Decorated veteran says Ottawa violated his privacy

One of Canada's most decorated veterans is speaking out for the first time about his claims that his personal privacy was violated by the Department of Veterans Affairs.

Tom Hoppe served in Bosnia during the mid-1990s and was decorated for bravery. The former sergeant was active in veterans support organizations even before he left the military in 2001 after 20 years of service.

Hoppe became the head of the Ontario Peacekeeping Veterans Association, and later the president of the national organization. He is currently chair of the Veterans Ombudsman Advisory Committee.

A critic of the government's revamp of benefits for veterans, called the New Veterans Charter, Hoppe found out that his name appeared in an email that another veteran, Sean Bruyea, obtained through access to information requests when he was investigating violations of his privacy by Veterans Affairs.

Hoppe then did his own request for information, which confirmed that private medical information in his file had been shared by people in the department.

Hoppe doesn't want to get into the details of the personal information that was shared, but he said it had nothing to do with his advocacy work. However, he does want the people who have been violating the privacy of veterans to be held accountable.

"If someone's broken the law, then they need to be punished and they need to be disciplined," he told CBC's The Current.

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Another injured veteran, Dennis Manuge, told a similar story. He is also a vocal activist and the point man in a class-action lawsuit trying to stop the government's clawback of disability payments for veterans.

Through an access to information request, Manuge found out his personal file had been accessed almost 1,000 times.

He sought further clarification from the department, and was able to quickly determine which were legitimate accesses to his  file by people working to provide him benefits, services, treatment authorizations and medications.

But he also found several cases of access to his files by people in the office of a senior assistant deputy minister.

Privacy violation 'unacceptable'

Manuge thinks veterans who have had their privacy breached should take the government to court via a class-action lawsuit.

A spokesman for Veterans Affairs Minister Steven Blaney told CBC News that any violation of veterans' privacy is "totally unacceptable."

"Our Government took action nearly two years ago to ensure disciplinary measures for those who violate the law," the spokesman said in a statement.

"Our Government wants to ensure that the privacy of all veterans remains protected and that is why Minister Blaney is currently looking at ways to update the Privacy Action Plan. We will continue to build on the successes of the Privacy Action Plan to make certain that privacy violations never occur again."