GNWT mishandles government IDs
Nearly 400 pieces of identification misplaced by multiple departments
Randi Beers
Northern News Services
Published Monday, November 10, 2014
NORTHWEST TERRITORIES
Around the time health officials in Inuvik mailed 196 health cards to wrong addresses in July, a Department of Transportation employee in Yellowknife stuck a box of 200 undelivered drivers licences in a vault where they sat unnoticed for 22 days.
The Department of Health and Social Services (HSS) is now assuring the public it will monitor the 86 health cards that haven't been returned for one year.
Last month in the legislative assembly, Range Lake MLA Daryl Dolynny called Health and Social Services Minister Glen Abernethy to task over the department's claim that no privacy concerns have arisen from the mistake.
Abernethy explained to assembly a "spreadsheet error" caused the problem. He added 110 cards were returned to the department.
Abernethy told Dolynny the department contacted affected individuals directly and the department is monitoring the outstanding health card numbers for suspicious activity.
"I'm really shocked they're not considering this a breach of privacy," Dolynny later told News/North. "A quick Google search indicates this can be a fraud issue and for this minister to brush it off and say it's no big deal, we have a duty to preserve this type of information ... I shake my head at this one."
Elaine Keenan Bengts, the territory's information and privacy commissioner, confirmed her office is conducting an independent review of the missing health cards although she declined to comment.
Daniel Williams, a senior call-taker supervisor at the Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre, says it's possible to commit identity fraud with a stolen health card and advised anybody whose card has been lost to immediately report it stolen to police.
"If you lost a health card, it could absolutely be bad for you," he said. "It's very important to report it to the local police and the agency that issued the card so they can get it on file."
According to Williams, identity theft is the "most massive" form of fraud affecting North Americans.
Damien Healy, manager of planning and communications for the health department, stated in an e-mail the department has no plans to contact the RCMP or credit agencies to monitor fraud.
Williams added monitoring the cards within the department should mitigate concerns regarding their use to fraudulently obtain health care, but "whether somebody uses that identification as secondary ID to obtain some type of credit, the quickest way to find that out would be through a credit report."
Meanwhile, at a Department of Transportation office in Yellowknife, a box of 200 drivers licences sat in a vault room for the better part of a month this summer rather than heading to their owners, News/North learned on Nov. 3.
One Yellowknife resident, who asked not to be named, says her licence was one of those the department misplaced, but she was never made aware of the situation. Although the department maintains the mistake was discovered in less than a month, she said after waiting two months for her licence to arrive, she called the department and asked what was going on.
"I was getting freaked out," said the woman. "They said, 'your licence was lost' and the only excuse they had was most of May and June's licences were also lost."
She shared her story after reading in Yellowknifer about 86 health cards that are still missing after the Department of Health and Social Services mailed them to wrong addresses in July.
Steve Loutitt, director of road licensing and safety with the Department of Transportation (DoT), said the licences were never lost, they were just misplaced by a summer student.
"The process (of mailing out new licences) normally takes five days," he explained.
"But what happened was instead of going to the post office, the employee put the box of licences into a vault room for a total of 22 days rather than five, so there was a delay."
He said his department realized the error when people started to call about the status of their driver's licences. He admitted his staff did not reach out to the 200 people affected individually to explain the situation.
"We got them into the mail as soon as we could," he said.
"Most people wouldn't have given it a second thought that there would be a delay."
Anyone experiencing a delay in getting their driver's licence can call the DoT driver and motor vehicle services number, he added.
The woman alleges when she called that number, she was asked by the person on the other end of the line, 'how did you get this number?' and that dealing with this person was a "horrible experience."
She said the DoT representative went on to tell her there was no way to re-issue her licence unless she went back down to the (DoT) office to fill out an application and have her picture taken again.
"I took time off work to take a picture again and guess what, they said 'we won't charge you for it,'" she said, jokingly explaining she probably broke even based on the time she had to take off work to re-apply for a licence.
Loutitt said he was not made aware of the experience this woman had with DoT.
"She shouldn't have had an experience like that," he said.
"It was one of our summer students looking after (answering that line)."
DoT staffers tasked with processing new driver's licences have received training since the incident that happened over the summer, he said.
