Privacy Commissioner Jennifer Stoddart says she is concerned other federal departments may be gathering and circulating personal information about critics of the government in the same way the Veterans Affairs Department improperly gave a Cabinet minister medical files about Gulf War veteran Sean Bruyea when he tried to expose weaknesses in a new financial-support net for veterans in 2006.
"It's a general concern, yes, of mine," Ms. Stoddart told The Hill Times after she released her finding last week that senior bureaucrats in the Veterans Affairs Department violated provisions of the Privacy Act by disclosing aspects of Mr. Bruyea's medical file to former veterans affairs minister Greg Thompson (New Brunswick Southwest, N.B.) and Prime Minister Stephen Harper's (Calgary Southwest, Alta.) office in what Mr. Bruyea says was an attempt to discredit him as a veterans advocate.
"At the present time, though, I have no indication that this is happening in other departments," Ms. Stoddart said. "If it is, I'm sure that they are heeding the lessons to be drawn from this particular incident."
Source: The Hill Times
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