran and family members of disabled veterans only, precisely to provide the currently lacking expertise in intimately understanding veteran clientele while developing programs veterans need, not programs to suit Veterans Affairs or Treasury Board unrealistic processes.  

Almost all witnesses have also testified about these overwhelming and confusing bureaucratic processes which VAC has implemented for disabled veterans and their families in order to receive the “care, treatment and rehabilitation” mandated by Canadian law. Meanwhile, New Veteran Charter architects attempt to appease Parliament and veterans by telling us that the NVC has all the built in flexibility necessary in order to accommodate change in what they call “a living Charter”. That no change has yet to occur is painfully obvious. However, there are two problems with the platitude of inherent flexibility:  

First, if the legislation has flexibility to offer services and benefits where not expressly defined by legislation, what happens when budget constraints are implemented and the spotlight is no longer on veterans and military service? Flexibility in legislation also allows the department to deny services and benefits if not expressly defined. Verbal guarantees to the contrary from VAC officials do not sit at all well with a veteran dependent upon VAC for life and should hold little water with this or any Parliament.

Second: The flexibility platitude is mostly untrue when it comes to implementing an overwhelming number of recommendations made thus far. Legislation will have to be written to accommodate such changes. For example, a number of Senators, most advocates including the Legion, as well as both the Special Needs Advisory Group and the New Veterans Charter Advisory Group have called for the earnings loss benefit to be moved from 75% up to 100% of salary and to have that 100% keep pace with real CF salary increases and typical career rank advancements. The NVC legislation as currently written does not allow any of this.

Furthermore, appeal mechanisms in the New Veterans Charter programs are hardwired into the legislation and designed to be severely limited. Under the Pension Act, all programs can be appealed at the Departmental level and failing that, through at least two levels of the Veterans Review and Appeal Board and then through Federal Court. Under the New Veterans Charter, only the lumpsum can be reviewed in this manner. All other programs can only be appealed through the department. This means the system of precedents set up through more than a century of common law is irrelevant to most of the New Veterans Charter programs.  

The Department has consistently told Canadians that the programs of the New Veterans Charter cannot be viewed in isolation and that the NVC is a suite of wellness programs. That this suite of wellness programs is merely a repackaging or a duplication of already existing programs is just now being understood, although we presented this conclusion and supporting documentation to the Canadian public, Members of Parliament and Veterans Affairs more than five years ago. I have provided the Committee with an updated summary version of that documentation.  

Canada’s most disabled veterans and their families are often completely dependent upon Veteran Affairs for both medical care and financial stability for the rest of their lives. What happens should these veterans or family members determine that the very government which controls so much of their life is not providing them with the necessary services or benefits? What protects disabled veterans from the real or perceived fear that they may be unjustly treated by a Veteran Affairs employee for reporting deficiencies in VAC practices for themselves or in veterans lifelong commitments to watch over their comrades? What is more integral to wellness than the need for security from such real or perceived reprisals?  

As I testified to this committee last month, I was and am the victim of reprisals by Veterans Affairs officials precisely because of my opposition to the New Veterans Charter as well as my support of a veterans’ ombudsman. The New Veterans Charter cannot be looked at in isolation from the process in which it was created. We cannot as a nation or a parliament blindly accept that any means justify the end. The secretive and bullying manner in which the New Veterans Charter was fast tracked prevented due process of Committee review, a review we called for exactly five years ago today and which you are now thankfully carrying out.

Perhaps if Parliament had held public hearings prior to tabling the New Veterans Charter, Veterans Affairs officials such as Darragh Mogan, the chief architect of the NVC, would not have acted with such impunity on March 24 2006 when he told six VAC senior managers including Assistant Deputy Minister Brian Ferguson that it was “time to take the gloves off” when dealing with me and my public analysis of the New Veterans Charter.  

It is not just a little alarming that the plan detailing what Mr. Mogan carried out with his “gloves off” was sent to two Canadian Forces officers and then later blanked out by Access to Information.  It can’t be a coincidence but later that afternoon, Ken Miller circulated a letter to Assistant Deputy Minister Brian Ferguson, Darragh Mogan and others which I wrote to Prime Minister Harper regarding the Charter and which had bold letters written above: “Not for Departmental Viewing.” Thirty-six minutes later, instructions from Assistant Deputy Minister Brian Ferguson that my personal medical files be shared with Parliamentary Secretary Betty Hinton were put into action, just three days after Minister Thompson saw those same files.   

I can only assume that this was done to undermine her confidence in me, because her office doesn’t look like a medical office to me and neither Mr. Mogan nor Mr. Ferguson appear to have M.D. or medical doctor designation following their names.  More curiously, Parliamentary Secretary Betty Hinton’s support of me quickly declined after receiving the skewed medical information provided by the Department, and I don’t think that’s a fair or ethical use of my personal information.  But I may not be alone here; the Privacy Commissioner is investigating the matter.

I wasn’t dreaming when 13,000 pages of Privacy Act information showed me how VAC had used my personal medical files, to slander my reputation with Ministers, Members of Parliament and Senior VAC managers thereby undermining my effectiveness as an advocate for the overhaul of the New Veterans Charter.  Nor was I delusional when those same documents showed how VAC bureaucrats – not medical doctors – had determined that I was “clearly unwell”, in need of a “one-week” or more inpatient psychiatric assessment, simply because I demanded a Parliamentary review of the New Veterans Charter.   

While it is true that I suffer from PTSD and have a therapeutic medical team which strongly opposed the need for this assessment, the mere fact that one disagrees with VAC officials, is not in itself, a diagnosis for such draconian measures or for any other treatment.--- If disagreement with VAC officials were a diagnosis for treatment, many members of this committee would already be racking up rather large therapy bills.

The fact that VAC officials would target an opponent in such a devious way, is precisely why a “Comprehensive Whistleblower Veteran and Family Protection” legislation must be included in any rewrite of the New Veterans Charter to show veterans that they are equal partners in overseeing the programs created in their name and in honour of their sacrifices.  

No matter what else is done; meaningful change at VAC, given that department’s history and culture, will only be successful in the long term if accompanied by a truly independent, impartial and legislated ombudsman’s office with teeth. Many members of this committee have pointed this out.

Such an office would ensure that veterans and families receive the programs they need in a timely and efficient manner. Such a partnership of legislated protection with a powerfully independent oversight body would have provided a perfect vehicle to which I could bring my allegations of reprisals.  

Equally important, a Veterans Ombudsman that reported to Parliament and was not beholden to VAC would avoid the troubling reaction of the current Veterans Ombudsman to VAC’s reprisals against me. A well-respected veteran colleague informed the Veterans Ombudsman personally of the allegations of harassment and my associated distress. He urged Mr. Stogran to have the Ombudsman’s office contact me. The ombudsman did not act upon this distress call of a veteran in dire need. Nor did the Ombudsman consider as potentially serious the reprisals and harassment endured by someone whose efforts had resulted in the creation of his office.  

Stunningly, the Ombudsman, Mr. Pat Stogran, e-mailed his director Louise Wallis, callously withholding help in the hope that I would endure greater harm.  The Ombudsman wrote, “In battle, it’s better to hold off on a counter-attack as long as the enemy is busy destroying himself.” Please, let me repeat that: “In battle, it’s better to hold off on a counter-attack as long as the enemy is busy destroying himself.”

If these are the views of the Ombudsman when faced with a clear distress call of a disabled veteran, what purpose does the position serve, and how are our men and women who once donned a uniform to have confidence in its impartiality? What protection does any disabled veteran and his or her family have against similar reprisals as I have endured?  

I am grateful for the opportunity to raise the Veteran’s Charter and Ombudsman with you because these are issues that are vital to Canada’s Veteran community and central to the mandate of this committee.

A secondary question, but of no less importance to the Veteran community, is VAC’s utter contempt and demeaning derision of those who advocate change.  I have the good fortune of having been able to carefully document VAC’s reprisals against me, but many of my colleagues do not have the health or fortitude to confront betrayal by a department in whom former soldiers must place their absolute trust.  

I hope you might request that either the House Standing Committee on Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics or the Senate Committee on Human Rights initiate a study. Perhaps these committees could look at what systemic flaws or individual failings contributed to Veterans Affairs employees believing they could seek reprisals against and try to silence the voices of those calling for change to the New Veterans Charter merely for exercising the well-earned right to freedom of expression, a right which those same voices have so valiantly defended in uniform.  

My great grandfather was killed in World War 1. My grandfather was killed on the beaches of Sicily in World War 2. My uncle died while serving in the Royal Canadian Navy and my brother is severely and permanently disabled because of his service with the CF. And 143 Canadian Forces members have not died in Afghanistan for the bureaucracy. They have paid the ultimate sacrifice for Canada’s democratic institutions and principles. They have died and been wounded at the order of Parliament, not by the order of public servants.  

The bravery and sacrifice of our men and women in uniform have consistently inspired Canadians for more than a century. The military is inspiring because they believe that their sacrifices mean something, that a vote means more than a different face in Parliament. That vote must necessarily translate to empowering those different faces, each one of you, to be the figurative and real will of Canadians, sacredly entrusted to hold all of government accountable or else the bureaucracy can continue to act with impunity and the principles of Canadian democracy and human rights mean nothing.  

To that end, as Col John McCRae writes, “To you from failing hands we throw the torch, be yours to hold it high” because our dead and wounded have lost so much carrying the torch for you and for Canadians. I and others have stood up to Veterans Affairs to bring reason and transparency to this haphazardly constructed New Veterans Charter.  Today virtually the whole veteran community is calling for those changes, and a growing chorus of Canadians, including perhaps the Privacy Commissioner, are learning firsthand about the tactics of a department whose practices and culture are long overdue for fundamental change.

Sean & Carolina Bruyea

Mrs. Carolina Bruyea (Veteran's Spouse, As an Individual):

Dear Members of Parliament,
Thank you very much for inviting my husband once again as a witness to testify on the New Veterans Charter.

I have been with Sean through his more than 10 years of advocacy work for disabled veterans and their families and I believe the word “witness” clearly describes my perspective on the events that lead to the creation, passing and implementation of the New Veterans Charter.

From my perspective as a wife, an immigrant to Canada and my experience as an Accountant in two countries, I would like to pass on a few observations:

As a family member of a prominent veteran advocate in Canada assisting disabled veterans and their families, neither I nor any of the other family members of disabled veterans I know has ever been “consulted” with by Veterans Affairs. Neither have we been given any education material as to what specific programs Veterans Affairs or the New Veterans Charter

Some people have said that we have to remove the “emotion” from the debate as to what benefits and programs Veterans Affairs provides to Veterans and instead look at a business model. As an experiment let us follow this reasoning:

• Parliament is the factory which produces a product for sale; VAC is a corporation that administers the distribution of the product; and in this case, the New Veterans Charter is that product. The people of Canada are the shareholders of the corporation; you are the Board of Directors representing the shareholders. Veterans and their families are the customers.
• In a business model, when a customer tells the Corporation that the product does not fulfill their needs or it is defective, the corporation cannot dismiss the concerns of the customer, tell the customer he is wrong and force him to accept the product. If the corporation does this, the customer would quickly abandon the corporation and buy another product from a different company. As customers flee the company making and selling the defective product, the stock price will fall and shareholders would become outraged, demanding the Board of Directors to order the company and its employees to change the product so the clients keep buying it.
• The sad truth is that disabled veterans do not have the option of turning somewhere else when VAC does not provide a service or a product that answers their needs. Veterans depend solely on you as representatives of the Canadian people to tell Veterans Affairs to change their product.

Unfortunately, the selling of the New Veterans Charter product seemed to me more characteristic of the hype associated with an intensive marketing campaign like I have only seen in the business world and less the noble and sacred process of open debate and inclusive discussions necessary to create any law, especially one so important to so many who have given up so much for Canada. These are the democratic principles which inspire me and I imagine all Canadians need to know that our disabled veterans and their families are granted the fullest generosity of the very democratic principles for which they fought and lost so much.

Sadly, as the public campaign to sell the New Veterans Charter continued, I witnessed the damaging effects of another campaign that took place behind closed doors to silence and discredit a disabled veteran that merely wished that the New Veterans Charter be studied better before it was approved. I am of course speaking about my husband.

The New Veterans Charter programs do not apply to Sean Bruyea; he was only standing up for those disabled veterans and family members who could not speak for themselves. Instead of listening to Sean, certain Veterans Affairs employees viewed him, if you allow me to come back to our business model, not as someone trying to improve the product but as a competitor who had to be crushed at all costs. After going through many of the 13,000 pages that VAC holds on Sean, I am still unable to find a reasonable answer to the following questions:

• Why did more than 400 people within VAC including the Media Relations Director need to know details about my husband’s medical conditions or financial benefits?
• While the Director of Public Consultations on the New Veterans Charter was opposing my husband’s view on it, why did he need to know that my husband suffers from fibromyalgia, has PTSD or a prostate illness and how are these medical conditions relevant to my husband’s opinions on the New Veterans Charter?
• Why do VAC bureaucrats such as the Director of Treatment and her assistant who were in charge of treatment approval sarcastically refer to him as “our favourite client”? Why did this same Director mislead the VAC finance section into supplying her with the details of his financial benefits only to place them in a Briefing Note to the VAC Minister the next day?
• Are VAC employees such as the Director of the Task Force that designed the New Veterans Charter so afraid of open debate that he has VAC “take the gloves off” to deal with my husband?
• Why do bureaucrats call my husband twice in one week to say they knew he has been trying to exercise his democratic right to speak to a Minister and that he should not try to speak to former Minister Thompson?
• Since when does disagreeing with VAC and trying to help others without any self interest have become such a “revolutionary idea” to our government that we allow disabled soldiers to be persecuted and punished by any means necessary?

Even in the business world, such behaviour is not acceptable and is even illegal.

Thankfully, Veterans’ benefits and freedom of expression are not controlled by the business world; they are matters of the heart and at the foundation of this country, a country so impressive in principles that I and so many others have left our homes to become Canadian.

After 5 years of witnessing such un-Canadian reprisals by public servants, I urge you to stop this from ever happening to anyone else.

I plead with you to create a mechanism which allows Veterans to voice their concerns without the fear of reprisals from the people that have a fiduciary duty to care for them.

I urge you to write not just a policy but a law which prohibits the sharing of personal information of any veteran or their family member to anyone in the Department and especially to senior managers and Ministers just because the Department has possession of it. I have watched firsthand the devastation on my husband as he witnessed the most sacred and personal facts of his life, his inner thoughts being shared without regard for his dignity.

Please, I ask you that you do not let these actions go unaddressed. We have both lost much because of what Veterans Affairs has done just because Sean was trying to help other disabled soldiers.