Disabled ex-nurse (and hated fishing "foe") loses benefits over CBC television interview

Beginning in 1979, I worked as a registered nurse for the Nova Scotia government. But because of a painful orthopedic condition, I've been unable to work since 1995, and I am entitled to disability benefits insured through my former employer. This crucial income stream also maintains my right to accumulate retirement pension credits through the government plan, and that is my retirement plan. But as soon as I was seen on CBC in 2004, Manulife terminated my benefits saying I had a "recent work history" and I was "very involved in the fishing industry". Manulife used CBC's online program abstract of its "starving ocean" Land and Sea episode as evidence against me.

In doing this job for my adversaries, Manulife violated professional and ethical standards, formal guidelines and laws normally applied in disability claims administration. Instead, unprofessional staff used my interview by CBC as their excuse for terminating my benefits claim, and for attacking my personal credibility. And once they launched this initiative against me for the government, it has never been let up. Nova Scotia decided to crucify me for speaking to CBC.

Manulife's decision to deprive me of my disability benefits and the bulk of my pension for life is being strictly enforced against me. I am barred by government authority from defending myself against the "case" Manulife allegedly made out against me, or from making the case that I continue to be entitled to benefits, which I am, as the government knows. Instead, I stand falsely accused of dishonesty and financially ruined by this action taken against me under government authority, while government authority also applies a legal freeze denying me any opportunity to challenge it. Other disabled ex-nurses have not been treated like this, and I had no idea I could be treated this way in a democratic society.

When I ignored a demand that I "sign a waiver", the NSGEU attacked me directly. It is unprecedented for the NSGEU to directly attack a non-member as it did to me, i.e. for 26,000 current employees to intentionally try to injure one ex-employee. But unprofessional NSGEU staff spent years aggressively insisting to me and to others that "the union" was entitled to waive my right to disability benefits and "any other claim" without my consent, and demanding my silent "compliance" with this process. No member of the NSGEU is willing give up a single pay check for my personal benefit, yet their "union" demands I voluntarily waive my entire right to my future income for the "union's" benefit and at the "union's" command. Since I would not "agree" to do this, the NSGEU simply proceeded to waived all my financial and other legal rights without my consent.

My Constitutional rights as a Canadian citizen were killed by the Nova Scotia government when it asked its ally, the NSGEU, to punish me in "private" for speaking to CBC.

Current members of the NSGEU who know me personally also know their union grossly abused my rights and stepped far beyond the bounds of its proper activities. But they are barred by the "union constitution" from saying anything about that, lest they face union discipline for "acting in a manner which is detrimental to the union." The official position of the NSGEU is that Manulife had "evidence" that I was "engaging in an occupation" and that I was employable as a "scientist." The NSGEU also believes I acted dishonestly, it believes I tried to defraud the LTD Trust Fund, it believes it has the right to forever bar me from challenging "evidence" used against me, and the NSGEU has the power to forbid any objections to be raised against its own position by me or by anyone else. When I objected, the NSGEU threatened a "subpoena" to force itself on me. The NSGEU bosses oblige all current union members to back this position against me in unison, even though many of them know it is false, defamatory, spiteful, oppressive, and sheer nonsense.

One former co-worker of mine, who is still working and still an NSGEU member, was promptly excommunicated by the union bosses after she told NSGEU president Joan Jessome that she knows I am a very honest person.

The NSGEU bosses took this exceptional punitive action against a non-member as a very special "union contribution" to the LTD Trust Fund, and to serve the Province's wider agenda. The union believes Manulife acted "reasonably," and that I got what I deserved for speaking to CBC about my hobby interest and for voicing my concerns about ocean ecology and fisheries management. The NSGEU is tightly allied with the government and the LTD Board, and they all support both their own hired gun (Manulife) and the fishing industry.

Local lawyers tell me I can never take any action to enforce my proven right to my disability benefits, my pension or my civil rights, because the NSGEU's claim of authority over me renders me legally "dead in the water." I am told I therefore have no choice but to accept any punishment "the union" chooses to deal to me, even though I have not been a union member for well over a decade.

Lawyers tell me this is not really justifiable by any legal standard, but that the NSGEU's attack against me will nevertheless be upheld in Nova Scotia, because the Provincial courts are biased in favour of the NSGEU, and because Nova Scotia judges (who contribute to the same LTD Plan) will not find the NSGEU wrong in anything. Under this scenario, it doesn't matter what form of abuse or indignity the NSGEU decides to "privately" inflict on me, not even if NSGEU staff decide to forge documents pretending the NSGEU holds a valid power of attorney over me when it does not (which they did) or if they outright lie to me and lie about me (which they also did). Apparently anything goes and I have no rights whatsoever. Lawyers are also reluctant to challenge the role played by the NSGEU's own lawyers, or to expose systemic corruption in the Nova Scotia public service, lest they "damage public trust in justice" and themselves be accused of "conduct unbecoming a lawyer" and subject to professional discipline. Also, it eventually became clear to me that nobody in the legal profession in Nova Scotia is particularly interested in going out on a limb for a person like me, i.e. a publicly despised figure who is believed to have tried to harm the fishing industry.

Unlike in the rest of the free world, "unions" in Canada remain a black hole of human rights abuses. This general Canadian backwardness may be at its worst in Nova Scotia, with the NSGEU, where disabled ex-employees like me are shunned and blocked from ever re-entering the workplace, while they are also routinely forced to pay "extra-contractual dues" to the NSGEU for years after their jobs have been terminated and after they have been barred from union "member" status and stripped of union "member rights".

When I called CBC and said my appearance on its show had caused me to lose my benefits, CBC's producer promptly wrote to the Board that CBC had not portrayed me as able to support myself as a fish scientist, suggesting this "couldn't be farther from the truth."

But truth and law play no part in this. The Supreme Court of Canada ruled years ago that ex-employees like me are exempt from the application of any "labour law" restrictions on individual rights. Forced association with "union" agendas has been declared unconstitutional by the high courts, especially when such agendas are forced on non-members. But it seems that might only actually be true in other Provinces.

Besides showing the peril in talking to the media, what happened to me demonstrates the impact of the lack of any regulation in Canada applying to "group disability insurance plans." In contrast, in the U.S. and elsewhere, federal law restrains "unions," and it guarantees individuals the right to fair and reasonable "appeal" and "review" procedures under employee group LTD Plans. But in Canada, it seems unprofessional claims administrators and "union staff" can use unscrupulous tactics outlawed elsewhere, to bully claimants however they please. In Nova Scotia in particular, the government "union" avenue is particularly suitable for a party with a grudge to take reprisals against a particular disability benefits claimant.

As a former professional myself, who provided ethical and accountable service to the Province of Nova Scotia when I was younger, healthier and worked as a registered nurse (1979 - 1995), it is mind-boggling to realize that speaking publicly about my hobby interest triggered this personal fiasco.

My ability to pursue my hobby interest has all but ended due to the stress and strain placed on me by my harassment by the NSGEU, and due to my own declining health. And I expect this pleases my "foes" in the fishing industry. But in 2006, I made a last fairly major effort, believing it to be a public consumer safety and sealer safety matter, when I tried to expose Canada's willful blindness to the potential human health impact of seal diseases. But I had long ago lost any credibility as a public health professional, and it seems I only antagonized fishing interests again. I tried to point out that on international markets, Canada currently avoids applying appropriate food safety standards to seal products by passing them off as "fish" products instead of "meat" products. And Federal and Provincial government employees' responses to me on that issue suggest insiders are afraid to blow the whistle. I communicated with employees of the Canadian Food Inspection Agency and the Natural Health Products Directorate who dipped and dodged and passed it around and refused to sign their names.

Ironically, the last thing I wrote for my website was a note to lobster fishermen two years ago, in which I was trying to help one of them in particular, and perhaps local lobster fishermen as a group, resist an injustice in DFO's "short lobster" crime racket. Speaking out of turn again, I naively suggested fishermen should be able to demand their "Charter rights" (by asking the courts for equal protection under the Weights and Measures Act). This effort on my part actually resulted from a targeted attack carried out under government authority against a friend of mine, and the one fisherman who had also been personally involved in making the Land and Sea program. He also found that no lawyer would help him, and I certainly was not "engaging in the practice of law" when I tried and failed to help him. I have also occasionally continued to repeat my original ecological argument against the current approach to fisheries management, including the seal hunt, along with my warning about risks to human health associated with seal diseases, which I think helps explain why I have been beaten so hard over the head.

My story confirms what CBC's investigative journalists have reported before. In Canada, it is extremely risky for a person to dare to speak a truth that is in the public interest, if that truth challenges government management or a powerful friend of government. As a fearful Transport Canada employee recently explained to the Fifth Estate, the danger is that government authority will then be abused to rip your life apart.

 Debbie MacKenzie ( codmother@bellaliant.net )

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Below is information CBC put online about its "Starving Ocean" program, and that Manulife put in my disability claim file as evidence against me. The show was aired on Sunday, June 13, 2004 and Manulife attacked me two days later. At this time, I can only find this evidence at web.archive.org, but this summarizes how CBC portrayed what I was doing.

When I told her I was being threatened with losing my benefits because I had been seen on CBC, Land and Sea producer, Joan MacKinnon, promptly wrote a letter to Charles Bruce, the Executive Director of the Nova Scotia Public Service LTD Plan. Here is a copy of her letter:

1. Manulife's investigative/claim termination approach:

    (a) I was deceived about the purpose of the information gatherer who questioned me two days after CBC aired its interview with me. Manulife employee, "rehabilitation specialist" Victoria Martin, told me she was "gathering data" to "develop a rehabilitation plan," but that is not what she was doing (she was seeking information to immediately terminate my claim), and "develop a rehabilitation plan" is not what she did (she immediately terminated my claim). This deceptive approach violated her "professional code of ethics" (as a Registered Rehabilitation Specialist) and breached the "guidelines for claims administration," however the LTD Board and the NSGEU allowed this and got what they wanted, an instant excuse to cut off my benefits. Clearly, one lesson for other LTD claimants is to be very wary of speaking to Manulife's "rehabilitation" staff who say they are "developing rehabilitation plans."

    (b) Victoria Martin's name then appeared on various documents in my claim file that also contained my name and that purported to contain information provided by me. However, a great deal of the information was grossly erroneous and did not apply to me at all, I had never seen the information before, and it had certainly not been obtained from me. The documents stated that my "work history" included "involvement in fisheries research" as had been "recently featured on the CBC program Land & Sea", CBC's program abstract from its website was included in the file, along my own notice of the upcoming Land & Sea program that I had put on my personal website.

    (c) A long list of "transferable work content skills" that I do not have was on a document showing no name except Victoria Martin's. The skills listed may have somehow been related to Victoria Martin or someone else, but they had no relation to me. It seems most likely that Martin just made up the "skills" list on her own, a pure fabrication of "evidence" to use against me. She also wrote a nonsensical "transferable skills analysis" report in which she named me, and she misrepresented my formal education and employment history. I never saw or signed any document containing information supposedly gathered from me, and when I tried to contradict the false information and appeal the decision, I was aggressively dismissed. (And I will gladly show all these documents to CBC.)

    (d) Victoria Martin, Manulife case manager Doug Low, and LTD Plan Executive Director Charles Bruce, then jointly demanded in a letter that I promptly "inform Manulife of my desire" to have Manulife cut off my benefits, while threatening to cut my benefits off at once if I "failed" to comply.

    (e) When I "failed to inform of my desire" as demanded, and I instead tried to appeal the decision, the LTD Board again demanded a signed waiver of my right to benefits and "any other claim", while threatening to cut my benefits off at once if I "failed" to comply. When that happened, my benefits were cut off and the LTD Board promptly directed NSGEU staff to launch a "labour arbitration" in my name as an alternate tactic to dismiss all my rights without my consent, which is what they proceeded to try to do next. And the NSGEU forced this on me although I was not even a member of the union. An untouchable NSGEU employee just fabricated evidence claiming that I was.

2. Employer-union collusion between the Province of Nova Scotia and the NSGEU is a strong tradition, collusion against disabled employees in particular, and this is one key to the Board's success in avoiding any accountability to marginalized claimants like me. The NSPS-LTD Board was created by a notoriously corrupt Provincial government, and it does not hesitate to cut corners using deception, misrepresentation and unfair coercion, as it had Manulife do to me. The LTD Board has things sewn up so it can never be found to have "abused its discretion" because if someone like me suggests it has done so, the Board itself can then assume the legal identities of the NSGEU and the Province, tell only its own side of a story to a "labour arbitrator," who will then be asked to issue a "final judgement" declaring that the Board acted "reasonably." That is what the Board tried to do in my case to defend the "reasonableness" of Manulife's unreasonable "view" that I could support myself as a fish scientist, and to cover up the unfair tactics used against me. This form of abuse of "labour arbitration" by LTD Boards of Trustees has been expressly outlawed for years in the United States. But since group disability insurance operations and actions of trade unions in Canada are unregulated, if a union is prepared to deceive and betray disabled employees, can unscrupulous tactics like this one, outlawed elsewhere for good reason, be profitably used as policy guidelines for routine operations in places like Nova Scotia? That seems to be the case with a bizarre "notwithstanding" clause buried in the Trust Agreement. Individual lawyers and the Nova Scotia Barristers Society refuse to say a word about this.

However, note that if an elite sort of LTD claimant under the same plan, like a current civil servant, MLA, government-employed lawyer or judge, should charge the LTD Board with abusing its discretion, then the Board must answer that charge in court and face a public review of the evidence against it. And that potential outcome apparently makes all the difference in how benefits claims are investigated and handled. There is obviously a plan within this LTD plan. For elite employees, the NSPS-LTD Plan works like a fairly normal group disability plan, but for the non-elite, i.e. mainly disabled health care sector workers, the same plan has been subtly downgraded to approximate a workers compensation scheme with a vengeance, and with no appeals. But everyone pays the same premiums. Not all unions collude so tightly with the Nova Scotia government, and my impression is that the affected health care sector workers would be wise to shop around for a new union. I actually do have the right to take the LTD Board to court because I am an ex-nurse who is also an ex-civil-servant, but the Board just demands the "privilege" of ignoring this truth along with the rest of it. All it had to do was apply a dishonest "union" stamp to my name.

3. I was shortchanged on my benefits constantly, for nine years before my claim was unfairly terminated by Manulife. The LTD Board never paid full benefits on the premium it charged me, it levied deductions against my benefits with no authority, and it drastically underpaid retirement pension premiums that are part of the package I am entitled to under the terms of the contract. The NSGEU is aware of these breaches of the contract, but as my former union and the LTD Plan's Co-sponsor, the NSGEU is indifferent to the impact on me caused by any breaches of my contractual or other rights. For all I know, the NSGEU allowed the fishing industry to directly influence the termination of my claim. The NSGEU does represent a significant number of rural people who probably think I deserve to be punished for uttering my well grounded grave concerns about the ocean. So I'll say it again, the whole world is being shortchanged on the benefit of the unique wealth of marine ecological scientific information and insight that currently exists in Atlantic Canada, but that is being carefully suppressed by the government.