Disability

Posted on by Pete Cross
Hacker in a hoodie working at a computer with a fraud alert and credit card data on screen

Considering the sensitive nature of this topic it seems likely that some of you will be upset with the overall theory of this blog, whose theme suggests that there are numerous ongoing claims of “disability” that —-dare I say, may be fraudulent. I will also apologize ahead of time for those of you readers who have “legitimate” claims. However, I am going to openly suggest that some “veterans” may in fact be milking the system. Even if you have doubts, do you not think it possible that a system that promises tax free monies often based on subjective evidence may be seen by some as an opportunity for fraud? None of you can deny of often hearing anecdotal stories from veterans claiming numerous medical issues and their pressing need, argument and demand for compensation. There are even web platforms dedicated to the subject.

On a singular and simple level any claim for a work related injury would and should be based on solid medical evidence and therefore assumed to be legitimate. But often when I would hear these stories, it was accompanied by the casual knowing smirk or smile in the persons telling of the story which so often drew my attention and raised a cynical eyebrow. I would also hear the word “entitled” a lot, a word that makes me shiver. So I thought I should inquire a little further.

Human nature being what it is, anytime the government offers up some tax free money I naturally assume there will be a lineup. The question is how long has that disability line become. Equally true is that there is no longer any stigma attached to claiming any disability. Offers of mental health assistance and help lines predominate the commercial air waves and are often aimed at military and policing circles. Post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) although a serious ailment is almost in vogue. Do I think PTSD is real? I do. Do I think that the system is wide open to wide spread fraud? I do.

Here are some of the most recent available numbers. Between 2014 and 2019 there was a 69% increase in RCMP members claiming “psychiatric disability” and as a result receiving disability benefits. In March of 2019 there were 16,254 recipients of disability payments, by 2024/25 that number in the RCMP had increased to 21,000. And the applications keep coming. The backlog at Veterans Affairs Canada was 20,000 in March 2007 and that backlog in June of 2020 increased by 150% to 50,000. Another somewhat startling number is that the current rate of approval for these claims is 88% in the very first instance.

The Union for the RCMP, the National Police Federation estimates that for the last fourteen years there has been a 184% increase in long term sick leave.

All of this should raise several pertinent questions that should demand further examination. What are the underlying reasons for these dramatic increases in health issues? How much is this costing? What pressures are being exerted on the organization when faced with this level of claimed disabilities?

Veterans Affairs Canada oversees this program and also oversees the Canadian Armed Forces. The RCMP portion of the disability claims actually only amounts to 10% of the total. So in terms of overall costs to the government, the numbers grow quickly when you add in the military claimants. In total in Canada there are 177,000 individuals claiming disability benefits, of which 20,686 are members or former members of the RCMP. Overall those claims in 2021/2022 are growing at 2.1% per year and costing VAC $606.1 million for disability pension expenditures, another $352.5 million for survivor pensions, and then if you include “special awards” the total comes to $1,046.6 million. Keep in mind that War Service Veterans are declining during this period. The level of employees needed to process these claims in Veterans Affairs Canada is 4,200 employees based in Charlottetown Prince Edward Island.

When asked, the VAC officially attributes this massive rise in claims to four different things.

a) a growing need for mental health services

b) rising number of medically released Veterans

c) the introduction of the Pension for Life program and finally

d) “improved outreach” (which could be translated into people know the money is there now.)

The most common medical complaints which generate those benefits, currently : Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), Tinnitus, and Hearing Loss.

Most of you will have guessed where I am going with this. There has to be some consideration given to the fact that there may be a lot of frauds being committed mixed in there with legitimate claims. Even Veterans Affairs say that the “VA system is considered vulnerable” mainly due to its reliance on “self-reporting” and “insufficient verification”. However, the Federal government at the same time clearly does not want to offend “veterans”. That is a public relations no-no and believed to be political voter suicide. So VAC officially says that actual fraud is “considered rare” that there are some faking or exaggerating conditions in a system where claims they readily admit are often based on “non-visible” injuries. One estimate they offer is that fraud in the VA system is less than 0.01%. Does that not seem inordinately low considering the type of system in place and the amount of anecdotal stories abounding about?

As it turns out, that is not the experience or the conclusion of the Americans who run a similar system, and one where they spend $193 billion a year on medical disability claims. There are 900 conditions in the U.S. system that can enable a claim; sleep apnea, migraines, and erectile dysfunction to name just a few. Getting a 100% disabled designation in their system is referred to by claimants as gaining “the holy grail”. The Department of Justice, unlike Canada, believes that there is massive fraud, especially in the PTSD claims, and their studies which they have undertaken show that 20-30% of claims are exaggerated or faked. In personal injury claims in the military they estimate the fraud runs at about 20%. They have investigated and found “fraud mills”, disabled benefit receivers holding and working full time jobs, and investigators and reporters talk openly about the “claim shark” industry.

The Americans have identified, like in Canada, that the biggest growth for claims is in the category of PTSD. They have 402,000 files in their database and point out the seemingly obvious, that the biggest problem is that PTSD is the most difficult to prove or nullify. PTSD diagnosis is also on a sliding scale and it is also problematic because some of the conditions that are being looked for are such things as “flashbacks”, “nightmares”, “negative thoughts mood swings, and detachment from others” which are difficult to define.

In Canada, to claim PTSD one merely needs some level of “diagnosis accompanied by a medical statement from a doctor, psychiatrist, or psychologist in support of that claim”. There clearly are many doctors signing off on these claims, and it would be an interesting investigation to see if some doctors are being “shopped” for their signatures. Once you go through the process, you’re usually “in” as in March of 2023 there was a 96% success rate of those claims of PTSD. Psychologists, as a matter of interest believe that 9.2 % of Canadians will have PTSD in some form in their lifetime.

Now, we could assume that the American experience is not ours. That the Americans just lie more, Canadians are just more trustworthy (which is I guess what the Feds in this country believe). But if we assume that there is some level of fraud in Canadian claims we shouldn’t worry because we believe that the system will monitor and go after the cheats.

Well, that too is a a bit of a problem, because like a lot of laws in Canada there is no real internal investigative support for fraud. The Federal government answer is that there are “several different bodies” tasked with fraud investigations. Service Canada has the Integrity Services Branch, but they only investigate EI, OAS, and CPP claims. Veterans Canada says that they have “internal mechanisms to “review and audit disability benefits”, but when you look further they are only looking across departments to see if there is duplication over various claims. Public Service and Procurement Canada has an “SIID” team, which tasks against “individuals defrauding federal benefits payments” although I could not uncover any specific cases of prosecution, except for one out of London, Ontario where they charged a woman for collecting a veterans survivor benefit long after the veteran had died.

The VAC does admit to there having been over 1,000 “over payments ” some as high as $65,000, caused by persons having failed to report additional income. So they have sent out letters to try and recoup the money, and obviously this also means that there is about 1,000 veterans who may or may not have been overly careful in their filings of received income. If this myriad of oversight agencies fail, the VA says they also refer any truly fraudulent criminal matters to the RCMP. Say no more.

At this point, let me again be the first to say that there are some very legitimate disability claims and that some people have suffered a great deal in terms of their ailments and physical damages as a result of being on the job and are needing taxpayer support. (in terms of full and frank disclosure, I receive a single disability payment of about $300 a month due to a spinal injury from VAC) But, I also believe that when a government opens up the coffers and points to and even advertises a pot of potential gold, some officers come out of the wood work and begin trying to figure out how they can “get me some of that”. When you combine this with an administrative inability to confirm “significant” impairments and you have willing doctors who can be manipulated to play the system, then there will undoubtedly be fraud. I don’t believe we are different than the Americans, the difference is that the Americans are more diligent in their oversight and investigation. When I ask various individuals why they are claiming for certain ailments, you often get part of the response which includes the words “entitled” and then they rationalize that the “money is there, might as well take it”.

For me this type of rationale leaves a bitter after taste. Anyone gouging this system should be ashamed, you are tainting your service and possibly taking from those that truly need it. The equally sad truth is that in Canada you are not going to get caught. So in the end it falls back to the individual and their personal level of integrity, something which unlike Federal monies seems to be at times rather limited.

Harassment Complaints and officers searching for gold…

Posted on by Pete Cross

It would be easy to speak to the nonsense that continues in Surrey and the shenanigans of Mayor Locke, or the fact that our Prime Minister has revealed himself to be a “Swiftie”, and is apparently devastated by the fact that Taylor isn’t scheduled to appear in Canada this year– but those topics are too easy. They are the types of subjects that are repeatedly proving themselves too easy to poke fun at and there is no challenge in it. And It’s summer, so one’s thoughts should be filled with images of sand, sun and warm rays. Nevertheless the ridiculousness continues to keep washing over us, as much as we try to not watch the news or listen, we are being inundated by the blarney.

So lets talk about sexual harassment and harassment complaints in the RCMP. Nothing like a good debate on sexual harassment to kill the beach boys vibe. It is a serious issue to be sure, but one which the RCMP, or more specifically the Liberal government has managed to turn into another three ring victim compassion circle. As is often the case, my interest and then my incredulity, was spiked by a recent CBC article. By the way, should you ever wish to get riled up, the CBC is usually the best place to start, as they are continually searching the world over, for the next victim, the next devastated community, the next world crisis which is forcing us to the brink of extinction. In terms of the story in question, one has to suspect that when they ran this sexual harassment story, they were clearly having a slow day, or were maybe more concerned with the current campaign by the Liberals to try and get Facebook to pay them for putting their television news clippings on their website.

The CBC story begins with the usual flabbergasted proclamation in the headline, that the Independent Centre for Harassment Resolution is, god help us all, backlogged. Justice is not being done, justice is on hold, victims, and their lawyers are forced to wait long lines, bureaucratic stalemates are everywhere. The CBC voiced their outrage, and then they needed to go find a couple of prattling victims to outline and demonstrate these nefarious examples of injustice.

First, one needs to remember that the RCMP has already paid out $125 million to 2,304 female officers who made claims of being sexually harassed or abused over the last thirty or so years; this averages out to $54,253.47 paid out per complainant. That was in 2016. Then, a few years later they then paid out another $100 million to female employees who were in “non-policing roles” with the RCMP. But that was clearly not enough for the liberal gods of outrage.

On June 30th, 2021 the government and the RCMP then created the Independent Centre for Harassment Resolution. This was another bureaucratic group that was going to act as an “investigative” body to deal with the apparent and rampant ongoing harassment that was taking place daily in the misogynistic RCMP. They have proven to be too popular. Since opening their doors, they say they are now dealing with “hundreds of sexual assault and harassment complaints”. This has led to “long delays”, and now having to apologize due to the fact that in their initial mandate they were claiming that the time line for any complaint was going to be a maximum of 12 months.

In their current reporting the ICHR says that in the two years of their existence, they have now received 940 notices/complaints– 165 in this year alone. They have completed 325 investigations to date, and at least 71 are still awaiting the assignment of an “investigator”. Of course because of this deluge of discontent, they are now not able to stick to their 12 month timeline.

These numbers seem high. Is it possible that this has become another place where the ever sniffing Mounties have picked up the scent of gold. Has this become another Veterans Disability pot of shiny substance, where certain members, who are willing to abuse the system, are now also lurking in great numbers? I realize some people may take offence at this proclamation, that this will be seen as a damning indictment which aims at the honesty and credibility of the officers involved. I will apologize in advance, to those with legitimate claims. However there is a great deal of anecdotal evidence, a great deal of smoke, of this simply being the latest pot at the end of the rainbow. This has excited the less than scrupulous officers, who we all know are out there.

Of course, we are not allowed to look in, all of the files are guarded by Privacy “concerns”, so we will never know the true extent of fraudulent claims, unless someone on the inside speaks out. But, no worries, the CBC is an expert in seeking out the victims and have enticed some to come forward to at the very least, provide the nature of their complaint.

The example provided by the CBC concerns the case of officer Nicole Patapoff, who speaks through her lawyer, Sherry Shir. Ms. Patapoff is an eight year member, who was just coming off maternity leave, so has probably six or seven years active service, and she was thus required to attend firearms qualifications at her local range to “re-qualify”. Ms. Patapoff was having troubles on the firing range, with the strength in her “trigger finger”. Now, for those that don’t know, this is a common problem, as it requires some strength to pull the trigger and hold it while maintaining breathing and control. Every time I was at the range doing the same thing, there was inevitably someone who was having problems with their trigger finger not being strong enough, or they had small hands, which made it more difficult for consistent trigger pull. Often the instructor will encourage the person to actually do finger exercises, in their off-time, to try and get it right.

The offence according to Ms. Patapoff, was that the instructor told her to go home, clean the bathroom with windex or something similar to help strengthen that trigger finger. One could only assume that he meant that by using the spray device would help build up strength, but of course that is not how Ms. Patapoff took it. She was angered, and said that the statement was “misogynistic, belittling, offensive, disrespectful, and demeaning”.

An 18 month harassment investigation ensued.

The eventual but short lived good news is that her complaint was dismissed, as not meeting the criteria under the Canada Labour Code.

Had sanity finally prevailed?

But wait, as you guessed, the madness of it all continues. There is no administrative appeal process. So, lawyer Sherry Shir took the case to Federal court and argued that the complaint was “dismissed improperly”, and launched an appeal on behalf of Ms. Patapoff.

Court documents now reveal that the original investigator has now been removed from the approved list of ICHR investigators; and earlier this month the RCMP have now agreed to assign another investigator to this case. Would anyone like to guess what the new outcome will be?

They are also complaining that it is all taking too long. Amanda Nemer the Executive Director of the ICHR blames the delays on the “lack of market availability for external investigators”. One would think that you would only have to go to LinkedIn because they seem to have lists of people who advertise themselves as “investigators”. But, I will accept her explanation, as who in their right mind would want to head up this massive investigation. One must also keep in mind it took the first investigator 18 months for an investigation that would boil down to two questions. Did you say it? Is this contrary to the Canadian Labour Code?

Marco Mendocino, the Minister responsible, and quickly trying to overtake Bill Blair as the most incompetent Minister in the Liberal government, is heartened by “the rise in complaints”, that it is a “positive sign as it demonstrates the confidence that the RCMP members and employees have in this system”. So one could assume if every singe person in the RCMP made a complaint, Mr. Mendocino would interpret this to mean that everything was good because they had faith in the process.

The second case, albeit briefly mentioned by the CBC is the one involving RCMP officer Todd Gray. You will remember him; he is the member complaining of harassment, and one of his complaints is that he had to ride in the horse trailer while assigned and on the Musical ride. (by the way, I am told that that was a common practise when the Ride was travelling with the horses).

If these two examples are the best cases for the argument against sexual harassment and bullying, then the RCMP and this government is in some serious trouble in terms of their credibility.

The problem with all of this seems to be that the Mounties are just one group, that has come to the realization that when it comes to suing the Federal government, there are certain cases you will always win– regardless of the evidence or lack of evidence. Any suit you can bring that deals with harassment, sexual harassment, disabilities, or indigenous rights will in effect be settled– the government and the RCMP will never go to court. When anyone brings forward a case that can involve these topics, it seems to chum the waters for the circling lawyer sharks. The lawyers and their clients know that virtually all of these types of cases end with the conversation “What will it cost to make this go away?” It is now well established that the Liberal government will never be forced into a headline where they are appearing to be insensitive to these issues. Money is no object, when one needs to be seen and are being directed so as to be on the right side of good.

Unfortunately, there are certain officers who can convince themselves that any infraction or misstatement should result in compensation. I know of many cases of officers abusing the Veterans Affairs disability system, and I know many cases of officers benefitting from the sexual harassment settlements where the evidence was dubious or weak at best. It’s all anecdotal, although many officers can’t help themselves and brag about their winnings, because no one is allowed to know, and therein lies the beauty of the fraud. There is no punishment or redress for making a vexatious complaint, you simply give it a try and see if it works.

So, I am sorry Ms. Patapoff, your complaint from the outside looking in, appears ridiculous, you are wasting the resources of government. But, I also suspect that in a year or two, if you hang in there, you will get a settlement and that it will be paid out, just to have you go away. It may not amount to much in the end, once your lawyer takes their 30% however. And if you continue your policing career, prepare to get much more offended by what people say to you– it will be more offensive than someone telling you to squeeze a Windex applicator.

Photo courtesy of Paul Scott Via Flickr Commons — Some Rights Reserved