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Military Police Complaints CommissionFYNES PUBLIC INTEREST HEARINGS

held pursuant to section 250.38(1) of the National DefenceAct, in the matter of file 2011-004

LES AUDIENCES D'INTÉRÊT PUBLIQUE SUR FYNEStenues en vertu du paragraphe 250.38(1) de la Loi sur la

défense nationale pour le dossier 2011-004

TRANSCRIPT OF PROCEEDINGSheld at 270 Albert St., Ottawa, Ontario

on Monday, May 7, 2012lundi, le 7 mai 2012

VOLUME 17

BEFORE:

Mr. Glenn Stannard Chairperson

Ms Raymonde Cléroux Registrar

APPEARANCES:

Mr. Mark Freiman Commission counselMs Genevieve Coutlée

Ms Elizabeth Richards For Sgt Jon Bigelow, MWO Ross Tourout,Ms Korinda McLaine LCol Gilles Sansterre, WO Blair Hart, PO 2 Eric McLaughlin,

Sgt David Mitchell, Sgt Matthew Alan Ritco, Maj Daniel Dandurand,Sgt Scott Shannon, LCol Brian Frei, LCol (ret=d) William H. Garrick

WO (ret=d) Sean Der Bonneteau, CWO (ret=d) Barry Watson

Col (ret=d) Michel W. Drapeau For Mr. Shaun FynesMr. Joshua Juneau and Mrs. Sheila Fynes

A.S.A.P. Reporting Services Inc. © 2012

200 Elgin Street, Suite 1105 333 Bay Street, Suite 900

Ottawa, Ontario K2P 1L5 Toronto, Ontario M5H 2T4

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(613) 564-2727 (416) 861-8720

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INDEX

PAGE

RESUMED: SHEILA FYNES 13

Continuation of Examination-in-chief by Mr. Freiman 13Cross-examination by Col Drapeau 85Cross-examination by Ms Richards 105Re-examination by Mr. Freeman 203Further Cross-examination by Ms Richards 205Further Cross-examination by Col Drapeau 206

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LIST OF EXHIBITS

NO. DESCRIPTION PAGE

P-60 Index 211

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Ottawa, Ontario

--- Upon resuming on Monday, May 7, 2012

at 10:35 a.m.

THE CHAIRPERSON: Mr. Freiman?

MR. FREIMAN: There is a

preliminary matter, Mr. Chairman, and we are hoping

this can be dealt with quite briefly. It may come

back later in our deliberations. In fact, I

suspect it will.

An issue has arisen with respect

to how some of the material that did find its way

to the Military Police, namely, the National

Investigation Service -- how that material is to be

dealt with.

There is a provision in the

National Defence Act that covers what use can be

made of various types of information, various types

of documents, and of references to testimony. I

can tell you that Ms Richards and I have very

contrasting and different interpretations of the

extent of the meaning of that provision, what it

allows and what it does not allow.

Just to put the argument as

briefly as possible -- and Ms Richards can talk

about it as well and can correct me if I am

A.S.A.P. Reporting Services Inc.(613) 564-2727 (416) 861-8720

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misstating anything about her position. My

understanding is that the Department of Justice

relies on certain provisions within the National

Defence Act for the proposition that no use

whatsoever can be made in a hearing of the Military

Police Complaints Commission of any statements made

to a board of inquiry or to a summary

investigation.

Commission counsel, by contrast,

takes the view that such a reading would lead to

the absurd result that material upon which the

National Investigation Service relied that it had

before it, that it analysed and may or may not have

incorporated into its investigative conclusions is

somehow immune or shielded from review by this

Commission. It would, to use a non inapt metaphor,

create a hole in the fabric of the jurisdiction of

this Commission that would be large enough to drive

a Mack truck through.

In preference to adopting such an

interpretation, Commission counsel believes that

there=s a difference between relying on statements

made to a board of inquiry or to a summary

investigation for the truth of their contents,

which clearly you cannot do and should not do, and


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the Commission taking note of the fact that certain

material was before the National investigation

Service and being entitled to ask questions of the

subject of the inquiry specifically about the use

of those materials.

The matter comes to a head both in

terms of what an individual witness may say or may

not say about encounters that they had or what they

observed at either the BOI or a summary

investigation. It also comes to a head in terms of

redactions that are made to material that is then

disclosed or authorized for disclosure by the

Military Police Complaints Commission.

As I said, Ms Richards and I have

very contrasting views on this topic. However --

I am hoping that wasn=t a ham-

fisted attempted by someone at redacting these

proceedings.

THE CHAIRPERSON: Hopefully

somebody didn=t think you were in the dark.

MR. FREIMAN: Sadly, most people

think that that is the case.

In any event, speaking only for

myself, I do not intend to ask any questions that

may raise this matter in the evidence of Mrs.


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Fynes. But Ms Richards and Colonel Drapeau -- and

we have had a meeting about this -- are probably

realistic in saying that there is the possibility

that such matters will happen.

None of us would like to disrupt

the proceedings this morning. We came here to hear

the rest of Mrs. Fynes= testimony and we would like

to proceed on that basis.

On that basis, Commission counsel

is content simply to put on the record that this is

an issue. It=s an issue that will have to be

addressed. I am making whatever efforts I can to

avoid igniting the issue during Mrs. Fynes=

testimony because all of us are of the view that

the most respectful way of dealing with Mrs. Fynes= testimony is to allow it to go in and to allow her

to finish her evidence.

I am content for this to be

argued, and I would expect that perhaps Thursday

might be a good time for us to argue the motion,

but to argue it at a time when we do not need to

interrupt Mrs. Fynes or her testimony. That is the

intention that I think the three of us have

manifested, but it=s important to note that none of

the three of us -- and I have intentionally not


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given Colonel Drapeau=s position because I am not

sure that I now exactly where he is going to come

down on this issue. None of us has conceded

anything in terms of our position in terms of what

we may think is appropriate or inappropriate or our

ability at some further point to make a principled

argument dealing with all these issues.

THE CHAIRPERSON: Thank you.

Ms Richards?

MS RICHARDS: I notice that Mr.

Freiman=s explanation of my position was much

shorter than his own, so I feel compelled to

address that. I hadn=t intended to make argument,

but since Mr. Freiman has gone into, in my

submission, outlining what his argument on the

issue is, I am just going to briefly state for the

record what ours is because I think it has been

misrepresented, Mr. Chairman.

THE CHAIRPERSON: Okay, but this

isn=t argument for purposes of making a ruling

right now.

MS RICHARDS: No. I am just going

to give you an explanation of what our position is

so that it=s clear on the record. I had hoped not

to do that, but since we have gone down that road


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somewhat, I feel compelled to put that on the

record.

THE CHAIRPERSON: Please do.

MS RICHARDS: First of all, as you

are well aware, this Commission is a statutory

commission and the powers that you have, Mr.

Chairman, to conduct these proceedings and to

receive evidence is set out in the statute.

It=s our position and it has

always been our position that you are bound by that

jurisdictionally, and in this case in a very

practical matter.

Commission counsel has stated that

we had a disagreement about the use that could be

made of certain evidence, and I want to be very

clear on that. It=s not a matter of use. It is

our position that the legislation on this issue was

very clear, and Parliament in its wisdom has seen

fit to impose certain restrictions on this

Commission in terms of the types of evidence that

you can receive in the course of these proceedings.

So it is not a matter of simply use, Mr. Chairman;

it is our position that there are certain types of

evidence that have been enumerated under the

legislation that you may simply not admit into


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evidence or consider in these proceedings.

Under the legislation, Parliament

has headed this provision a restriction and they

have enumerated a number of categories of evidence

or information which you are not permitted to admit

into evidence.

As you know, the one that we have

discussed a lot before you is the issue of

solicitor-client privilege, and that is a specific

exclusion. It goes a little broader than that. As

you are no doubt aware, Mr. Chairman, Parliament

has specified that this Commission cannot receive

into evidence any information that would be

admissible by reason of any privilege, but they

have also gone further and Parliament has

specifically directed this Commission that it may

not receive or accept any answer given or statement

made before a board of inquiry or a summary

investigation.

That is exactly the issue that we

are having, in our submission. We have tried

throughout the course of these proceedings to walk

the line as carefully and as narrowly as we can, as

you know. You have heard testimony about

conclusions drawn at the board of inquiry. You


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have the board of inquiry report before you.

However, when it gets to the point of Commission

counsel or other parties trying to put before you

actual statements made or answers given in response

to questions at the board of inquiry and the

summary investigation, it is our position that that

legislation is clear, that Parliament=s intent is

clear, that this Commission cannot receive that

into evidence in the course of this public interest

hearing. So that is where really the dispute

arises.

Again, I agree with my friend, we

have had a discussion to see if we can avoid that

today. As you may recall, the issue did arise

during Mrs. Fynes= testimony and we have tried to

avoid any unnecessary interruption to the testimony

and I am hopeful that we can get through it today

without that happening again. But as is likely

clear from this outline, if it does happen again, I

will have no choice but to object and then we will

have to decide how we deal with that issue.


Colonel Drapeau?

COL (RET=D) DRAPEAU: Mr. Chair,

let me make my position very, very clear. I am


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sitting at the right of Mr. Freiman. I agree with

everything he says, but as far as I am concerned he

is not going far enough.

This issue that we will see in

more detail as the week progresses, certainly as

the witnesses come, and the point will be more

acute for many of them, we are dealing today with

the possibility of any reference to the BOI not

being acceptable to my friend. That I don=t think

is an issue today because I think we can receive

the testimony of Mrs. Fynes without basically

locking horns on this specific issue.

But there is a wider issue. Many

other witnesses that will come, and particularly

the NIS, will use the BOI as the embryonic

documents from which they launched and investigated

many of the allegations made by the Fynes. You

cannot disassociate the two. First.

Second, the documents -- the BOI,

the draft or the preliminary report became part and

parcel attached to an integral part of the general

occurrences report that was disclosed and has been

introduced as evidence already. So to try to do

that would mean many of us will have to have a

brain transplant that we could only see left side


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information as opposed to right side information.

That would be a difficult thing to do. That=s the

BOI.

In addition to that, if I were to

follow my friend=s logic and arguments and

position, it would also apply to many, many other

redactions. One of the documents which we only

received this very morning deals with the summary

investigation. Same logic, same arguments would be

used. Basically, if you combine the two that we

would not have access to or be able to enter into

evidence any one of the answers provided before

those two bodies means that this Commission would

become handicapped, impotent, unable to answer and

to investigate and to address some of the

allegations made by the Fynes already.

So this issue doesn=t have to be

decided today. We are not speaking to that. But

certainly I want to put a marker down that we will

object to it as robustly as we can.

Mr. Freiman has use the analogy

that it=s like driving a big truck through it. I

wouldn=t use a truck. I would use a military

analogy. It=s using a Leopard tank through the

entire set of documents and evidence that is


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absolutely essential to make the case and essential

to allow us to get to the truth, not only 50 per

cent of it, not only partial, not only what DND

wants to provide or not to provide to the whole

truth so that we can address these allegations and

basically for you to make findings as to the

veracity, authenticity or otherwise.


I get the drift in terms of your

statements today. I don=t accept them as the

arguments, obviously, but just as an outline of

them. It is an issue that I agree will need to be

addressed. The other side of that is probably

sooner than later.

Is Thursday too far away? I think

each side knows the issues for the other, so I

guess we should probably when you want to make this

argument.

MR. FREIMAN: My view is that

Thursday is a good time. Tomorrow we have two

witnesses, neither of whom is likely to have this

issue arise with respect to their testimony.

THE CHAIRPERSON: Do you agree

with that, Colonel Drapeau.

COL (RET=D) DRAPEAU: I do, sir.


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THE CHAIRPERSON: Ms Richards?

MS RICHARDS: As far as I know,

that should be fine. Of course, I don=t know what

Commission counsel=s intentions are for the next

five witnesses, Tuesday and Wednesday, but I will

take him at his word. If he thinks it=s not going

to arise, then we are content to leave it.

COL (RET=D) DRAPEAU: And if it

does, you can object, but I certainly don=t have

any intention also over the next three days

concerning witnesses.

THE CHAIRPERSON: So let=s plan on

arguing it Thursday morning. I think everybody

knows what the positions are, but it is an issue

that needs to be addressed. I recognize that it

has been coming.

Thursday morning at 9:30. I don=t

know what Thursday=s witness list looks like.

MR. FREIMAN: It=s Ms Rebecca

Starr.

THE CHAIRPERSON: Is that all day?

MR. FREIMAN: She is the only

witness. I doubt seriously whether her testimony

will last the entire day, so we should have lots of

time.


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THE CHAIRPERSON: All right. I

think we are all set.

Let=s start with Mrs. Fynes.

RESUMED: SHEILA FYNES

THE CHAIRPERSON: Good morning,

Mrs. Fynes. Welcome back.

CONTINUED EXAMINATION BY MR. FREIMAN:

Q. Good morning, Mrs. Fynes.

A. Good morning, sir.

Q. On behalf of all of counsel,

we apologize for keeping you waiting. We had a

couple of matters that needed to be discussed

before we could get started.

I would like to start by recalling

a bit of evidence that we dealt with last time and

I didn=t have a document in front of me.

If you look to your left on the

pile of documents, the first document you see which

is Exhibit P-4, Collection D, Volume 10, tab 44,

document 868, page 2 is a next-of-kin form. I

think you were telling us about a conversation you

had with Mr. Finlay in which he said something

along the lines of you and Mr. Fynes were the

primary next of kin all along.

I would like you to have a look at


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that document and if you could tell me whether it=s

your understanding that Mr. Finlay was referring to

this document as the basis for that conclusion.

A. Yes, it is.

Q. Thank you. I would like to

take us a little bit further and I would like to

take us to the eve of the board of inquiry. We

have talked a little bit about the board of inquiry

and the setup for the board of inquiry.

If you look at tab 19, you will

see an e-mail that goes back and forth between

Major Lubiniecki and you. The dates are in late

April and then late May of 2009.

I would like you to have a look at

that e-mail exchange and perhaps try to recreate

for us what the event was that led to this exchange

of e-mails. Obviously we have to read it from the

bottom to the top, as always.

A. Yes. When we attended the

board of inquiry, we knew that we were primary and

secondary next of kin. So for my husband, when he

wrote this e-mail, it was to do with who made that

decision to insert someone else.

Q. Yes.

A. It was more than a month


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later that Captain Lubiniecki responded and I am

not sure that he really was able to answer the

question from this e-mail.

Q. Did you have any expectations

coming out of the e-mail you received from Captain

Lubiniecki as to how that specific question and

similar questions would be answered?

A. By the time we got to April

of 2009, we had very few expectations that we were

going to be given the answers to the questions we

were asking.

Q. I would like to then take you

to another matter that arose, I believe, at least

initially during the course of the board of inquiry

and may have spun out to some other locales, and

that was your meeting with Lieutenant Colonel King.

Do you remember who Lieutenant Colonel King was?

A. Yes, he was the legal officer

who was assigned to the board of inquiry. He said

that he would like to meet with us and our lawyer

in Edmonton to do with some of our other issues.

Q. Tell us what happened in

response to that. Lieutenant Colonel King, as I

understand it, through Major Parlee, informed you

that he would like to have a meeting.


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A. I believe it was Major Parlee

who approached us during the inquiry and said that

he would like to have a meeting with us to see

about resolving some of our issues. We spoke with

Bruce King and eventually a meeting was set up

while we were still in Edmonton.

Q. From our point of view, what

was the purpose of that meeting?

A. We went into the meeting

thinking that somebody is listening and now we are

going to start making some forward progress. By

the end of the meeting, a very expensive meeting

for us and a long afternoon -- following that, we

received a letter from Mr. King asking us to

outline on paper everything that we had talked

about at the meeting, and there followed a series

of exchanges where he eventually said that they

wouldn=t be helping us whatsoever. I think it was

somewhere in there that he actually suggested that

we were fortunate that they hadn=t charged us with

storage of Stuart=s things while they were still at

the regiment.

Q. Let=s try to separate a few

things. You told us that during the course of the

BOI, I believe, you were informed that Lieutenant


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Colonel King, the BOI=s legal adviser, wanted to

meet you. You told us that, in your view, the

purpose of that meeting was to help you to resolve

some of your issues.

A. That=s what were told it

would be.

Q. Did you have an expectation

of what issues were going to be dealt with?

A. We had some questions

surrounding the death certificates and having to

have all of that corrected. There were some issues

around the other paperwork, partly the SDB form,

and whether or not that was valid. We had issues

around the Memorial Crosses. We weren=t awarded

those and we were wondering why not. I think they

were primarily the things that we discussed, but in

the meeting we discussed everything.

Q. By everything, you mean --

aside from those very specific issues where, as I

understand it, you had things that you thought had

been done wrongly and you wanted corrected, what

was the Aeverything@ aside from that?

A. At that point we still didn=t

have Stuart=s things returned to us. The inventory

was still sitting at the base.


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Q. If you look at tab 21, you

will see it=s an e-mail from Lieutenant Colonel

King to your counsel.

A. Yes.

Q. It sets out certain

positions. Have a look at it to refresh your

memory.

A. All right.

Q. The e-mail says what it says

and it takes certain positions. You understood

those, you told us, to be essentially that the

military wasn=t going to be helping you.

A. That=s correct.

Q. On whose behalf did you think

that Lieutenant Colonel King was sending you this

correspondence?

A. We realized very quickly

after our initial meeting, and I think that this

confirms it, we had the strong feeling that the

purpose of Mr. King wanting to speak with us was

not to resolve our issues but to find out what our

stance was on the issues. We felt as if he was

there as a fact-finding mission for their purposes

as opposed to a fact-finding mission to assist us.

Q. Did you have any


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understanding as to any relationship between this

aspect of what was going on and the BOI that was

going on simultaneously?

A. We thought that they would be

two separate events, but the fact that Mr. King was

also the legal adviser for the BOI we thought was a

conflict.

Q. Did you ever express that

view to anyone about the conflict?

A. Probably.

Q. We may deal with that in a

little while. I would like to ask you to turn to

tab 24 which is also a bit of correspondence

between a member of the legal team, a lawyer on

behalf of the Department of National Defence, and

your lawyer. I want to draw your attention to the

third and fourth paragraphs.

AAfter a thorough review of all communications from your

firm to various counsel of

the Canadian Forces as well

as my discussions with our

counsel, it is our opinion

that you are still counsel of

record for all of Mrs. Fynes=


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claims against the Crown

until such time as you

formally remove yourself and

your firm as counsel for Mrs.

Fynes. It is on this basis

that I must request you

immediately inform Mrs. Fynes

not to have any further

direct contact with members

of the Canadian Forces,

Department of National

Defence or Department of

Justice with respect to any

matter related to the claim

she has demanded from the

Crown.@ (As read)

It goes on to note that you have

been in contact with several offices. It says:

AAll further contact with the Crown must be through you or

your office to me unless you

formally and in writing

withdraw as counsel. All

sections of the above-

mentioned organizations have


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been informed not to have any

further direct contact with

Mrs. Fynes but to address the

issues through this office.@ (As read)

Did you have an understanding as

to what the impact of this letter was?

A. Yes, I did.

Q. What was your understanding?

A. That I was not to talk to

anybody associated with DND or Veterans Affairs or

Pensions and Estates. This letter suggests that we

had this lawsuit against the Crown. We did not.

Our lawyer was instructed to try and have our legal

fees to have the registration of death reimbursed.

It wasn=t our mistake. If we had been taken to the

funeral home to arrange the funeral, as was our

right, then we probably wouldn=t be sitting here

today. But instead, we probably spent upwards of

about $12,000 to ensure that our son was buried

with proper paperwork and that we would have

correct proofs of death.

We did ask about the SDB form. We

had come to the conclusion that Stuart did new

paperwork because some of it was signed, some of it


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was not. Some of it was dated, some of it was not.

But that paperwork, in conjunction with other facts

as we knew them then clearly outlined what Stuart=s

wishes were and we wanted those wishes honoured.

We are not suing the Crown for

money. We don=t ever expect to be compensated for

the loss of our son, but we strongly felt that=s

what this letter suggested.

Would you like me to go on with

the second paragraph?

Q. Yes, please.

A. This second paragraph set in

motion a chain of events, namely, the press

conference that I did when I came to Ottawa in

October of 2010. I have seldom been so angry as

when I read that paragraph.

Q. Can you explain to us in your

mind what the connection was between receiving this

letter with the paragraph you have mentioned and

calling a press conference?

A. We already had been having

some meetings with our Member of Parliament where

we lived to see if she could be instrumental in

helping us resolve some of our issues with DND.

She wrote some letters.


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After I got this letter and I

shared it with them, we jointly decided that

everything we had done to this point -- because we

are quite a long way down the road now -- was not

only not getting us anywhere, but now we are

getting a letter saying that we weren=t allowed to

speak to anyone. So we jointly decided that

perhaps making it a very public issue might help

break that stonewalling and see if we could get

some progress. And we did.

Q. Can I ask you whether there

was any connection between any of these events and

contact that you may have had with the Office of

the Military Ombudsman?

A. The Military Ombudsman came

onto the scene. We contacted him in January, I

believe, of 2009. He said that they needed to wait

until the board of inquiry had finished its work

and then they would -- they had opened a file and

they would progress.

Q. What was the exact topic that

you addressed to the ombudsman in 2009?

A. There were a number of

topics. Pretty much everything that happened from

the moment that Stuart had died, by the time we


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talked to the ombudsman=s office, we felt we were

being deliberately being kept at arm=s length.

That included the whole paperwork issue, the fact

that we were having difficulty even having Stuart=s

things brought home. It was the Memorial Crosses.

Stuart had filled in a form more than once

designating recipients for the Memorial Crosses.

Everything that we tried to do

that would just normally happen, we had been

prevented or stonewalled or just totally and

completely ignored. We found it completely

unacceptable, from the executor being wrong to the

primary next of kin being wrong. I was offended.

I went to a funeral for my son where we were not

only not the primary next of kin, but we were

second class citizens at that funeral. That hurt.

It hurt for me, it hurt for my family, and it hurt

for my son. It was complicated.

Q. That was one avenue that you

went to, the ombudsman, and you were told to wait

until after the BOI. We saw in the -- let=s do

this in a consecutive fashion.

Did you have an expectation that

the BOI would deal with these post death issues

that you were raising with the ombudsman?


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A. I didn=t feel that they were

going to be able to solve the problems but I felt

that by them asking questions of the appropriate

people, perhaps it would help move some things,

change some things.

Q. We saw in the e-mail from

Captain Lubiniecki a suggestion that the type of

issue that you addressed to him would be answered

by a summary investigation. Do you remember any

discussions about a summary investigation, either

with Captain Lubiniecki or with Major Parlee?

A. Not that I recall right now.

We did have a discussion with Mr. Martel from the

Ombudsman=s Office.

Q. To the extent that you can

remember -- and if you can=t, you can=t -- did you

have any expectations as to what would happen

during the course of the summary investigation that

Captain Lubiniecki refers to?

A. I don=t think I can answer

that right now, I=m sorry.

Q. I would like to briefly turn

to the issue of your relationship with Major

Parkinson. We have already spoken about Major

Parkinson being appointed as your assisting


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officer.

A. Yes.

Q. At one point -- and this is

one of your complaints -- you allege that you were

told that Colonel Parkinson -- and I believe you

were told by a member of the NIS. I think that the

complaint refers to Major Dandurand, as he then

was, but I may be wrong -- that you were told that

Colonel Parkinson was suffering from something

analogous to Stockholm syndrome.

A. That=s right.

Q. Can you put us into the

picture as to what the context of that was?

A. Major Parkinson was on the

scene quite a bit, of course, right after Stuart

died, and then as time went by, our contact became

less and less. But my husband and I were becoming

more and more upset at being ignored. One day we

went to the reserve unit on his night that he was

working and my husband said we need some help with

this.

At that point we were angry. He

listened to us for a while. He said that he would

see what he could do. We went home and later that

evening he sent us a copy of an e-mail that he had


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sent up to someone in Edmonton, I suppose, where he

said that, in his opinion, we had been Adeceived, misled and intentionally marginalized@. His words.

We were astounded that someone had

stepped up and said what they really thought,

consequences be darned.

Q. What was the context for the

Stockholm syndrome comment that you complain about?

A. I think that Major Dandurand

was trying to minimize that comment.

Q. If you look at tab 48,

complaint 9 -- tab 48 is a list of your allegations

that underlie the hearings we are engaged in now.

At tab 9 you say:

ANIS members commented, during a meeting with the

complainants, that a

statement made by their

Assisting Officer indicating

that the complainants were

>deceived, misled and

intentionally marginalized in

their dealings with DND and

the CF= was likely the result

of Stockholm syndrome. This


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25789

demonstrated a previously-

held view by NIS members that

any views critical of the CF

must be wrong. Such views

prevented NIS members from

conducting independent

investigations into the

actions of CF members.@What I asked for was the basis,

the facts as you remember them, about when this

happened, who it was, and the context in which the

statement was made.

A. I don=t remember which of our

three meetings with Major Dandurand this statement

was made. I would guess it was probably the second

meeting when we met in Esquimalt. I know that they

felt that the Stockholm syndrome thing explained

away any criticism that Major Parkinson may have

had with DND.

Q. One of the reasons I am

asking, Mrs. Fynes, is we have the transcripts of

all three interviews and we haven=t been able to

find a reference to Stockholm syndrome.

A. I know.

Q. Do you have any --


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A. It was in an e-mail that that

was said between Major Parkinson and DND.

Q. That we have seen. We have

seen the e-mail containing the words Amisled, deceived and intentionally marginalized@. What we

haven=t been able to do is locate any part in the

transcript where anyone talks about a Stockholm

syndrome or says those words.

A. They were said.

Q. Is it your view, then, that

there were parts of the interview that weren=t

properly recorded or transcribed?

A. It is my belief that there

are pieces missing from the interviews.

Q. Do you have a view as to what

other pieces are missing from the interviews?

A. I do.

Q. Tell me.

A. There was a conversation with

Master Corporal Mitchell, who was the second

investigator working with Major Dandurand. I

honestly cannot recall if it was the second or the

third meeting. My guess is it was the third one.

We have listened to the transcripts of those

meetings as well. If I had to, I could go the


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point in the transcript exactly where the piece has

gone because it stood out, that conversation,

because it was quite a testy exchange.

Our question to Master Corporal

Mitchell was: ASomeone please tell us if Stuart wasn=t on a suicide watch and everything was all

good, as you say, why was he living at the duty

desk? Someone please answer that question. You

said he wasn=t on defaulter=s, he wasn=t under

discipline, he wasn=t under a suicide watch. Why

was he under orders to live at the duty desk?@His first answer was, AOh, he was

only living at the duty desk for the first two days

after he left the hospital -- that would be the 5th

and 6th of March -- until they found him a room

which happened on the 7th.@ That was the first

answer. We came back with, ANo, it=s rumoured that

Stuart was living in his car on those two days.@

And he said, ANo, no, no, living at the duty desk.@So I called his attention to the

NIS report which we had with us and I asked him, I

said, AHave you contributed to this report?@ He

said AYes.@ I said AYou have read it recently?@

AYes.@ AAll of it?@ AYes.@ AThen can I bring your attention to --A and I went to about three


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different pages in that report where it showed

Stuart was living at the duty desk.

His body language -- he just kind

of collapsed and he was staring at the ground and

he never could answer it.

So when we did our access requests

and we listened to the transcripts and the tapes, I

said to Shaun even before I listened, AI bet that=s

missing@ because it made him look so silly. It was

a silly exchange to say Stuart never lived at the

duty desk when it was all over their document that

he did.

Q. I am going to ask you, Mrs.

Fynes, to pick up one of the books in front of you

that says ATranscript - CFNIS Interview of Sheila and Shaun Fynes - May 5, 2010@.

You will have to be patient with

me. I would like you to have a look at page 58 and

thereafter. I am going to read you the exchange of

questions and answers starting on page 58. It

talks about the conditions that were imposed. You

say at line 3 on page 58 -- you have told Major

Dandurand that when Stuart was released from

hospital he was taken directly into a counselling

session. Here is the exchange:


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AWith Dennis?MRS. FYNES: With Dennis and

a bunch of other guys. How

embarrassing is that?

Stuart walked out. He was so

-- he had such a panic and

anxiety attack he actually --

he collapsed in the parking

lot, eyes rolled back in his

head, all the physical

manifestations.

MR. FYNES: He had a seizure,

as a matter of fact.

MRS. FYNES: Right?

MR. FYNES: That=s not

documented in the stuff we=re

read here.@Then you make an allegation that

it was at the board of inquiry.

AOkay, he...he -- is that allowed, to go back to the

Alberta Hospital to get his

car, to get his car keys? He

drove himself out there after

all this happened, and then


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he came back.@Because there was no plan for

him, Sergeant Ross said that

he believed he was living in

his car. So Dennis said,

>I=m done with him...= --

and that=s documented --

>I=m done with him, I=m not

going to deal with him

anymore=.

So Dr. Hanna put that, >If he

wants to go to AA meetings,

he can, and somebody will

have to drive him=.

And then Ross put the other

conditions in place and said

he had to live at the Duty

Desk and had to sleep there

at night.

But we have yet to be told

why he was living at the Duty

Desk?@Here=s the passage:

MAJ DANDURAND: In the Duty

Room?


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MRS. FYNES: M=hmm, why was

he?

MCPL MITCHELL: Because --

sorry, I just went over that

actually. There were no

accommodations when he

returned to the base --

MRS. FYNES: Yeah, but after

that.

MCPL MITCHELL: -- so as a

temporary fix for the first

couple of days --

MRS. FYNES: No, he wasn=t

living there the first couple

of days.

MCPL MITCHELL: I know.

That=s why he was at the duty

centre in the unit lines.

MRS. FYNES: He had a room.

MCPL MITCHELL: In the unit

lines, yes, for the first --

MRS. FYNES: He had a room --

MCPL MITCHELL: In the unit

lines, yeah.

MRS. FYNES: -- on the 7th.


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No, not in unit lines, in the

barracks.

MCPL MITCHELL: Okay, yeah.

But you asked why was he --

MRS. FYNES: Why was he

living at -- why did he have

to stay at duty desk?

MCPL MITCHELL: Because there

were no rooms available in

the quarters that day.

That=s the --

MRS. FYNES: That=s not what

it says in there.

MCPL MITCHELL: That=s the

testimony that I just read.

MR. FYNES: Okay, sorry, so

between the 5th and the 7th,

wherever Stuart lived in that

period of time, when we were

trying to prove stuff for the

courts to get the stuff

changed, we got two different

affidavits from the regiment,

one saying that Stuart lived

--


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MRS. FYNES: In unit lines.

MR. FYNES: -- on Artona and

one that he lived on Korea --

MRS. FYNES: Yeah.

MR. FYNES: -- two different

affidavits saying that he was

living on the base at two

different addresses. So they

didn=t know where the hell he

was. And we certainly didn=t

know anything about --

MRS. FYNES: So when did he

actually get his room

allocated to him? On the

7th?

MCPL MITCHELL: Uh, the

actual dates isn=t coming to

be, but I believe he spent

three days in the Duty

Centre, and then had the --

MRS. FYNES: No, he was at

the Duty Centre right up till

the minute he died.

MR. FYNES: He was -- he was

ordered to reside in the Duty


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25789

Centre, and that was -- those

conditions were put in place

on the 7th of March. He got

out on the 5th, and on the

7th --

MAJ DANDURAND: Okay. Did he

--

MRS. FYNES: He was at the

Duty Desk until -- at the

Duty Centre until the day he

died. And the reason we know

that is because they

testified --

MR. FYNES: They signed an

individual out.

MRS. FYNES: -- he got up in

the morning, he told the guys

there that he=d had really

bad dreams at night and the

nightmares had come back. He

went outside, he swept off

the walk, and then said he

was going to his room to do

his laundry.

MR. FYNES: Sorry --@


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There=s more stuff about signing

in and it goes on at least to page 63.

Is this the passage you are

talking about that you believe was edited or there

is something that is missing?

A. Yes, there is a piece missing

out of here where I refer him to his own NIS

report.

Q. Let=s have another look at

page 133. There is talk about three parties and

the Criminal Code. Major Dandurand at line 10

says:

ASo when we investigate that, if we are looking at

testimony, believe me, the

seeds of cynicism you have

planted even or you=ve --

MRS. FYNES: Good.

MAJ DANDURAND: -- poured

water on them.

MRS. FYNES: Good.

MAJ DANDURAND: Because you

know we=re naturally

suspicious right off the bat.

MRS. FYNES: Then my job is


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25789

done here.

MAJ DANDURAND: But when we

look at this, we=ll say, you

know what, this person

they=re talking about, this

particular aspect of Stuart=s

employment or this particular

aspect of his life, it has

absolutely no bearing, you

know. But nonetheless, they

testified at the Board of

Inquiry. Park that one to

the margin.@ (As read)

He goes on to talk about things

that -- he calls him Mr. Hannah. It was Dr.

Hannah.

A...we need to look at because it speaks to certain

things that we are looking

with respect to the last

month or perhaps leading to

his death. When we look at

that, we don=t just say >Oh,

that=s what he said, that=s

what must have happened.= We


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say, >That=s what he said,

so what does --@ but that is

kind of what you did with the

example, right?@ (As read)

There is more discussion about the

findings of the summary investigation. I=m not

sure this is exactly what I was looking for, I=m

sorry.

Ms Coutlée, who knows everything,

tells me to look at page 177. You are talking

about the NIS report. At line 4 you ask:

AI have a question. Have you read the NIS report all the

way through?

MCPL MITCHELL: The original

one, yes, yes, I have.

MRS. FYNES: Okay.

MCPL MITCHELL: So then that

raises for me the question of

well, it doesn=t matter.

MRS. FYNES: Sorry, it=s been

a long day. It doesn=t

matter. I=ll let it go.

MR. FYNES: I think we=re

there for tonight.


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MRS. FYNES: Yeah, I think

we=re done. Thank you for

travelling out. We were

quite prepared to come to

Edmonton. We appreciate the

professional courtesy.@ (As

read)

That=s the only reference we were

able to find to your asking about the NIS

investigation. Is it your belief that somewhere

around here there was more that was said? Or it

may have been elsewhere?

A. No. Talking about the room,

you mean, where he was living? It would have been

back in here.

Q. At an earlier section.

A. Yes.

Q. I=m trying to locate where

you believe there is an inaccuracy in the

transcript, that some things may have been left out

that you said and that you believe to be important.

A. I think it=s that piece that

would have been back in here.

Q. So it was the earlier piece

we talked about.


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25789

A. Yes.

Q. You have already told us that

the comments that you believe were made about

Stockholm syndrome must have been said and must not

have made their way into the transcript.

In your review of the transcript,

were you able to locate any other errors or

defects?

A. In terms of this?

Q. No, that you talked about

that you were surprised not to see in the

transcript.

A. No, if there was, it wasn=t

anything that was of any importance. That was huge

because it just was such a silly conversation. It

actually typified pretty much our whole experience

so far.

Q. I should ask you, if we are

talking about transcripts of interviews, whether

you have any issues with the way the interviews

were recorded or transcribed?

A. Yes.

Q. Tell me.

A. We were asked if we would

mind if it was recorded, a voice recording, and we


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25789

said absolutely not, that would be good for

everyone concerned. We were never asked if we

would be okay with being video recorded. It wasn=t

until very recently when we got the recording of

that third interview that we put on and, lo and

behold, there it was in video. So that was done

without us knowing about it.

My husband and I actually were --

you know, why would you do that except you are

going to examine everything after the fact.

Q. I am going to ask you a few

more questions in a minute about -- let me ask you

now. You had a number of contacts with the NIS.

You also had some contacts with the BOI. I just

want to be sure we know them all.

In terms of the sudden death

investigation, do you remember having any contact

with the National Investigation Service?

A. That was our third time that

we met with them, and that was in May.

Q. No, I=m thinking about the

initial one that was conducted shortly after

Stuart=s death.

A. After Stuart died? That came

about -- our contact with the NIS. Is that what


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25789

you want to know?

Q. Yes. It would have been

early May 2008.

If it=s of any assistance to you,

you may want to turn up tab 1 in your book of

documents. That says it is a record of

investigative activity of a teleconference between

you and Master Corporal Matthew Allen Ritco.

A. I didn=t request Master

Corporal Ritco to call. He called our home wanting

a little bit of history for his file. So it was

initiated by him, not by us.

Q. I have to ask you because we

need to know what your position is about accuracy.

Does this transcript, to your mind, accurately

capture the discussion that you had with Master

Corporal Ritco?

A. I did not -- when I glance at

it now and I look at it, it=s like, hh, right, I

remember. It=s full of inaccuracies. First of

all, I would never have said that I remarried when

Stuart was four years old. I met Shaun when Stuart

was six. We actually didn=t get married until

Stuart was a teenager. So I would not have said

that.


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I would not have said that Stuart

attended the University Hospital because he never

ever was a patient there. I think that is being

gleaned from somewhere else because I have seen it

written somewhere else that Stuart was taken by

ambulance to University Hospital. I did an access

to information request for all hospitalization

charts and Capital Health said he was never a

patient there.

I think it should be Apanic attacks@, not Apain attacks@.

Q. Can you tell us what line

that is at?

A. That=s (d).

I don=t believe I would have said

that Stuart was struggling with depression. I

would have said PTSD.

Q. Is paragraph (h) an accurate

report of what you would have told Master Corporal

Ritco?

A. Yes.

Q. In March of 2008 Stuart

informed you that he changed the appropriate

paperwork.

A. Yes. When Stuart and Rebecca


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split up in January, they didn=t live together

after that. Their relationship sputtered through

that January to March period. Then in March he

actually tried to change his paperwork. Actually,

I think he tried to do it before that. But we had

a conversation about that.

I said three death certificates,

but I now know that -- I think there may be four.

Q. Other than those points, do

you have any issues with the completeness or

correctness of this summary, based on what you

remember.

A. The rest of it seems to be

fine.

Q. Did you have any other

contacts with respect to that initial sudden death

investigation conducted by the Military Police?

A. In November we had our first

meeting with Major Dandurand and Eric McLaughlin, I

think was the investigator with him then.

Q. Yes.

A. That came about after we had

received our second version of the NIS report.

That was kind of a whole series of events.

Q. Tell me about that.


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A. I have to remember which

month now. In the summer -- June maybe. Actually,

it was June. It was after we got the suicide note.

Q. This would have been June

2009.

A. June of 2009 I received a

telephone call from Colonel Sansterre. He actually

wasn=t calling for us. He had called our number by

mistake. He started the conversation with AMay I speak with Major Parkinson?@

Q. Yes.

A. I was a little bit surprised

and immediately realized you have both numbers and

you have called thinking that this is Major

Parkinson. So I said, AI=m sorry, he=s not here,

can I take a message?@ He explained that he needed

to speak to Major Parkinson and I said -- the

conversation was along the lines of: I think you

probably want to speak to him about us, so why

don=t you just ask us directly what it is that you

would like to know.

Q. Yes.

A. He was a little bit taken

aback. I think I kind of caught him flat-footed

and he wasn=t too sure what to say. He talked


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about the note a little bit and confirmed that we

now had it. I said AWhile you are on the phone, there=s something that you can do for us@, and we

asked him if we could have a copy of the National

Investigative Services report into the death of our

son, and he said that he would do that.

Q. Yes.

A. He was very obliging. Within

a very few days he actually had a very abbreviated

copy of the report couriered out to Captain

Weatherbee who hand-delivered it to our home.

The report was small. It was

mostly redactions. The only pieces that we

received were pieces that we already had anyway,

like copies of his medical files. There was

nothing new in there. That led to us inquiring

about the rest of the report. We actually counted.

We got 260-odd pages of the report. We thought at

that time, and until quite recently, that there

were 514 pages of that report -- I think 514 or 578

-- 500-plus of that report and we wanted the rest

of it.

So a second report was sent out to

us and that one was much more complete. There were

tons of pages redacted, lots of lines redacted that


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we didn=t understand because some of it was about

us, some of it was stuff that they knew we already

had. Since Shaun was Stuart=s personal

representative, we thought he probably was entitled

to most everything other than other people=s

personal information.

Anyway, we had this second report.

Then we asked if we could have a debriefing on that

report.

Q. Yes.

A. And that is how we came to

have our next contact -- our first contact with

Major Dandurand and that happened at the end of

November.

Q. From your point of view, what

was the purpose of that second contact?

A. The one that came after that

in March?

Q. Yes. Sorry, let=s talk about

the first meeting.

A. The first meeting was in

November and that was to give us a debriefing. We

had been told that we were entitled to have a

debriefing of the investigation. So we were coming

out to Edmonton in November anyway, so it was set


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up that we would meet then. It was just to talk

about the investigation into Stuart=s death.

Q. Were you satisfied with the

outcome of that briefing?

A. They appeared to be very nice

and on the surface were attempting to be helpful.

We had only seen the second copy of the report a

couple of days before we went to this meeting, so

we had only done a very quick search through it.

We had some issues surrounding the report that we

wanted addressed regarding inconsistent statements

and what efforts were going to be made to clarify

those statements so that the final report would be

good.

My husband had some issues around

their findings at the end. He felt that they

weren=t people who were qualified to make those

findings. He can speak to that better.

Q. We will reserve that for when

he comes to talk to us.

After that briefing, I understand

there was another meeting with Major Dandurand.

What was the purpose of that meeting?

A. The first one he said that he

would -- actually, I think he did mention the


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summary investigation then because he said that as

the investigation progressed he would keep us up to

date and it would be on a very regular basis, like

every two weeks or so. It came to March and we

hadn=t really had any updates.

Q. Yes.

A. So that led to the meeting

that we had in March.

Q. What happened at that

meeting?

A. It was pretty much a repeat

of the first meeting.

Q. How was it left at the end of

that meeting and were satisfied, unsatisfied? What

were you looking for? What was offered to you?

A. They were still

investigating. We told them that we still had many

questions. They assured us they were still

investigating and they would get back to us.

Q. You had a third meeting,

correct?

A. We did.

Q. Tell me what the purpose of

that meeting was.

A. My husband asked for that


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meeting very specifically so that he could give

them a letter asking them to investigate for

criminal negligence resulting in our son=s death.

Q. From your point of view, was

that meeting satisfactory or non-satisfactory?

A. I don=t think we can say it

was satisfactory because here we are.

Q. I am going to be skipping

back and forth on a number of issues, but I want to

just address a few of them and then we will go to

some allegations.

You said that during the course of

the first briefing you were promised that there

would be contact very regularly.

A. Yes.

Q. Was that promise kept?

A. No.

Q. Tell me about that.

A. It was like everything else

to do with everything administrative after Stuart

died it was just more of the same, being ignored

and Major Dandurand did it with a smile on his

face, but the fact was we got no answers and we

were ignored as much as possible.

Q. I understand that at some


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point a new investigator was put on the file. That

would have been Sergeant Shannon.

A. Right.

Q. Can you tell me about your

contact with Sergeant Shannon?

A. He called around the Labour

Day weekend of two thousand and --

Q. Ten.

A. Ten. Thank you. Again, he

was very nice. He said that he had been assigned

the case. He had taken over from Mitchell, that he

was going to spend his weekend -- even though he

had just moved, it was important enough he was

going to spend his weekend reading up on this very

comprehensive file and that we would hear from him

the very next business day. And we didn=t.

Q. When was the next time you

did hear from him?

A. In the new year for sure.

Q. I might be able to assist

you. If you look at tab 47 --

A. There=s so many meetings, so

many contacts, it=s all starting to melt into each

other.

Q. Sometimes it=s helpful to


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have a document in front of us to get the

chronology right. Look at tab 37 and tell me if

that refreshes your memory about any contacts.

A. I do remember this contact.

Q. Tell me about that contact.

A. They were ready to give us a

debriefing for the investigations. By then we

decided that we would like to have the debriefing

at our lawyer=s office. They were quite clear that

they wanted to give us a PowerPoint presentation at

a hotel room. We didn=t want a PowerPoint

presentation. We didn=t want a nice prepackaged

little show. We wanted to have a back-and-forth

conversation about what their findings were. We

felt a PowerPoint presentation wouldn=t accomplish

that.

Then it was all shut down, they

weren=t going to meet with us, and that we would

get a letter instead, which is what happened.

Q. That was in April, I believe.

A. Yes.

Q. Were you satisfied with the

contents of the letter?

A. No.

Q. Let me go over some specific


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issues that we haven=t dealt with at this point.

For completeness of the record,

why were you not satisfied with the contents of the

letter?

A. The letter was broken down

and addressed each of the three investigations.

Q. I think we are looking at tab

5.

A. First of all, the first

investigation was their investigation into our

son=s death.

Q. Yes.

A. The second investigation was

the result of the Military Ombudsman=s Office

contacting the NIS to start that investigation.

It=s not something we started, but of course

something that we had an interest in. The third

investigation was to do with my husband=s

allegations of negligence.

We felt, to sum up this letter:

We did nothing wrong then and we are doing nothing

wrong now and will do nothing wrong in the future.

Q. Let=s go back and look at

some of the things you say were done wrong in the

past. You have a specific complaint about the


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suicide note. Can you talk about the specific

complaint you have with respect to what happened to

the suicide note?

A. The suicide note was our

note. There was, in our mind, absolutely no reason

whatsoever for that note to be seized in the first

place. There was certainly no need for it to be

kept for many months. I don=t know if it was

forgotten about after the file was closed, but that

was our son=s last communication with us and I

cannot possibly imagine what evidentiary value it

had in the beginning or why it should have been

kept after the file was closed.

Q. We are going to look at tab

48 quite a bit in the next five to 10 minutes, so

you may want to have that to hand. I want to refer

you to allegation 26 and allegation 33.

THE CHAIRPERSON: I just want to

find the most appropriate time before you start

getting into allegations. I don=t know whether

this is the best time or not.

MR. FREIMAN: I expect that I have

about 20 minutes left, but we might as well take a

break if you like.

THE CHAIRPERSON: If it=s 20


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minutes, I think you can go ahead and finish unless

you think it=s going to be longer.

MS RICHARDS: Could we take a two-

minute health break and then we can finish?

THE CHAIRPERSON: Yes. Let=s take

five minutes for a health break and then we will

finish with Mr. Freiman.

--- Short recess at 11:52 a.m..

--- Upon resuming at 12:00 p.m.

MR. FREIMAN: Mrs. Fynes, what I

would like to do in the concluding few moments of

my questions is to go over some but not all of the

complaints at paragraph 48. Just to explain to

you, some of the allegations speak for themselves

and direct us to compare certain things or to draw

some conclusions. Others of the complaints are

based on facts that are not yet in evidence. I am

just going to ask you with respect to those

complaints to give us a little bit of background.

Before I do that, though, just by

way of preliminarily setting the record straight,

Ms Richards at the break informed me quite

correctly that I may have created a misimpression

about the transcripts. The transcripts that were

created were created by or on behalf of the


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Commission. They were created based on the audio

tapes that were provided to us by the military

through the Department of Justice.

Our belief is that the

transcription is complete and we have transcribed

everything that was on the audio tapes, and I

believe you have had an opportunity to listen to

the audio tapes as well. I did not want to create

the impression that these transcripts are in any

way the work of the military or the Department of

Justice.

The transcripts are our work. The

tapes on which they are based are the tapes of

conversations that were submitted to us. In those

circumstances, I just want to be clear that the

references you made about incompleteness were

incompleteness in terms of substance rather than

the words on the page.

THE CHAIRPERSON: Having said

that, Mr. Freiman, for purposes of reference, are

those tapes subject to me listening to them?

MR. FREIMAN: They are.

THE CHAIRPERSON: They are part of

the filing?

MR. FREIMAN: They are part of the


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filing. We compiled the transcripts so as to make

it possible for people to address the content

without playing the tapes in the hearing.

THE CHAIRPERSON: Okay.

MR. FREIMAN:

Q. I would like to take you to

tab 48. We are going to be skipping back and forth

because of the organization of this document.

The allegation at number 7 is:

ANIS members involved in the conduct of the 2008 Sudden

Death investigation provided

inaccurate information to the

Alberta Medical Examiner (ME)

about whether Cpl Langridge

was the subject of

disciplinary action in the

CF. This resulted in an

inaccurate mention on the ME

certificate that Cpl

Langridge had >disciplinary

issues.= NIS refused to make

any attempt to have this

inaccuracy corrected.@Can you fill us in on the facts

A.S.A.P. Reporting Services Inc.

(613) 564-2727 (416) 861-8720

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that underline this allegation?

A. It does say at the bottom of

the medical examiner=s report that he was a soldier

who had disciplinary issues. We questioned it

because we had already heard that he was not on

defaulter=s or had any disciplinary issues.

We were told that if the medical

examiner had written it down, it wasn=t because of

information that was provided to him. He must have

just deduced himself that that was the case, that

he had disciplinary issues. That led us to think

that to make that deduction he had to have at least

been party to some conversation. We asked if they

would help us get in touch with the medical

examiner=s office and have that corrected, and they

said no.

Q. Let=s look at allegation

number 8:

AThe NIS and its members made inaccurate statements about

where Cpl Langridge was

residing immediately prior to

his death. Those statements

were aimed at exonerating the

LDSH Chain of command of any


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responsibility and were

examples of NIS participation

in broader efforts by the CF

to exonerate themselves from

any responsibility.@Can you tell us about that?

A. There=s the whole issue of

where Stuart was living when he came out of the

hospital and where he was living when he was under

orders to be at the duty desk.

There didn=t seem to be any clear

answer from anyone at the NIS about what the truth

of the matter was and didn=t seem to be interested

in solving that particular puzzle.

Q. Paragraph 9 we have already

dealt with. That is the complaint about the

Stockholm syndrome.

Paragraph 10:

ANIS agreed to participate in an intended briefing that was

offered to the complainants

by the CF and that was to

include information about the

CF Board of Inquiry, as well

as about the CFNIS


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investigations. NIS failed

to preserve its independence

by failing to ensure that its

police investigations were

kept separate and distinct

from other internal CF

processes.@Do I understand that the essence

of this complaint is that you were to be briefed

simultaneously about the board of inquiry and about

the various police investigations?

A. Yes, and we were told that we

would be getting our PowerPoint presentation. It

was at that time period we were told that because

we still hadn=t been told anything about the report

from the BOI and we were told that it would all be

rolled into one great big, giant debriefing. We

already knew that the NIS report had been provided

to the board of inquiry and the board of inquiry

had provided information to the NIS and this just

sort of further cemented that there was no

independence from each other.

Q. Some of the following

allegations we can deal with without getting

further information from you. Paragraph 15 is


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under the rubric of allegations relating to

insufficient investigation or failure to

investigate. At paragraph 15, you say:

ANIS failed to properly investigate in a timely

manner the potential criminal

or service offences committed

by members of the LDSH Chain

of Command and other CF

members prior to Cpl

Langridge=s death.@I think that is a self-explanatory

statement. It=s the next one:

AConduct requiring further investigation, follow-up and

analysis was uncovered during

the 2008 investigation and

was specifically brought to

the attention of the NIS by

the complainants.@Can you tell us where and how this

happened? What was brought to the attention of the

NIS or is there a document we can refer to that

contains that? If you can=t answer the question,

we can ask Mr. Fynes.


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A. What I do know is that in the

early winter of 2009 the Military Ombudsman=s

Office brought the whole issue of the next-of-kin

paperwork issue to the NIS=s attention in Ottawa

and then it filtered through to them to

investigate.

Q. Let=s look at some very

detailed complaints. Paragraph 23:

ANIS failed to investigate, follow up or provide a

response to the complainants

with respect to the concerns

they raised about damage done

to Cpl Langridge=s blackberry

and computer while in NIS and

CF custody.@Can you tell us about that

complaint?

A. The issue of the BlackBerry:

When we called to have Stuart=s phone plan shut

down, we were asked as of when, when did Stuart

die, and we told them and they said the last time

it was used was on March 16th, in the early hours

of March 16th. I said, no, no, my son died on the

15th, that can=t be right. They actually gave me


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times and what it was used for, how many minutes

and what it was used for.

According to them -- and we don=t

have the records for this. We have asked for them

and I think they just don=t want to be involved.

They told us that at 4-something in the morning it

was used to surf the web, the net, for 30-some-odd

minutes. The phone was left on because after that

there was also some incoming texts, I think.

So we asked about that. We said,

AWhy is it that Stuart=s BlackBerry, which we

assumed would be locked up -- because you said you

locked up his things -- why was somebody using his

BlackBerry to surf the net? That=s just plain

wrong.@We didn=t ever get an answer about

that other than it didn=t happen. We don=t make

this stuff up as we go along.

Then the computer was an issue,

because when we were told Rebecca was next of kin,

we accepted that, we went along with that. That=s

what they said, that=s what must be true at the

time. One of the things that she wanted to do was

access the computer so that she could pull some

photos off for the reception. By then we knew that


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I was the beneficiary of Stuart=s estate, so they

came to us and asked us for permission to do that.

We said yes, but we didn=t want anything taken off

the computer. We were thinking at the time that if

there are photos of both of them or whatever, we

want whatever photos are on there, we want the

computer left as is.

So it was arranged that Rebecca

would be allowed to pull some photos off for the

purpose of the funeral only and she would be

supervised doing it.

Then later on in discussions with

the NIS, it came to light that the computer wasn=t

working. We asked how can that be because we do

know the photos were taken off. We saw the photos.

So when did it become a not working computer? When

did it become damaged? Was it while -- did Rebecca

do something with it? Did something happen when it

was transported? How is it that it=s not working?

We never got an answer for that.

Let me go back about the

BlackBerry for a second. One of the things that

the NIS asked us for was Stuart=s password for his

phone and I said I didn=t know. They said they

sent it away to the RCMP to see if they could


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analyse his phone. That was after the file was

closed, after the whole investigation was over.

They took his BlackBerry which they still had and

said they sent it away.

I don=t think it was their

BlackBerry at that point to do that.

Q. Paragraph 26 talks in general

about the failure to advise you about the suicide

note. We have seen the chronology. You have been

in the room when we have heard some of the

chronology discussed. From your point of view, is

there anything that should be added for us to

understand your complaints about the way the

suicide note was revealed to you and given to you

or when it was revealed to you, when it was given

to you and how it was given to you.

A. I think I said the other day

we didn=t know about it until the end of May when

Major Parlee made it known. Initially they sent us

a photocopy. Then we asked for and received the

original. One of the things that the NIS told us

was that -- they made a comment that they -- I

guess they were trying to excuse why we never got

it. They said that of course it would be held

because when they do an investigation of a death,


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they start from the place of, you know, was it a

murder, was it a suicide, was it an assisted

suicide, and that that note would be evidence held

for that reason.

Then they kept it after that

because there might be an appeal. I remember my

husband=s reaction was AAppealing what? There was no crime here.@ It was a lot of waffling and a lot

of excuses.

We also know from listening to the

tapes that when Major Parkinson was interviewed on

this particular piece of information Major

Dandurand actually makes the comment, AWhat is it that they don=t understand@, sort of comment, AWe have explained it to them twice now.@

Q. Let me refer you to that

transcript. I think it=s at page 45 of the 18

March transcript --

Ms Coutlée will put it into

evidence.

MS COUTLÉE: This is a document

that is already in evidence at Exhibit P-2,

Collection B, Volume 2, tab 5, document 1087F, the

transcript for the NIS interview with Major

Parkinson.


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MS RICHARDS: Maybe you could give

us all a chance to pull that out.

MR. FREIMAN:

Q. I am actually going to ask

you to look at page 44 when everyone is on the same

wavelength.

At page 44, just to introduce the

topic, at line 8, Major Parkinson is going over

some of the complaints that he says you

communicated to him. At line 9 he says:

A>Family was told there was

no suicide note=, and there

was, okay, and that would

have had a very real bearing

on the funeral service

itself, because the note said

specifically he didn=t want

any service.

MAJ DANDURAND: Yeah. Well,

you and I spoke on that --

MAJ PARKINSON: Yeah.

MAJ DANDURAND: -- issue

before, so I=ll just jump in

and --

MAJ PARKINSON: I don=t need


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a --

MAJ DANDURAND: But, no --

MAJ PARKINSON: Yeah, we=ve

been there.

MAJ DANDURAND: Yeah. The

issue is there=s very much a

recognition by the NIS that,

you know what, there should

have been a review of

evidentiary holdings at least

at the end of the file, and

we would have been able to

give it to them at that

point. I believe the file

was concluded within three

months.

At that point where it=s

determined that foul play is

ruled out --

MAJ PARKINSON: M=hmm.

MAJ DANDURAND: -- we accept

that we=ve changed our

practices that, yes,

actually, it=s at that point.

The part where I think it


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would have had no bearing on

the funeral dealings is that

the determination of no foul

play had not yet been made at

the point of the funeral.

And we=ve explained at this

at length, and I=m explaining

this now because you do still

have contact with Shaun and

Sheila Fynes, and, funny

enough -- not funny, but

oddly enough this still does

come up, even though they=ve

had it explained twice to

them.


MAJ DANDURAND: The issue is

that, until that

determination=s made, that=s

considered non-disclosable

evidence, from a police

investigation point of view.

It=s frustrating for the

family perhaps, but had it

been foul play, had it been


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foul play and the note had

been falsified --


MAJ DANDURAND: -- and then

they had acted on that for

the funeral --

MAJ PARKINSON: Yeah.

MAJ DANDURAND: -- that could

have been equally traumatic.

Yeah.@That=s the passage I think you

were referring to.

A. We only have pieces of this.

Our disk was quite heavily redacted, but we do have

some of this.

Q. All right. Is that part of

your complaint about what the NIS did or didn=t do?

A. Yes.

Q. Tell us why that is part of

the complaint.

A. As he says there, their

justification for withholding the note was that

they had to investigate foul play. It was deemed a

suicide within the first two and a half minutes, I

think, after having found Stuart. They were


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waiting for toxicology which I believe came in

around May. Their file was closed in June.

I have read a lot of material

about the investigation into Stuart=s death and I

have yet to see anything that constitutes even the

beginning of an inquiry into could he have been

murdered. It just isn=t there. Everyone knew it

was a suicide, so I just don=t see anywhere ever

there is any justification for that note being

withheld for one minute.

Q. We understand that at some

point you were offered an apology about the suicide

note. Can you tell us about that?

A. No, I can=t.

Q. To your mind there was no

apology.

A. No.

Q. We have also heard that there

was a policy change. I think there is reference to

that in Major Dandurand=s statement to Major

Parkinson. What were you informed was the nature

of the policy change?

A. We weren=t.

Q. Let=s continue back at tab 48

and look at a couple more of the complaints.


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Complaint number 27:

ANIS members failed to promptly cut down Cpl

Langridge and show respect

for his body once they

arrived at the scene.@We have seen the videotape; you

have not, thankfully. Is there any additional

information or evidence that you have from any

other source that has a bearing on this allegation?

A. The other source for me would

be my husband=s experience as a police officer.

Q. Yes.

A. In his mind, one of the first

things that he told me that he learned was if you

attend something like this, that you can cut the

rope or whatever as long as you don=t compromise

the knots. If it appears to be a suicide, there is

no reason that you would need to --

Q. I think maybe we will ask Mr.

Fynes to provide his comments. Since you are just

telling us what he has told you, we will go to the

source.

Can we look, then, down to

paragraph 32. You have:


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ANIS reports contained inaccurate factual

statements. In particular:

a. The 2008 investigation

report contained incorrect

facts, including an account

of a suicide attempt and

hospitalization of Cpl

Langridge, whereas hospital

records show he was not

hospitalized during this

period and the MP making the

statement took no notes about

the incident. The inaccurate

factual statements were not

re-examined by NIS members

when the complainants brought

new facts to their

attention.@Can you tell us specifically what

it was you say was inaccurately recorded and where

you get the information about the MP making the

statement taking no notes?

A. We went through the NIS

report very carefully. My husband and I actually


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each did it independently. We each had a report.

We did it that way partially so that we could --

AIs it accurate what we are saying; are we both seeing the same things?@

Q. Yes.

A. Right from the very

beginning, right through the whole report, there

were -- everybody comes into this. They do their

witness statements and they are going to have their

own view of what happened. They are probably going

to try very hard to protect their own little piece

of turf so you expect to see some differences in

statements.

Some of it was just so wildly

different and inaccurate that we felt there was an

onus on Major Dandurand to investigate these

inaccuracies that we brought before him. To have

in there that Stuart had a suicide attempt in 2003,

no, he didn=t. I think that we would have known

about that. There are the different statements

between people, different interviews. There was no

balance to the report in terms of -- there were no

service records attached to the report. There is

mental health stuff that goes way back to when he

was six months old, but there are no service


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records that show what a great soldier he had been.

We felt they should have been provided for balance.

Captain Lubiniecki made statements

that -- there were people that made statements

about things that just were not true. When we

pointed these out, it wasn=t AOh, well, okay, we=ll look into this@, it was just AOh, okay.@

Q. Would these facts that you

brought to the attention of the NIS be contained in

one of the three or all three of the interviews

with Major Dandurand or was there additional

information provided by another means?

A. He was provided with copies

of documents in terms of the next of kin, and

everything that we had to support the statements

that we were making.

Q. When you say that the MP took

no notes, are you referring to Major Dandurand

taking no notes during your interviews with him?

A. I am referring to Major

Dandurand and the investigator.

Q. Paragraph 33 is the last one

I am going to ask you about. AA@ we have already

talked about. It says:

AInaccurate rationales were


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provided by NIS members to

explain or justify the

actions taken by NIS.@First was the issue of appeals.

We have already talked about that.

Ab. NIS members inaccurately stated that the

responsibility for failing to

promptly cut down Cpl

Langridge=s body rested with

the Alberta Medical

Examiner.@We can certainly look at

provincial statutes to look at that or federal law.

Do you have any additional information or anything

else that has a bearing on this?

A. Yes. My husband challenged

them on that, and then followed up by writing away

to, I think, the Attorney General=s office in

Alberta to find out what the right answer to the

question could he be cut down or not. He was told

the NIS couldn=t take him down because it was the

medical examiner=s jurisdiction, but it was indeed

the NIS -- the Military Police and the NIS had

jurisdiction over the medical examiner and it was


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their responsibility to do that.

Q. I think AC@ speaks for

itself. AC@ says:

ANIS members took the position that it was not

their responsibility if the

ME overheard things during

the processing of the scene

and made his inaccurate

comment about the

disciplinary issues on that

basis.@I think you have told us about

that.

A. That=s right.

Q. The last allegation that I

would like to ask you about is 33(d):

ANIS members advised the complainants that, under MP

policies, they were allowed

to retain the exhibits for a

period of one year to provide

for an appeal period.@Is that the issue you told us

about before?


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25789

A. Yes.

Q. You have had the weekend to

think through your evidence from last week. Is

there any matter that you need to clarify?

A. Yes, there is, actually.

There are two things. The first thing is in my

comment we were talking about Stuart=s treatment at

the hospital or lack of treatment from the base,

and I listed off a whole series of things that I

thought were wrong, and I mentioned that Kim

Buchanan from the Alberta Hospital was not called

to testify at the board of inquiry. In fact, she

was. It Dr. Block from the hospital who wasn=t

called, along with Dr. Lai.

The other thing is when we were

closing down Stuart=s house. I think it=s really

important that I clarify this completely. Rebecca

was not part of closing down that house in any way

except for at the end of the day when she got off

work she appeared at the house to ask if she had

left behind an old, huge, big rear projection TV

and she wanted to donate it to the junior ranks

mess at the base.

MR. FREIMAN: Mrs. Fynes, you have

been very patient with me, and I thank you. Those


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are my questions, although I am sure that both

Colonel Drapeau and Ms Richards will have questions

that they wish to ask you as well.

THE WITNESS: Thank you.

THE CHAIRPERSON: Thank you, Mr.

Freiman.

Would one hour be sufficient for

lunch or does counsel need longer?

MS RICHARDS: That=s fine.

THE CHAIRPERSON: We will adjourn

until 1:30.

--- Luncheon recess at 12:30 p.m.


THE CHAIRPERSON: Mr. Freiman?

MR. FREIMAN: Yes. Ms Coutlée has

usual educated me the actual state of affairs

rather than the pretence state of affairs that I

thought it were in fact in existence.

On the issue of the tapes from

which the transcripts have been made, there are

redaction issues in those tapes, and accordingly,

the transcripts are in evidence, but because we are

not capable of physically cutting out, and we

wouldn't want to cut out parts of the tape, the

tape itself is not in evidence before you.


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THE CHAIRPERSON: Ms Fynes has

made an allegation that there has been a piece cut

out of the tape, that there is a piece missing from

the tape, so there is only two or three ways that

can happen. One is it's missed in translation, one

is taken out digitally or some other way, so the

question is at some point, that has to be addressed

without dealing with the examination.

MS RICHARDS: I don't believe

there are any redactions in Ms Fynes transcripts,

and I stand to be corrected if there are, but I

don't know why we couldn't admit her tapes from her

interview.

THE CHAIRPERSON: Ms Coutlée?

MS COUTLÉE: Mr. Chairman, for all

of the tapes for the NIS interviews, there had been

an initial request for them and it was agreed with

the CFPM's counsel that in lieu of introducing the

tapes, because they advised us some redactions

would be necessary, and I'm not sure specifically

to which of the interviews and whether that

includes the interview with the Fynes, but we never

received specific authorization to disclose these

tapes to the parties or introduce them into

evidence, and because they were provided to us by


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25789

CFPM as Protected B materials, without such

authorization, we cannot enter them as public

exhibits.

MS RICHARDS: I will check and I

can speak to Commission counsel.

THE CHAIRPERSON: When we say

tapes, I'm going to make an assumption that they

are digitally recorded devices, not tapes.

MS RICHARDS: I think that's

correct, but we will have to -- I'm happy to speak

to Commission counsel. I think that that's an

issue that's easily resolved.

THE CHAIRPERSON: Yes.

COL (RET'D) DRAPEAU: Is it

audiotape or audio and videotape?

MS COUTLÉE: We have both. Some

interviews were audio recorded, others were video

recorded, so some of the interviews are videos with

an audio track and some of the interviews are audio

recordings.

THE CHAIRPERSON: So this

particular one that Ms Fynes was making the

allegation reference to, she said that there was

some video recording of it. Would this be one that

was video recorded?


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25789

MS COUTLÉE: I believe so, but I

would have to double check just to make sure.

THE CHAIRPERSON: Because that

would be very easy to deal with, much easier to

deal with than just the -- we would have some

questions from a technical point of view. I'm not

a techy geek, but there is ways to deal with that.

I know it's very easy to address whether or not

things have been tampered with, so I guess -- how

do we leave it?

MS RICHARDS: I will make some

inquiries and I will communicate with counsel and

we can discuss. My understanding is actually the

Fynes have copies of these already.

COL (RET'D) DRAPEAU: They have

received some through ATIP, but I couldn't tell you

whether or not the one received from ATIP are also

redacted or not. Don't know.

THE CHAIRPERSON: But I think as

Ms Coutlée says is that Commission counsel has said

we can have them under certain conditions and we

need to make sure those conditions are properly

addressed. It doesn't have to be addressed today

or tomorrow, so before the hearing winds down, we

need to address it.


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25789

MS RICHARDS: I think this is an

easy one to resolve, you will be glad to hear.

THE CHAIRPERSON: I think so.

Just one moment, Ms Fynes. I'm sorry. I'm just

making a note here, not about you.

Colonel Drapeau?

CROSS-EXAMINATION BY COL (RET'D) DRAPEAU:

COL (RET'D) DRAPEAU:

Q. Good afternoon, Ms Fynes.

A. Good afternoon.

Q. I have a number of questions

for you. What I want to say at the very beginning

is if at any time you are tired, you would like to

have a break, please say so. Stop me. Say so.

A. Thank you.

Q. You testified this morning

about Colonel King, the local legal officer in

Edmonton who calls you and your husband, you have

meeting with your own solicitor creating, you said,

legal explanation for you.

At this meeting, in your opinion,

in what capacity was Colonel King acting? Was he

acting for the board of inquiry? Was he acting for

the whole of DND, or was he acting for the both of

them?


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25789

A. I think he was acting for

both of them.

Q. In your testimony, you noted

that at the funeral, you, and I presume your

husband, felt like second class citizen. Could you

explain what you mean by that?

A. When we arrived at -- first

of all, we went to a viewing that morning of Stuart

and it's something that if it had became a choice,

we would have said no, no viewing.

But once we knew that I could go

and see him again, then we did, and that was

probably a mistake. It was a mistake. We were

told that we would be allocated to 30 minute time

slot in that day to see him. We questioned that,

and we were told, "Oh no, that's okay. You can go

for as long as you want."

As it turned out, we only did go

for a few minutes. When we arrived at the funeral,

we were told immediately afterwards while we were

still outside that there was a big kerfuffle when

we arrived because there was no seating for us.

There was a "Where are they going to sit?" So we

were eventually led to the first row. When Ms

Starr arrived with her mother and her father, part


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25789

of my family was bumped to the second row to

accommodate Rebecca having her mother sit beside

her at the first two seats.

We left the funeral and went to

the reception. There was one crew mate of Stuart

who spoke to me and offered his condolences and

Major Jared and I had a brief conversation. Other

than that, there wasn't one single person who came

up to my and offered condolences in the loss of our

son.

Q. Did Major Lubiniecki not come

to you and offer his condolences?

A. No, sir.

Q. Was Colonel Demers, the

commanding officer?

A. No, no one.

Q. Colonel Cadieu?

A. No.

Q. Deputy commanding officer?

A. No.

Q. The RSM?

A. No.

Q. You obtain, I believe, a copy

of the NIS reports from the Access to Information

Act?


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25789

A. The first two came from the

NIS themselves, and then the third copy we got

through the Access to Information.

Q. Of the NIS report.

A. Yes.

Q. Was there any discrepancy

between them or --

A. The first copy had about

260pages of what we thought was a 500 and some page

report. The second copy, we had more than that.

The third copy when we did an Access to Information

Request, we got most of 578pages.

The problem was that when we

started to compare the copies, we realized that the

third copy, the pages were numbered completely

different, and it's not just that pages had been

added at the end more information, there was, for

example, a witness' interview might be on page 203

on one copy and on page 470 on the third copy, so

everything was out of order.

There were interviews that had

been no mention before, but we were really

concerned when we saw that the numbering was

completely different. In fact, our comment was

they are running a double set of files here, one


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25789

that is released to us and one that has been

released elsewhere because it was completely out of

order everywhere.

Q. Were you provided with an

explanation as to why these presentations would be

so different?

A. No, no explanation.

Q. What I would like you to tell

us is what did the 14month delay in discovering the

existence of a suicide note did to you and your

family. Your husband Shaun wrote that it was

cruel, callous and disrespectful. What do you say?

A. I don't know what to say to

that. The contents of the note itself had some

ramification as to how if we had been given a

choice, events would have unfolded in terms of the

funeral, so much of the information came after the

fact in chunks. I was devastated, to be honest. I

just had this image of my son sitting there and

going through a shopping list of the people who he

thought was important, the people who were

important in his life who actually would still care

about it. Sorry.

And I just thought what a horribly

lonely place he was in when he wrote that note, and


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25789

then nobody even cared enough to think that we

might want to see it. How do I answer that? I

have an image of my son that day now. I have two

images of my son that day, but he was sitting there

writing that note -- breaks my heart.

Q. Ms Fynes, let's change

subject and talk about your dealing with the

ombudsman. I'm referring to retired Major General

Pierre Daigle, who is the ombudsman. Why did you

go to the ombudsman?

A. We went to the ombudsman

because no one would listen to us and our contact

with Mr. Daigle was a town hall meeting that was

held in Esquimalt.

Q. For you specifically or was

it for --

A. It was a regular town hall

meeting and someone in the system had told us that

he was going to be there and our issues were

already in the ombudsman's office at that time and

we appreciated that it would take a long time to

work its way through the system, but we did go to

the town hall meeting and we did Mr. Daigle and he

knew who we were.

Q. Do you remember when that


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25789

took place?

A. It was quite a ways down the

road in the process and I don't recall exactly when

that was.

Q. Mr. Daigle appointed two

investigators, correct?

A. I don't know how that piece

unfolded because my husband-- I actually made a

phone call, and then my husband followed up with --

and Mr. Martel had contacted him and said he was

the investigator who would be looking into it, and

then eventually Mr. Martel and Veronique Perreault

came and interviewed us in our home.

Q. How long was that interview

for?

A. They came for and all day,

twodays.

Q. In your own -- interview you.

A. Yes.

Q. And you went through the

whole ball of wax?

A. Everything.

Q. Did you kept contact with

them after?

A. Yes. We have had contact all


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25789

the way through, after we got the medals in 2010,

and the last thing that I heard that once the

Commission had done its work, they would revisit

the issue and deal with anything else that might be

still outstanding.

Q. What do you expect from it?

A. What did we expect from it?

I guess what we expected -- everything that we do

-- there would be some answers and maybe some

accountability and perhaps that will lead to some

changes being made so that our story isn't

repeated.

Q. Did you get answers and

accountability from that?

A. We are still waiting.

Q. Have they made contact with

you since the BOI report has been finalized?

A. They said that -- we know

that they have had a draft of the report almost

since the beginning.

Q. A draft of what report?

A. The BOI report almost since

the beginning, since '09. As far as we know, we

were offered the final copy of the report and a

debriefing, but now it seems that the report isn't


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finalized yet and CDS still has it, so I think that

Mr. Martel is also waiting for that to be done.

Q. And you have no contacts with

Mr. Martel or Mr. Daigle?

A. Recently?

Q. Recently.

A. No.

Q. When the BOI was submitted to

the Chief of Defence Staff, it had to go through

various levels, one of which was to the convening

authority.

A. Yes.

Q. You have recollection as to

what the convening authority did with this?

A. They sent it up. From what I

heard the Commission here which was news to us was

it went all part way up, it was sent back down, and

the inquiry was reopened. We didn't know it had

been reopened and we were supposed to have full

standing at that inquiry, but I guess everybody

forgot to tell us that the inquiry was reopened.

Q. So you were never told that

the board of inquiry was reconvened or reopened?

A. No.

Q. Had you been told, would you


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have attended?

A. Absolutely.

Q. I want to go over some of the

testimony that has been made since the beginning,

and I know you sat in the room. Major Hannah

testified concerning his professional relationship

with your son Stuart, and that is before -- just a

second. I'm just going through my note.

Based on your knowledge, and that

came through in Major Hannah's testimony, what was

the situation between Stuart and his then common

law wife Rebecca at the time Stuart saw Dr. Hannah?

A. They were done.

Q. Pardon me?

A. They were done.

Q. They in done in March2008.

They were done? Where was Stuart's belonging at

the time?

A. In storage at the base.

Q. All of it?

A. All of it.

Q. Concerning your testimony and

Ms Shannon Newing, to the best of your knowledge,

how many times did Shannon see Stuart and over what

period of time? Once? Many times?


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A. Not many times, no. I'm

trying to recall her testimony. No one saw Stuart

many times.

Q. When you called the base, the

addiction treatment centre concerning Stuart in

January, did you try to speak to Ms Newing?

A. No, I spoke with Leo Etienne,

and he was -- I think actually what he said was he

was going off on sick leave. That's that my notes

reflect. And that he was going to be replaced with

Mr. Strilchuk and that he would pass the message

along and Mr. Strilchuk should call me back.

Q. You attended the BOI in its

entirety?

A. Yes.

Q. Did the subject ever come up

that Major Mark Lubiniecki=s spouse was working at

the base hospital?

A. No.

Q. It wasn't discussed?

A. No. Also, it didn't come up

that Major Parlee's brother had been a STRAT and

they had all kind of -- Fitzpatrick and Chad

Parlee, they were all kind of intertwined. They

all kind of knew each other.


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Q. I'm going to bring you back,

unfortunately, to the funeral itself. At the

funeral, Major Lubiniecki said that he delivered an

eulogy on behalf of Stuart, and he has testified,

and you heard him say that he prepared long and

hard for it. He spent six hours and he had spoken

to his staff about it and so on. What was your

impression of this eulogy?

A. I don't believe that Major

Lubiniecki did deliver an eulogy. I think he gave

a CV of Stuart's experience in the army.

Q. What do you mean by CV?

A. It was a shopping list. You

know, Stuart joined reserves at 17. In 2000, he

became a member of the Royal Strathcona Regiment.

In 2002, he went to Bosnia and until it brought him

up to present day.

There was not one personal note in

the eulogy. I know he testified that he suggested

that people try and look past recent events and

think kindly upon the soldier he had been, none of

that was said. None of that was said. There was

not one personal note to that eulogy, and when he

sat down, I looked at Shaun and I said, "What was

that?" I was actually offended and I was hurt


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because I think we had actually mentioned that it

would be great if Captain Lubiniecki could do the

eulogy because Stuart had served with him and had

liked him, so it was disappointment.

Q. Sergeant Bowden came and she

testified that troops who had been involved in

transferring Stuart to the hospital were aware that

he had suicidal tendency. She also said the whole

regiment was aware of Stuart's suicide attempts.

Before this testimony, was this ever discussed,

this common knowledge toward the regiment between

you and Stuart?

A. It was discussed to Stuart

and I and also Rebecca Starr, and I had had a

discussion about it when he had a suicide attempt

in June and they were two very close together.

Corporal Hillier and Corporal Rohmer who found him,

it was put out there that these two young men had

gone to extraordinary lengths and that Stuart owes

his life to the measures that they took, according

to Rebecca and according had hospital notes, Stuart

had sent out one text message asking them to go and

be with Rebecca, that she would need them, and I

assumed that's after he would have been found and

she called them and they figured out, "Oh, he is


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probably gone to where we go off roading," and they

went there and then they went to the hospital.

They stayed with Stuart that

night, then they went back to the regiment and

instantly Stuart became the focus of an awful lot

of gossip about where he was, why he was there. I

know Stuart, and I think he would have been just so

humiliated.

I have to tell you, I was very --

when I found out that they were awarded commanders

coins, I was really surprised because I know that

the summary investigation that was done into the

incident, it was suggested that the corporals used

some restraint in keeping it confidential and it

wasn't.

Q. Why would Major Jared, as he

testified, that he had to ensure separation between

you and Rebecca at the funeral of Stuart?

A. I have no idea.

Q. Where does that come from?

A. I have absolutely no idea. I

was a little bit surprised when I heard that.

Q. What happened?

A. There was an incident at the

funeral, but it wasn't one that I made public.


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Shaun didn't even know about it until after the

fact. When we arrived at the reception, we went

into the ladies' room and I overheard Rebecca and

either family or friends, I think both, come into

the ladies' room and they are in a discussion about

how tired she but what a great week overall it was,

what a great bunch of outings that they had had and

who all was coming out tonight. I don't know.

Maybe the mother of a dead soldier sees things a

little bit differently than -- I don't know.

Q. What is your assessment of

the performance of Major Parkinson, your assisting

officer, overall?

A. Overall? I thought he was

great. He had been around forever. He is now

retired. He had the right blend of being business

like and yet having a heart. He was rough, but he

had a big heart, and I bristled with any suggestion

that he was less than professional.

Q. I have to go back to the

suicide note for a second, and it came up in

various testimony and certainly some of the

document that you would have seen that an apology

was issued to you by General Natynczyk. Was it?

A. No.


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Q. Why do you think General

Natynczyk would say as he says that an apology had

been issued to you? Was there miscommunication?

A. When I came to Ottawa in

October2010 and I had my press conference from that

flow of series of events, one of them was I was

told by someone that that general wanted to talk

with me.

So it was arranged that I would

set up -- and I called his assistant that night.

He called me back and his apology was, and I quote,

"I am sorry that you are feeling so disrespected."

That is not an apology. That has since been spun

into the general apologized. No, he didn't.

Q. Was that the communication

you had with General Natynczyk?

A. That was the only

communication we have ever had with him of any

kind.

Q. By phone at night.

A. Yes. No e-mail, no letters,

no anything.

Q. For the first couple of weeks

of these hearings, we had a parade of witnesses who

came and said that they took care of Stuart and


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Stuart received the best medical care, on one hand.

On the other hand, we have also

seen comments reported attributed to Stuart that he

said he would rather kill himself to go back to his

unit. How do you reconcile the two?

A. I don't. I don't. I stand

by what I said the other day. I do not believe

that Stuart received any care. I think he was

funnelled through a system where there was

absolutely no continuity. The base addictions

counsellor, they look at the symptoms and no one

ever looked at the underlying cause of what was

going on.

Q. Through these hearings, but

since the fateful incident of March2008, you have

been in the news and questions to you is whether or

not you had been contacted by other military

families who may have suffered the same fate.

A. Oh, we have. One other

family, their story is almost identical, and that's

not surprising anymore. There is actually almost a

network right across the country. There has been

tons of people getting in touch with us. There is

a lot of disgruntled people who are unhappy with

the NIS and the system in general.


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Q. Is that more or less PTSD

victims, or it has to do with the matter in which

their death or their accident is being

investigated?

A. I think it's both. I know of

one family where their son was killed, and it was

put to them that it was one set of people who

actually killed him, but once they got the reports

and they started to look at it all, it could not

possibly have happened the way that it was put out

there. Physics just wasn't making the fact fit.

Q. The military police

investigated Stuart's death. The military has

conducted a board of inquiry. The military has

also conducted a summary investigation. Have you

been formally debriefed on any one of these

activities?

A. No, I haven't.

Q. You have testified in so many

ways, repetitively in fact, that you have no

confidence in the matter in which these

instruments, these investigation have taken place.

A. Right.

Q. This, I presume, have led you

to make the complaint to the Military Police


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Complaints Commission. What, if anything, in your

opinion, should be made to provide better

investigative service that would satisfy people in

your situation in the future?

A. I guess the principal thing

for us would be that there needs to be civilian

participation in boards of inquiry. Our son didn't

die on the battle field. A police force should

have come in, a civilian police force should come

in if there needed to be an investigation into his

suicide.

It wasn't a military police death.

When you do a board of inquiry, it's the military

investigating the military, and I just don't see

how that's going to come out as being unbiased. Of

course you are always going to protect your own

uniform. That's where we are at now, but if there

was some kind of civilian participation in that,

you know, not a complete civilian board perhaps,

but at least oneperson, I think, that -- the other

piece is-- and this is the NIS and the board of

inquiry.

You are never going to have a

Master Corporal asking a Colonel questions, and

it's going to be the right answers or the correct


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answers, because of the hierarchal system, a Master

Corporal is never going to find that that Colonel

did anything wrong.

You can say, "Well, we are

completely independent," but you are not. You all

work for the same people at the end of the day.

Q. One last question for you.

If I can bring you back to October2010 at which

time you had your press conference, I will

characterize the press conference as a cri de

coeur, you are looking for somebody to address and

to take you seriously. What would that have taken

at that time to basically make you go away?

A. The same thing that would

have taken right from day one is for someone to sit

down with us and have an honest discussion. We

started out from a place of just tell us what

happened and here we had today because not once has

anyone ever sat down with us and said, "Let's

talk.@ You know what, I don't -- I'm not even sure

how to phrase this properly.

We want some acknowledgment that

there are lessons that need to be learned from

Stuart's death, from the way that he was cared for,

how soldiers with PTSD and mental illness, what's


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going to be put in place for them, maybe there was

some lessons learned, how things will be different.

That's all we have ever asked for.

Eventually, we did get to a place

where we said, "Hey, you know what, your mistakes

have cost us a chunk of money. We are just

ordinary average people. We would like that money

back, please. Not our mistake. Your mistake."

To the military, that's not even a

drop in the bucket. It was so minuscule, but the

overriding concern for us was somebody give us some

honesty and show us what lessons have been learned.

That's it.

Q. So General Natynczyk admit

with you in October 2010 --

A. That would have been the end

of it.

Q. That's it. We wouldn't be

here today.

A. That's it. Yes.

Q. Thank you.


CROSS-EXAMINATION BY MS RICHARDS:

Q. Thank you, Ms Fynes. I know

this is going to be difficult for you and I do have


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some questions that I want to take you back and ask

you about.

I have provided you on the desk,

you have probably seen in front of you, the

transcripts from your testimony in April. I do

want to go back to some of the areas that you

covered, and in the event that you want to look

back or refresh your memory because I know it was a

week ago, we have the transcripts there.

A. Thank you.

Q. You will also see another

book of documents, and those are additional that we

may discuss in the course of your testimony, and so

for your convenience and the convenience of the

other parties, I have just put them together.

A. Thank you.

Q. Before I go into some of the

questions that I want to ask you, I just want to

follow-up on that last point that you have made

about the reason we are here and what you wanted

was simply some acknowledgment.

A. Yes.

Q. Isn't it true that the reason

we are here goes a little bit further than that?

In fact, in 2010 when you and your husband


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approached the National Investigation Service, you

asked them to investigate senior leadership in the

Canadian Forces for some very serious criminal

offences. So this just wasn't about answers and

sitting down with you. You believed and asked that

senior leadership be charged with criminal offences

of criminal negligence causing death.

A. What we said was that we

would like an investigation into criminal

negligence resulting in death.

Q. And failing to provide the

necessities of life.

A. That kind of comes under the

same catch all phrase when my husband did the

research and that's how it's phrased, yes.

Q. You certainly understood at

that time that those were very serious allegations

and very serious criminal offences.

A. It's very serious, what

happened.

Q. Right. What I want to do is

go back to some of the testimony that you gave in

April, and I can appreciate as you said to Mr.

Freiman that you have done a very good job. It's

hard for witnesses to try and separate what you


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knew back in 2007 versus what you know today, and I

think you have been very frank that you have

learned a lot since 2007, 2008.

A. Yes.

Q. You would agree with me that

since that time, you have learned some new things

about Stuart as well.

A. Yes.

Q. When you gave your testimony

in April and you talked about your understanding of

Stuart's life and Stuart's medical condition in

2000 and 2008, that was based on the information

that you had at that time.

A. I'm sorry. When you are

talking about April, I'm not sure what you are

referring to.

Q. Sorry. Your testimony was in

April when you testified a week and a half ago.

A. I'm sorry.

Q. We have changed months. I

thought for ease, I was going to refer that as your

testimony in April.

A. That's all right.

Q. When you talked about your

understanding in 2000 and 2008 about his condition,


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when you gave that earlier evidence before this

board, you were trying to separate what you knew at

the time.

A. In terms of -- you just asked

me is that since the proceeding started, since

2008, I have learned a lot about Stuart. I think

when he died, I think I knew -- I mean, I knew that

he was into drugs, I knew that he was a drunk. I

knew all these things that have been suggested

here. The rest of it is detail.

Q. I'm going to take you through

some of those additional things that have come out.

But, really, what I want to be clear before the

Commission is that you when you gave your testimony

to a lot of questions before Mr. Freiman, you were

talking about what you knew about Stuart at the

time.

A. Yes.

Q. I suggest to you that at the

time, and I think you have been very frank about

this, Stuart didn't share everything with you.

A. In terms of what?

Q. He didn't tell you about

everything that was going on with his medical

condition, for example.


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A. He told us that he -- "I have

been diagnosed as having PTSD." He told us about

all the symptoms associated with that, his night

terrors, his night sweats and all of that stuff.

At one point he had a conversation

with my husband in January where he said that he

thought maybe he was bipolar. We went through his

medical files and he actually in that time period

was given no less than 10 different diagnoses.

Q. My point, Ms Fynes, is that

at that time, when you were dealing with him in

2007 and then when you were talking about what

Stuart's life was like, some of that information he

didn't tell you at the time. He didn't tell you,

for example, that he had attempted suicide in

June2007.

A. No. My husband knew about

it.

Q. And your husband didn't share

that information with you.

A. No.

Q. And for very good reasons

because you had your own medical conditions.

A. Yes.

Q. When you testified as well in


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April about really what you understood was going on

in Stuart's life, and if I was to understand your

testimony, it changed dramatically November2007

when Rebecca called you and asked you for your

help.

A. Yes.

Q. But up until that point in

time, there were some things that were going on in

Stuart's life that you didn't have a lot of

knowledge about.

A. I had some knowledge, but not

everything.

Q. If we were to talk about the

period of time between March'07 and March'08, that

year period that really I think this hearing is

focused on, you spoke to Stuart, I think,

frequently.

A. Yes.

Q. That was your testimony, and

you saw him in person only three times during that

year.

A. I saw him for Rebecca's

graduation.

Q. Was that June or July visit?

A. It was in May. I saw him in


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July.

Q. And that was his summer

vacation.

A. Summer vacation. And then I

saw him in November.

Q. And then you saw him again in

February.

A. And then I saw him in

February --

Q. When he was in the hospital.

A. That's right.

Q. Before we go to that period,

let's say, March'07 March'08, I want to go back to

some of the evidence that you gave about Stuart's

teenage years.

And you were asked questions by

Mr. Freiman about when Stuart was growing up

whether you were aware of any issues that Stuart

had with alcohol or drugs.

A. Yes.

Q. Your answer is, I think many

mothers would say it was very definitive. Your

first answer was -- about alcohol, you said Ano.@

Do you recall giving that answer?

A. I don't know if I gave that


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answer about alcohol. What I said was in the

reserves was when he started drinking.

Q. Do you want to look at your

testimony or --

A. Sure.

Q. Because the testimony that

you gave was when you were asked about whether or

not Stuart had any problems with alcohol, you said

"no", and you were asked about whether he had any

problems with drugs, you said "not in my house."

A. Not in my house.

Q. I'm happy to try and direct

you to that point, but if you are satisfied that

those were the answers that you gave, I just wanted

to ask you some questions about that.

A. No, they were the answers

that I gave, but I'm going to clarify about the

alcohol because when somebody said were there

issues with alcohol, to me, that implies that you

are on your way to become an alcoholic or something

that was an issue, so the answer is "no."

Q. And about drugs, you said

"not in my house."

A. Not in my house.

Q. I want to put to you that in


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fact you had an incident that you are aware of when

Stuart was a teenager where you caught him and you

suspected him of using drugs. Do you recall that?

A. Shall I explain the incident?

Q. Sure.

A. He was a teenager. He was a

senior cadet at the time. He had a friend who was

a navy senior cadet. They had been hanging out one

night. He came home. Shaun and I were already in

bed. He knocked on the bedroom door, peaked his

head in as was his custom when he came home. For

whatever reason, my mom radar was just going off

and I said, "In the kitchen now."

Went out to the kitchen. I said,

"You have been smoking grass?" I got the head down

and the shuffle. I said, "That's fine. You are

grounded." I said two months. "I will pick you up

from school and make sure that you are coming home

and that's pretty much it for you." And that's

what happened.

Q. That was the incident. The

reason I know about it is because both you and

Shaun spoke about that in your interviews with the

NIS.

A. Yes.


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Q. I also suggest to you that

since Stuart's death and since reviewing his

medical records, you also know now that Stuart

himself reported to various medical personnel that

he had been drinking and using drugs since 15 or

17.

A. Yes, he did report that, and

if I may, I would like to respond to that.

Q. Sure.

A. Our son was a very successful

cadet. He was one of only four in the whole

province who attained his gold star and his warrant

officer status right off the bat first go.

I don't know how familiar you are

with that testing, but it's months and months and

months. It's an awful lot of work and it's a very

difficult thing to attain especially for his time

out. He spent all of his free time doing cadet

stuff including being chosen to go on international

exchanges.

He did not have a part-time job

because he didn't have time for a part-time job.

So I would suggest that any issues that he had with

drugs and alcohol were not major issues. First, he

couldn't afford it. He had no money except what we


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give him, and second of all, there is no way he

could have been as successful as he was if he was

what you, I think, are trying to suggest.

Q. I'm not really trying to

suggest anything. I guess my point to you is what

we know now from the medical records is that maybe

Stuart's view of that was a little bit because he

reported at least four times that he had been

drinking since the age of 15 and that he had in

fact been binge drinking since that age.

A. I think that when he joined

the reserves, I think he did what all reservers do.

He worked hard and played hard, so however he

reported that, I'm just going on the facts as I saw

them that it doesn't reconcile with the person he

was.

Q. I understand. You also know

from the medical records as well that Stuart

reported repeatedly to medical personnel that he

had been using marijuana since the age of 17.

A. Perhaps.

Q. And that he had been using it

daily since that time.

A. I don't believe that.

Q. But you understand that


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that's what Stuart told all the doctors.

A. I know that's what he said.

I also know that he gave addresses that he never

lived at and a bunch of other things.

Q. I'm happy to take you through

the medical records, but I take it you don't

dispute the fact that he made those representations

repeatedly --

A. No, I'm not disputing that he

said that.

Q. And he told doctors at both

the Royal Alex, Edgewood, and the Alberta Hospital.

A. Yes.

Q. And you would agree with me

that in terms of these issues, he was pretty

consistent in the information that he gave all

these doctors.

A. I would agree with you that

he said all these things. I do not agree with you

that-- I mean, I have read his personal

evaluations, and I will never ever be able to

square that circle of he was a drug addict since he

was a teenager and an alcoholic since he was

teenager because he just was way to successful and

there is way too much paper that I didn't produce,


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the military did, that says otherwise.

Q. I just want to be clear with

you, Ms Fynes. I'm not saying that your son was a

drug addict or an alcoholic since those age. I'm

just putting to you what he reported to the

doctors.

A. And that's fine.

Q. I don't think he described

himself that way either, so...

A. No.

Q. The last thing that he did

report to some doctors as well was that he

experimented with drugs in his teenage years, which

I guess you know he made those statements as well.

A. Yes, I do.

Q. I want to move on now to the

period of time that we have been talking about and

your knowledge of Stuart's career in the military.

You are obviously a very proud and knowledgeable

military mom. You know a lot of the terms that

many people in the room wouldn't know. Is it fair

to say that you didn't always know everything that

was going on in his job?

A. No, I wouldn't expect I

would.


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Q. So you were asked a number of

questions about whether or not Stuart had discussed

with you his thoughts about a future deployment or

whether he would be interested in another

deployment in Afghanistan. Do you recall that?

A. Yes.

Q. Your testimony was that he

made the comment that he hoped he would never have

to go back there.

A. Right.

Q. You also stated that the only

thing he discussed about his work in that time

period was that he was working in the kit shop. Am

I correct that Stuart didn't tell you that he had

been slotted to deploy to Afghanistan again and was

training for deployment?

A. No, I did know that.

Q. You did know that in May

2007.

A. Yes.

Q. Did you also know that he had

been removed from that deployment because of the

positive drug test?

A. No. Well, yes, he did, but

that that's only a piece of what happened. He was


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on this PLQ course to be promoted. He had done the

classroom portion of it and had aced it, was at the

top of his class, and then he went into the field

at Wainwright, and that's when he started to suffer

from the chest pains and the anxiety, and they

returned him to unit and then he also had his

failed drug test.

Q. I'm going to suggest to you,

Ms Fynes, that the PLQ course was in March2007 and

that predated the failed drug test.

A. Yes.

Q. And you have been here and

you have heard the testimony of the other witnesses

in the regiment who said he was removed from the

deployment because of the drug test.

A. Yes, I did hear them say

that.

Q. You know that now. Did you

know that at the time?

A. No. I had a conversation

with him, actually, when he was at Wainwright and

he was home for a weekend and he told me that he

wasn't feeling well.

Q. Pardon me?

A. Told me he wasn't feeling


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well.

Q. What did he tell you about

why he wasn't going to Afghanistan now?

A. We didn't talk about why he

wasn't going to Afghanistan because from that point

that he was returned because of chest pain and

anxiety, that's where the focus was. It wasn't

"Are you still going to Afghanistan or not?" It

was, "How are you feeling?"

Q. Did you know in March2007

that he had been returned because of chest pain and

anxiety?

A. I don't know exactly when I

became aware of that, but it was some time shortly

after, I think.

Q. But I understood from your

testimony earlier that up until the October,

November time period, you really didn't understand

or have any information that there was anything

going on with Stuart in terms of anxiety.

A. I know he wasn't well. I

knew he wasn't sleeping well. I knew he was having

nightmares.

Q. In terms of the positive drug

test, am I correct that Stuart didn't share with


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you the fact that he was challenging that drug

test?

A. No, not the time.

Q. So you didn't know at the

time that there was an ongoing process that he was

involved in for challenging that drug test?

A. No.


given everything you have said about Stuart's pride

and being a soldier, that this must have been a

very stressful thing at the time for him.

A. Oh, it would have been.

Absolutely.

Q. On the issue of his medical

condition and his emotional, physical health, you

gave some testimony earlier about your

understanding of what was going on in his life. I

want to take you back to some additional things

that we have seen in the medical records that

Commission counsel didn't ask you about.

One of the things -- the

reference, and I apologize if I misunderstood or I

have summarized this incorrectly about your

testimony, but I understood you to have said that

before that, at some point in November, was when


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you first became aware that Stuart was suffering

from some problems, and maybe that's some real

problems.

A. Yes, it was actually before

that because Rebecca had a fairly lengthy ongoing

line of communication open with me about that, but

it was November when she finally said, "Would you

come up?"

Q. Certainly up until November,

you had no idea that he had attempted suicide

previously.

A. No.

Q. We have seen in the medical

records from his admission in June2007 that in fact

Stuart reported to the doctors that he had felt

depressed and suicidal all his life. You are aware

that he reported that information?

A. I'm aware he reported it, but

I don't believe that.

Q. Was that something that he

had ever discussed with you?

A. No.

Q. Also in that admission in

June2007, he spoke about feelings that he had

toward his biological father. I don't want to ask


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you these questions blind, but in that book I gave

you, if you want to look at tab 1, and at tab 1 is

a copy of the history from his chart from June26,

2007.

A. Yes.

Q. I take it you have reviewed

this one before.

A. I haven't seen it for a

while, but I have seen it, yes.

Q. If you look at the second

page under the heading "Past Psychiatric History,"

so the first sentence that I had put to you was

what is reported here that Stuart had reported and

that was that he had been "depressed and

intermittently suicidal all his life."

And the second is that he goes on

to discuss issues about his biological father. You

were certainly aware in this time period, you felt

that Stuart had some serious issues, unresolved

feelings about his biological father.

A. When his father left, my boys

were all very small, and all three of my boys were

upset their dad was done. Their dad was a cool

guy. He skated, he did all kinds of things.

Shaun came into my boys' life very


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early on and has already been a father figure, so

while Stuart was upset that his dad had left and he

was angry and didn't talk to him for a number of

years, it was not an overriding issue with him.

Q. I put to you that things had

changed a little bit in 2007, and you were

concerned that it had become a bigger issue for him

because at that time his father had actually passed

away.

A. He passed away in 2006,

February 2006, so it was quite some time before.

Q. I suggest to you that in

2007, you actually felt that this was a significant

issue in Stuart's life.

A. I think it was an issue. I

don't think it was a significant one.

Q. It's true, isn't it, that you

brought it to the attention of the doctors when he

was admitted to the hospital?

A. Yes, I did.

Q. And you actually told the

doctors that you believe that he had unresolved

feelings and negative emotions?

A. Yes.

Q. And that you actually believe


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that he had spiralled into a deepening depression

following the death of his biological father.

A. I think that at the time, he

was very upset.

Q. You also told the doctors

when he was admitted, and this is in February2008,

that you felt that he had not been right since he

attended the funeral.

A. If I said that, I'm not sure

-- I'm not sure how much of an impact I would have

felt that had on the events at the time.

Q. I'm happy to take you to the

notes, but it's one of the very first things that

you told the doctors when he was admitted.

A. Yes.

Q. So you must have thought it

was of enough significance.

A. It was an issue. It wasn't

the issue.

Q. I just want to briefly talk

again about the issue of cocaine use, and I know

this is an issue that you have very strong feelings

and opinions on.

I just want to go back and clarify

the evidence you gave about your understanding of


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the cocaine use and when it became a problem for

Stuart. I want to make sure that I don't

misunderstand what your testimony was back in

April.

You stated that when you spoke to

Rebecca in November, when she asked you to come and

help with some problems that Stuart was having, you

asked her about drug use.

A. Yes.

Q. She said "absolutely not" at

the time.

A. That's right.

Q. You testified that, as I

understand your testimony, you felt like his

problems with drugs may have not started until

December2007.

A. Well, the first time that I

became aware that cocaine was an issue was not

until after that because I had asked the question

and receive a negative.

Q. The actual quote of what you

said is you think from that point on, and I

understand that to be December2007, that he may

have occasionally used cocaine. I just want to be

clear: You understood that he used cocaine prior


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to that.

A. I didn't know that at the

time.

Q. But you know that now?

A. I know that he had a failed

drug test.

Q. You also know that he tested

positive for cocaine when he was admitted to the

hospital on October30th?

A. I didn't know that until

later.

Q. But you know that now.

A. Yes.

Q. You are also aware that when

Stuart was admitted to Edgewood, that he told the

Edgewood officials that he had been using twograms

of cocaine daily for at least fourmonths, so that

would be since September'07.

A. That's what I read in the

file.

Q. Certainly by February2008,

you were very concerned about those issues and you

believe that Stuart was good at covering up his

tracks or playing down the extent of his drug use.

A. What I would say about


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Stuart's drug use is that I do not believe he was

using twograms daily. I don't think he could have

afforded it primarily because Rebecca handled all

the money. He was given an allowance. I think it

was $20 a week or something and he got to choose a

treat at the grocery store. She handled all the

money and paid all of the bills out of his money,

so I'm not quite sure how he would have afforded

that to start with.

Secondly, it just doesn't-- I

think that the drug use replaced the alcohol after

he sort of fessed up to the alcohol piece that they

had.

Q. When Stuart was first

admitted to the hospital, you told the doctors that

it was your view that he would lie and manipulate

when it came to his drug and alcohol use. Do you

recall that?

A. Yes, I did. I said that I

don't think that he wants people to think badly of

him was basically where I was going with that one.

Q. You also stated that you

thought he would manipulate and deny everything to

avoid treatment.

A. Yes, at that point.


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Q. You also stated that he was

very good at covering up his tracks and downplaying

the whole situation.

A. Well, obviously he was.

Q. So at that point time, it

must have occurred to you that Stuart had been

downplaying and covering his tracks when he spoke

to you about his drug use as well.

A. No.

Q. I think in your testimony you

said that you thought he might have turned to drugs

because it was easier to cover up, it was easier to

hide the fact that he was using drugs instead of

alcohol.

A. At the end of December, yes.

I want to speak to this, if I may. I think that

somewhere in 2007, I think he became a recreational

user, and I think that come the end of December, it

switched, and that's when it became a real issue.

Q. Is there any reason that you

are aware of that Stuart would have lied to

Edgewood or the other medical professionals when he

told them about his drug use?

A. I think by that time, Stuart

would say whatever would come to mind so that he


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would get treatment. That's what I think.

Q. It's fair to say that you

personally -- you would have had difficulty telling

if he was using cocaine when you weren't around

him.

A. I wasn't around during that

whole time period other than the visits, and, yes,

I think I would have known because when he was a

patient at the Alberta Hospital. I was the one who

picked up on it when I went to visit him, and

bearing in mind, I used to work with teenagers who

were in all kinds of trouble when it came to that

kind of stuff and I think I have learned to

recognize it pretty well.

When he was using it and I was

there and I saw him, I was the one who told them,

"You need to go test him."

Q. I want to take you to a

couple of other incidents that occurred while you

were there where Stuart has reported or was tested

positive for using drugs. One is after he left

Edgewood.

You were asked some questions by

Commission counsel about the condition he was in

when you saw him at the Nanaimo Airport. Do you


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recall that?

A. Yes.

Q. And it was in reference to a

note that was in one of the records he was in an

intoxicated state. You had responded that he had

one drink but definitely was not intoxicated.

A. He was not intoxicated.

Q. Are you aware that Stuart

reported to the base medical doctors that after he

left Edgewood, he had used alcohol and cocaine?

A. That was after he was home,

and I think it was the end of January, actually.

Q. He actually states that on

January10th, which you will agree with me, that's

the day that you went to see him at the airport in

Edgewood.

A. Yes.

Q. He stated to the medical

doctors that when he checked himself out of

Edgewood, he used a little bit of cocaine and he

drank.

A. I actually don't believe that

and I will tell you why. When he checked himself

out of Edgewood, he did have a couple of drinks at

the airport. I would say two tops. He was not


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intoxicated.

When he got home that night, it

was probably close to midnight. He had a

conversation with the base about whether or not he

had to come in and he was told to call back the

next morning, that he did, and he tried to put his

bed back together because his house had been

trashed and he went to bed, so I'm not quite sure

where he would have accessed drugs, used them or

even had time to.

Q. Do you know, again, why

Stuart would have lied to the base doctors about

that?

A. I think subsequent to that he

would have used maybe on the weekend, but I do not

believe on January10th that he used drugs.

Q. I can take you to the notes,

but do you have any issue with the fact that it is

recorded in the notes that that's what he reported,

that he used it on January 10th.

A. Absolutely. I think Stuart

reported a whole ton of stuff to a whole bunch of

people about a whole bunch of things, some of which

are provably wrong.

Q. So, then, let's talk about


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his admission to the Alberta Hospital on

February5th. You were in Edmonton at the time.

A. Yes.

Q. And you had been with him

while he was at the Royal Alex and you have talked

about that experience. When he was released on

February4th, were you with him the rest of the day

and that evening as well?

A. I was with him until I

delivered him back to the mental health unit to the

padre and stayed while arrangements were made for

Corporal Bartlett to come and stay with Stuart at

his home that night.

He was tasked with staying with

Stuart for the whole evening and not leaving him

alone because they were worried about his suicide

risk. He did leave him alone and he did use drugs

that night.

Q. Is there any reason why you

didn't stay with him that night?

A. Because, first of all, I

don't think the padre thought it was appropriate.

I was supposed to have gone home a week before. It

was time for me to be going and I needed to know

that he was going to be safe and the padre put this


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in place, so we our big hugs in the parking lot and

I was scheduled to leave the next morning.

Q. So you do know that he used

cocaine that night.

A. Yes.

Q. Just one last --

A. Which I didn't know he used

cocaine. I thought he used grass, but if you say

it was cocaine, okay.

Q. No. I don't want to

misrepresent anything to you. On February6, 2008,

so this was the day after he was admitted to the

Alberta Hospital. He tested positive for marijuana

and cocaine.

A. Okay.

Q. Just one last issue on this

topic, and that was some question you were asked

about a notation that you had made about Stuart's

suicidal thoughts not being linked solely to drugs

and alcohol. It was in reference to -- if you have

the main book there, the main Commission book with

the blue cover, tab 53 -- maybe it's 52. I'm

looking for your handwritten notes.

You were asked some questions by

Commission counsel on the second page to a


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handwritten note you had about:

"Safety given his suicidal

tendencies not only when he

makes his drug, alcohol and

meds." (As read)

A. I'm sorry. Am I looking at

the right page?

Q. The second page.

A. Yes.

Q. You had referred in your

testimony to the fact that Stuart had made an

attempt to the Royal Alex when he was not using

drugs and alcohol as far as anyone knows, but you

also were aware that his other attempts had

involved drugs and alcohol.

A. I didn't know if every

attempt had involved drugs and alcohol or not.

Q. Had Stuart talked to you

about his feelings on the impact that cocaine had

on his suicidal thoughts?

A. I know that -- no, Stuart did

not make me aware of that, but I know what cocaine

can do.

Q. Were you aware that he

reported to the Alberta Hospital that he had


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increased suicidal thoughts when he was coming down

off of cocaine?

A. Yes.

Q. You are aware now from

reading his records, but that wasn't something he

discussed with you at the time.

A. We discussed a lot of things

at the time that I can't recall.

Q. While we are talking about

the Alberta Hospital, you testified previously that

you believed he was making good progress at the

Alberta Hospital.

A. No. What I said was that the

first couple of weeks, he wasn't. He was the first

few days, and then he accessed their system that he

started using drugs, and then there was a personal

incident between him and Rebecca and I could

actually even pinpoint the date. It was around the

23rd, 24th of February. That turned out okay, and

at that point, he got with the program. He started

going to his programs. He was clean. He was not

using.

He actually did have some suicidal

feelings at that time and turned his belt in to the

doctors, and I believe that he was not on drugs at


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that time. And then at the very end when the base

said that they were giving him the run-around, not

telling him if he was going to have to go back to

the base or not, once he found out that he was

being sent back, then he used again. I think at

that point, it was pretty much all over.

Q. You are right. Your

testimony was that, just as you have summarized it,

you believe by the third week, there was a marked

change and that he was with the program and he was

attending the programs.

A. Yes.

Q. You have reviewed the

discharge summary of Dr. Sowa, and it's at tab 6 of

that new book that I have given you. I know you

have reviewed this before. I believe these are

your handwritten notes? Those are your notes?

This is the copy that you had?

A. Right.


Dr. Sowa didn't exactly or completely share your

view about Stuart's progress in the last week.

A. I think that he gave evidence

that Stuart did not do well.

Q. I just wanted to take you to


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some of the comments he made because his view

seemed to be different than your view of how Stuart

was progressing at the time.

He stated that -- I'm sorry. I

want to just find you the actual -- there we go.

Under "Investigations, Treatment and Course in

Hospital" on the second page, you see there is a

full paragraph.

If you go five lines up from the

bottom, Dr. Sowa states:

"His involvement in these

programs were intermittent

and quite lackadaisical. He

had difficulty adhering all

the time to ward or hospital

rules and regulations and at

times had been found smoking

in the washrooms on the word

and seemed not at least

remorseful about it."

And there is a reference here to

the issue of the drug use that I just want to come

back to. The next paragraph, the first sentence,

he states:

"In the last week of his stay


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in hospital, we kept him

under close observation

because of his continued drug

abuse."

So there was some concern, you

will, it carries on:

"Displayed intermittent

irritability and those

periods were quite noticeable

and indicated illicit drug

use."

So Dr. Sowa was of the view that

there were still some very serious issues going on

even in that last week.

A. That's not quite the

conversation that I had with him, and I will call

your attention to the fact that he dictated this

note on June18th, which is threemonths after

Stuart's death, and I think by this time, people

had very selective memory because there was

possibility of liability in terms of saying he

wasn't certifiable.

He was dead 10days later, so I

think he was probably still at risk, so I think

that these reports-- I will admit to the things


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that Stuart did wrong, but where I think that

perhaps it's not quite as things were, I will also

say that.

Q. I just want to be clear

because that's a pretty serious accusation you are

making.

A. Absolutely it is.

Q. Are you saying that Dr. Sowa

falsified this report to protect himself?

A. No, I'm not saying he

falsified the report. What I'm saying is that

sometimes there is going to be a -- I mean, I will

take you to -- Dr. Sowa, when he gave his

testimony, he said that he had never looked at the

Royal Alex discharge forms, that they like to make

their own opinion, and the medical file, one of the

first pages in that report is the discharge form

from the Royal Alex hospital, and I see segments of

that report lifted right into this report. I mean,

I don't know what else to think.

Q. So I want to go back, then,

to the issue of drug use while Stuart was in the

hospital. In your testimony, you referred to the

fact that you called the hospital because you were

concerned that he was using drugs.


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A. I was actually there.

Q. That's right. You were

there. You went back to the hotel, you thought he

seemed unusually and you phoned him.

A. Right.

Q. And that's recorded in the

notes that on February9th that you called him.

They tested him for drugs three days later on

February12th and he tested positive.

A. Yes.

Q. You testified that you were

told at the time that there was an underground

network and that when people would use their street

privileges to go get drugs and bring them back to

the hospital. I just want to be clear: Is it your

understanding that that's how Stuart accessed

cocaine while he was in hospital?

A. I have been told differently

at the board of inquiry that Stuart used the nice

new runners that I got him for PT to jog down to an

intersection and meet a dealer. I'm just telling

you when I reported, that's what the nurse told me

from the ward.

Q. You have read the notes. You

understand that Stuart himself told the doctors


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that he had been leaving the hospital to meet his

dealer to get cocaine. I just wanted to clarify

that.

Last question on the issue of the

medical issues is the question about what was

planned for Stuart when he was released from the

Alberta Hospital. It was your testimony that you

believe that the military never had any intention

to send him to a rehab facility.

A. I now know from reading

Captain Lubiniecki -- but Doctor Hannah thought he

was going, Captain Lubiniecki said "no."

Q. I'm going to suggest to you

that Captain Lubiniecki gave different testimony

before this Commission on that issue.

A. His statement, his words.

Q. You were here when he

testified.

A. Yes.

Q. And you heard what he

testified.

A. Yes.

Q. He explained what that

statement was. Do you recall that?

A. I don't recall that actually.


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Q. If I could ask you to look at

the little book that I have given you, I have

provided you at tab 19 -- just to back up while we

talk about this statement. You are referring to

the note that's in the police file that records an

interview that was given with Major Lubiniecki.

A. Sorry. I'm not following

you.

Q. Sorry. When you say that you

know from Major Lubiniecki's statement they weren't

going to send Stuart to a rehab facility, what you

were talking about is the record of an interview

that is in the National Investigation Service file,

right?

A. Yes.

Q. Much like you did in your

testimony where you went through and you noted

where you thought there were inaccuracies in the

record of your interview with the military police,

Major Lubiniecki was asked to do that as well

during his testimony. Do you recall that?

A. I do recall that.

Q. He was asked specifically

about this note. If you want to look, it's at page

176 and 177. You will see from that that Major


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Lubiniecki's testimony before this Commission was

that that note did not reflect his understanding

that they weren't going to send him.

A. That's what he said.

Q. You don't believe him?

A. No, that's what he says here,

but I'm telling you what he said to the NIS when he

was interviewed.

Q. You know that there are no

records of that interview. There is no recording

of that interview.

A. Okay.

Q. You are also aware that Dr.

Hannah testified before this Commission that it was

always his intention that he would send Stuart to

the rehab facility.

A. I don't think that Dr. Hannah

really had much input in Stuart's treatment in one

way or another other than help put the conditions

in place when he saw him that one time.

Q. You understand that Dr.

Hannah was the acting base surgeon at the time.

A. Yes, I do.

Q. And his testimony was that he

in fact was the person who could make the decision


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as to whether or not Stuart would go to rehab.

A. Yes.

Q. You also heard his testimony

and you understood his testimony that it was only

the medical personnel who could make that decision,

not the regiment.

A. Yes.

Q. You also heard the testimony

of Dr. Elwell, the psychiatrist.

A. Yes.

Q. He testified as well that it

was intention that Stuart would go to the rehab

facility.

A. He never even saw Stuart.

Q. He never saw Stuart?

A. Sorry. That was Etienne.

Elwell did see him. He saw him twice?

Q. Once.

A. Yes.

Q. He was consulted regarding

the next steps and he testified before this

Commission that it was his intention and

understanding that Stuart would be going to the

rehab facility.

A. The part that confuses me


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about this is that Stuart was told when he left the

Alberta Hospital, it would be twoweeks he would be

there. 10days after the fact, he has a

conversation and then it's going to be a further

threeweeks. I'm sorry, so did the NIS make up that

statement by Captain Lubiniecki? I don't know, but

somehow it appeared in an interview, so either the

NIS has made a big mistake.

Q. When you testified a week and

a half ago, you had heard a lot of the evidence

that was here, and what I'm going to suggest to you

is that Dr. Hannah, Dr. Elwell, Major Lubiniecki,

and as well, Charlene Ferdinand all testified

before this Commission that to the best of their

knowledge, Stuart was going to be sent to a rehab

facility.

A. I don't think Charlene

Ferdinand was involved at that point. I could be

wrong, but I don't recall her being involved in

March, and perhaps they were all planning to send

him, however, he didn't end up going. He ended up

dead.

Q. I understand that, but what I

want to explore with you is your testimony that as

far as you are concerned, a decision had been made


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before he died that they would not send him to

rehab.

A. That's what I read.

Q. What I'm putting to you is

since you read that, you have heard the evidence of

various officials who have come before this

Commission and have said that, yes, as far as they

were concerned, they had the authority and they

were going to send him to rehab.

A. That's what they said.

Q. Does that change your view on

what was going on at the time?

A. No.

Q. I'm going to move into a new

area now. I just want to give you an opportunity

for a break.

A. I would like a break.

THE CHAIRPERSON: We will break

till five after.

--- Recess taken at 2:48 p.m.



MS RICHARDS: Thank you. I have

been reminded of how quickly I speak, so please

feel free if I'm going too fast or tell me to slow


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down.

Q. I wanted to turn now to the

issue of really what was the substance of the 2009

NIS investigation and that's the next of kin,

designation of next of kin.

As understood the concern or the

complaint you have is that you believe it was

negligent performance of duty for the military to

recognize Rebecca as a common law spouse and as a

next of kin following Stuart's death.

A. That complaint originated

from the military ombudsman's office.

Q. I will get to that, but have

I encapsulated correctly, regardless of where the

complaint started, have I encapsulated correctly

your concerns?

A. Our concern was that we were

not notified as being the primary and secondary

next of kin.

Q. So you object both to the

fact that the regiment recognized Rebecca as a

common law wife.

A. Yes.

Q. And they recognized her as

next of kin.


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A. Yes.

Q. I just want to start sort of

at the back end, which is the impact, the most

significant impact that this had on you and that

was the arrangements for the funeral.

A. Yes.

Q. It's fair to say that in your

conversations with the military police that you

felt that Rebecca was given too much support by the

regiment in that process.

A. I felt that Rebecca was an

ex-girlfriend, and as such, was not entitled to

anything other than what an ex-girlfriend would be

accorded.

Q. In your earlier testimony in

April, so a week ago, you were asked about what

input you had in the funeral process. Do you

recall that?

A. Yes.

Q. And you testified that you

had minimal input.

A. That's right.

Q. And your testimony was

specifically that out of all of the hundreds of

decisions that are made surrounding military


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funeral, the only input we had was we were told

that Stuart would be cremated and we objected and

we were told that Rebecca had consented that he

could be buried and that you picked a hymn.

A. Yes. We may have been --

actually, the assisting officer said that Rebecca

had picked two caskets and did we have a

preference. She sent pictures online. We looked

at them and we said that we liked one rather than

the other, but we didn't know if that was the one

picked or not.

Q. I'm going to suggest to you,

Ms Fynes, that you actually had considerably more

input in Stuart's funeral that you have

represented.

A. There may have been some

minor things, but we never actually got to make

decisions.

Q. I just want to separate the

two. I understand that you have a fundamental

objection to the fact that you didn't get to

control the process, and I understand that. Your

concern is that you didn't have final say, but if

we take that issue out, I suggest to you that you

actually had considerable input and expressed your


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opinions and your desires for the funeral and that

most, if not all, of those were respected.

A. I don't recall, but...

Q. I would like to take you

through some of those, and to assist you, I have it

in the book at tab 7. I don't know if you

recognize these, if you have seen them before.

These are the notes of your assisting officer Major

Parkinson.

A. No, I haven't seen these

before.

Q. In these notes, Major

Parkinson records meetings that he had with you and

discussions that he had with you. We are going to

start at the back as Commission says, as we often

do.

A. Page 242?

Q. At page 242. Ms Fynes, you

have been here for the testimony from

representatives of the regiment who has spoken

about the fact that there was a great effort made

to coordinate between yourselves and Ms Fynes and

to try and come to some kind of agreement on the

funeral arrangements. Do you agree with that?

A. We had contact with their


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assisting officer who had contact with Rebecca's

assisting officer. The conversations between them,

I assume, were amicable.

Q. I have taken you to 242. It

sets out here what Major Parkinson records of his

meeting with you and the wishes that you expressed

at that time. First of all, you expressed a desire

that Stuart be given a military funeral.

A. Yes.

Q. And that happened.

A. I would have assumed that

that was going to happen because he was in the

military, not because we had an expressed wish.

Q. Did you understand at the

time that it didn't necessarily happen, that you

could express that he would not have a military

funeral?

A. I understood at the time we

didn't have a choice.

Q. You didn't understand that

there was a choice.

A. No.

Q. And Major Parkinson did not

explain that to you.

A. No.


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Q. You asked as well to have

military padre proceeding at the service.

A. Yes.

Q. Later on, I will take you,

but later on, you specifically ask that it be Padre

Hubbard.

A. Yes.

Q. And that was indeed what

happened?

A. Yes.

Q. You also requested that

Stuart be interred in Victoria?

A. Right.

Q. And that's indeed what

happened.

A. Right.

Q. Rebecca had no connection

with Victoria.

A. No. The conversation that we

had -- Major Parkinson said that there is a number

of places that Stuart could be buried. The first

place he suggested was in Ottawa, and I guess

wejust -- we moved through this process, but we

said what we would like, but it wasn't "Do you want

this? It's going to be done." It was a


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conversation that we had.

Q. And we can go through these,

but what I suggest to you that what you asked for,

what you said you would like is in fact what

happened.

A. We expressed our wishes and

some of them were-- but when it came to the

important things, the viewing, we had absolutely

nothing to say about. We did have quite a reaction

to the fact that -- I mean, Rebecca picked all the

pallbearers, and when we found out that Jason

Hillier was one of them, we said "no."

There were certain things that we

were just going to stand up and try and fight

against and she caved and said "okay."

Q. I suggest to you that in fact

most of what you asked for was respected. When you

say some, I suggest to you that most was.

A. If that's what you think.

Q. That's what -- I'm happy to

take you through what happened.

A. I think that what you are

doing is you are pointing out some-- I mean, where

he was buried, that was respected, the padre, he

was the padre at the base, so he was the logical


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person; I can't imagine who would have been picked.

There were things that we moved

through and they were granted, but the big things,

we didn't get the flag off his casket, my family

did have to bump down the seats. They didn't even

know if family was coming.

Q. You asked for the specific

date for the funeral to be held on.

A. No, the dates were discussed

and Rebecca had made some suggestions, and we asked

if we could -- because we had family overseas.

Q. And that was accommodated.

A. And that was accommodated,

absolutely.

Q. You asked that a piper play.

A. Yes, but all of those things

we just assumed went along with the military

funeral. It wasn't the case of these are our

requests, please honour them. It was a part of a

military funeral and it was discussions that we had

surrounding what this military funeral would look

like and that would include the base padre and it

would include a piper.

Q. And you specifically asked at

the very outset to be given Stuart's beret and


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medals.

A. No. That was not quite the

way it worked out because at that time, it was all

things Rebecca. I actually asked her personally if

she wouldn't mind, please, could she do me a big

favour and let me have Stuart's beret and medals,

and she very kindly said "Yes, you could have

those." They were actually my right.

Q. I would like to turn you to

page 239 because from the notes of Major Parkinson,

it appears that you actually made that request

before you spoke to Rebecca. That's at tab 7.

A. Perhaps I did, but my request

went to Rebecca.

Q. You see at page 239, under

point 7 --

A. Yes, I see it.

Q. This is a more detailed

listing, and you will see part-way through, desire

to close casket, under date, it talks about the

date, and then there is a listing of information

and things that were requested, and included in

that is asked to be given the beret and medals. At

this point in time, I understand from your earlier

testimony you hadn't spoken to Rebecca.


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A. I spoke to Rebecca on the

16th or 17th.

Q. As well, you had asked about

a reception area but indicated that you weren't

able to pay.

A. Most of the things on this

list are just inquiring what a military funeral was

going to look like for my son. Would there be a

reception? We couldn't afford to hold one for him.

Will the padre be the officiating person? And it

was understanding what a funeral would look like

down at the base.

Q. Were you aware that Major

Parkinson communicated these to the other assisting

officer at your request for the funeral, that these

are the items you wanted?

A. I am aware that he

communicated with Adam Brown about that.

Q. Are you aware that he

communicated those to him as your direct request

for what would happen at the funeral?

A. I'm not sure what format he

did it in.

Q. Have you seen the e-mails

back and forth about this?


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A. I have seen a lot of e-mails.

I don't know if I have seen that one specifically.

Q. You have mentioned already

the casket. I think you stated that you didn't

even know if the casket that you asked for was the

one that was chosen.

A. I think my husband said he

thought that it may have been, but we don't know.

Q. If I could ask you to turn to

tab 9 just to close the loop on that. It's hand

numbered on the bottom, page 6. Does that refresh

your memory as all in terms of being advised about

the casket?

A. I guess it was. I haven't

seen this before, and I honestly couldn't tell you

what colour the casket even was today.

Q. If you see that e-mail down

at the bottom, Sunday March 23rd, it says "Sheila

and Shaun." I understood that that was your e-mail

address that this was sent to.

A. Yes.

Q. Also, the obituary for Stuart

was sent to you for review?

A. Yes.

Q. And I understand that Padre


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Hubbard called you and discussed the funeral

service in advance.

A. I don't recall, but he may

have.

Q. If you just want to turn over

to tab 10, this is an e-mail string. I have just

given you the top page, and it refers to a request

that Padre Hubbard call you and discuss a funeral

service and ask for your input.

A. Yes.

Q. That occurred as well?

A. I don't remember.

Q. You had referred to the fact

that you had a lot of family members present. I'm

correct that the military paid for those family

members to travel to the funeral?

A. My eldest son didn't come,

but other than that, yes.

Q. Some of those family members

were travelling from a vacation in New Mexico?

A. Yes, but their expenses were

not paid for most of that portion. They had to

cover that themselves.

Q. So some of it was just from

in Canada.


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A. Right.

Q. I'm going to turn now to the

issue of the common law relationship or the

relationship that Rebecca and Stuart had and the

issues surrounding whether or not they were in a

common law relationship.

A. Okay. Before we do that, can

I make a comment about these e-mails. I noticed

here that it says in one of the e-mails that to

make sure that Rebecca is happy with the plans that

have been made, so she did have final say.

Q. Yes. Okay.

A. Absolutely.

Q. So I'm going to switch to a

new topic now.

A. Okay.

Q. I just want to discuss with

you the issue around the relationship between

Stuart and Rebecca and your concerns about the fact

that the military recognize them to be in a common

law relationship.

As I understand it, there were two

bases for that, and please correct me if I'm wrong,

but one is that as you understood it, there was a

different rule or different legislation in Alberta


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that apply to a common law relationship.

A. Right.

Q. You certainly understood that

there was a different standard that might apply in

the military, that they could have a different

legal test for common law for military benefits.

A. They do, but it doesn't cover

things that would fall under the legislation of

Alberta.

Q. Am I correct that you also

disputed whether or not they were common law for

military purposes, for the purposes of military

benefits?

A. Correct.

Q. So it's both.

A. Right.

Q. I am going to want to go back

a little bit to the registration of death issues

that you talked about, but am I correct that the

biggest objection that you had to your son's

registration of death was the fact that he was

registered as being in a common law status and that

the address that was reflected there was the last

address that he had with Rebecca?

A. No. My biggest concern about


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the paperwork was that my son wasn't buried with

even the correct facts surrounding his death.

Q. The biggest facts that you

were concerned about was the recognition of him as

being common law?

A. No, that was one of the

facts.

Q. And the other one was the

address of where he was living in the end.

A. Between the two of them, it

reflected a situation which was not correct.

Q. That was that he was living

with Rebecca or in a common law relationship with

her.

A. At the time of his death.

Q. At the time of his death.

Regarding the common law status, you stated that

you were advised by Stuart and Rebecca that they

only declared common law to allow her to attend

Edgewood.

A. Yes, and she actually

confirmed that herself with her testimony at the

board of inquiry.

Q. We are not going to talk

about what she talked about before the board of


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inquiry. I'm going to ask you some other questions

about information you had, and I just want to be

clear: You are not saying that you believe Stuart

made a false declaration when he went to the

military and declared that they were in a common

law relationship.

A. I believe they both made a

false declaration, but my son was sick, Rebecca

wasn't.

Q. You knew that they had been

in a relationship for over a year.

A. Yes. I can even tell you

what day their relationship started.

Q. Were you also aware that

Stuart had been referring to Rebecca as his common

law spouse for some time before this?

A. Yes.

Q. Were you aware that Stuart

had been asking Rebecca to enter into a common law

relationship for some time before this?

A. No. I'm aware that there

were discussions off and on about whether or not

they should declare common law, but it had never

actually happened, and then when he was going to

the program at Edgewood and there was this spousal


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program available and the fact that a long time

friend of hers was working in the area, in fact,

volunteered at that program, she really wanted to

go, so this was as good a time as any to do it.

Q. You have seen that Rebecca --

and I have a copy in here -- but Rebecca swore a

statutory declaration before the Canadian Forces

and she doesn't agree with your view and their

relationship.

A. Of course not.

Q. You also are aware that

Stuart had actually designated Rebecca as his

beneficiary on a supplementary death benefit in

2006.

A. Yes.

Q. So that was well before the

declared common law status.

A. Sorry. What was the date in

2006?

Q. In 2006.

A. Yes, I know that he did it

then and they actually declared common law on

December7, 2007.

Q. When you testified a week ago

about your son coming out to visit Stuart, Michael,


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I believe. It's true at that time that he was

actually coming out and staying with Stuart and

Rebecca.

A. Right.

Q. At that time, Rebecca and

Stuart had signed a caregiver agreement?

A. That's right.

Q. It's your testimony that they

ceased living together after Stuart returned from

Edgewood. I don't think there is any dispute that

they were --

A. She was gone before he got

home.

Q. They were not living

together, but you also knew that their relationship

continued after that.

A. It sputtered off and on.

When she came to the hospital, he put her down as

being his common law so that they could have a

conversation about his treatment and past history,

and then at a point where he was telling the

hospital, "I want her to come and visit anymore.

We are finished," and then they went to a movie

together and it was down in his file that she was

common law, and then they declared that they were


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done, in fact. I mean, you know where I'm going

with this statement of Captain Lubiniecki.

Q. Let's back this up a little

bit. You had testified in your last testimony that

Rebecca was calling you after January'08 daily and

telling you that she wanted to get back with

Stuart. Pardon me. You didn't testify that

before. You told the National Investigation

Service that.

A. I said that he was calling a

lot and she wanted to get back and then that

changed.

Q. I don't want to misrepresent

you. I'm just going to check that reference. Do

you have your transcripts in front of you?

A. Yes.

Q. Not those ones. This is from

your interview with the National Investigation

Service, and it's the second interview dated

March3, 2010, page 116. I'm looking from line 10

down. You will see here, this is you. You are

saying:

"Everybody was communicating

with Rebecca. She, you know,

and Rebecca was phoning me


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daily and she wanted to be

back with Stuart and she was

-- daily, she was alternating

between being really angry

with him and, I mean, I felt

really sorry for her. I

really did, and I think -- I

think she was notified. She

was given an assisting

officer." (As read).

Does that refresh your memory at

all in terms of after Stuart and Rebecca were no

longer living together in January, you were

speaking to her frequently and she was telling you

that she wanted to be back together with him.

A. She was. They really were

sputtering in January, February and part of March.

Q. So you referred to the fact

that he had put her on his medical records as his

common law spouse.

A. Yes.

Q. He did that both at the Royal

Alexandra Hospital?

A. Yes.

Q. And at the Alberta Hospital?


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A. Yes.

Q. Rebecca visited him or spoke

to him very frequently during his 30 day stay at

the Alberta Hospital.

A. Initially it was frequently,

and then it tapered off. They had an issue they

were dealing with, and when that was resolved. I

think that it tailored off quite a bit.

Q. During his stay at the

hospital, Stuart told you that he intended to buy

Rebecca a diamond ring.

A. Stuart said a lot of things

while he was at the hospital.

Q. That's one thing he said to

you.

A. Yes.

Q. And you understood that to

mean that he was interested in pursuing the

relationship.

A. At that particular moment in

time, yes.

Q. You referred to the fact that

she met him at a movie night. That was while they

were in hospital.

A. That was just before he was


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discharged.

Q. When he was discharged on

March 5th, Rebecca met him at the base. Are you

aware of that on March5th?

A. Yes, that was after he had

left his counselling session.

Q. On the issue of the common

law status and the registration of death, you were

asked some questions -- I'm sorry. I'm skipping on

now to that. You were asked some questions from

Commission counsel about your statement that you

couldn't settle the estate because of the

registration of death.

A. It was one of the things.

Q. Isn't it true that one of the

issues with settling the estate was that you were

trying to get the pension contributions and the

supplementary benefit back and paid into the

estate.

A. No, that was a completely

separate issue and that was something that wasn't

started at that time. It was sort of a progression

that went on for twoyears, but that was not part of

-- to do with that statement.

Q. When you received the


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corrected registration of death, you provided it to

the military.

A. Yes, through our assisting

officer.

Q. And you asked him to cease

recognizing Rebecca as common law spouse.

A. Yes. Part of that was

because they had been -- there was at least one

instance where she was asked for authority to sign

a form so that his medical records and mental

health records could be used in other places,

pensions and estates, I think, being one of them,

and she had no authority to do that, so I, through

our assisting officer, said that I wanted it made

clear that she did not have any authority to sign

anything to release anything.

Q. When you sent them that ex

parte order, you also asked them to confirm that

they would not be paying any pension benefits to

Rebecca.

A. That's right.

Q. Because it was your view that

she wasn't entitled to them.

A. That's right, and that was

the ruling that was found by Veterans Affairs.


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Q. Part of what you also

expected was that the pension contributions would

be paid back into the estate.

A. Yes, of course.

Q. So that was part of the

reason that you were seeking to change a

registration of death.

A. No, it's not. That was one

of the by-products of it. The main reason of

having that registration of death fixed was because

my son wasn't even buried with the correct

paperwork.

Q. In terms of Rebecca and her

position as common law status, you pretty quickly

after the funeral decided that that was an issue

that you were going to be challenging.

A. As soon as I realized that

the proof of death certificates were wrong,

absolutely I was going to have them fixed, what mum

wouldn't.

Q. Within threeweeks of the

funeral, you actually consulted a lawyer about

challenging the common law status.

A. Within threeweeks of the

funeral?


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Q. Yes, by April the 8th.

A. No. I consulted a lawyer

because the military refused to assist us and

having the registration of death fixed. All it

would have taken in the beginning was a letter from

the military or some kind of a discussion with the

funeral home to say there have been some mistakes,

there has been some misinformation provided, this

is their correct information, and the military

refused to do that, so Vital Statistics gave us a

run-around that went on for some time, and in the

end, we were told we needed to have a lawyer to

help us have that amended.

Q. You also asked your assisting

officer to write to the regiment and ask them to

stop providing any assistance to Rebecca. Do you

recall that?

A. No, I don't think it was stop

helping Rebecca. I think it was Ms Tree has been

found to not be the primary next of kin. She is

not his wife.

Q. I'm sorry. I'm flipping

around here so I can find the e-mail reference for

you. I will come back to that so that I can put

the document before you.


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A. Thank you.

Q. In and around that same time

period, you mentioned the fact that you were

looking into the supplemental death benefit.

A. Yes.

Q. You had the same issue with

that. You felt that the last unsigned form should

be respected and that the supplemental death

benefit should not be paid to Rebecca.

A. I felt that the fact that

misinformation had been deliberately supplied on a

legal document that discussions were made or

decisions were made that really should have gone to

my husband as executor of the estate. It was

unlawful, actually, to provide misinformation like

that. The only conclusion that I could draw from

that that somebody would do that would be for a

monetary benefit, which is what happened.

Was I angry? Absolutely. My son

filled out four forms that it -- none of my son's

wishes in any respect to do with his life were

respected and I was angry. I still am angry. We

very quickly, because we were being stonewalled, it

was every single thing that Stuart wished to have

happen, and that includes the supplementary death


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benefit, we want them honoured, every single one of

those documents because his intentions were clear.

Q. It's fair to say that one of

the things that you are still angry about is

Rebecca being recognized as his widow or receiving

any of that money.

A. She was not his widow.

Q. Are you aware of whether or

not she is now receiving pension benefits?

A. I know that his pension

contributions were converted into a benefit that

went to the person who was on the last honoured

supplemental death benefit form, which is Rebecca,

so to say that or even to hint that this was about

money, I find really offensive. It's about making

sure that Stuart's wishes were respected and, you

know, if it was about money, we wouldn't be sitting

here doing this today. We would be in court of law

suing somebody for wrongful death.

Q. Ms Fynes, to be clear, I'm

not saying this is about money. What I'm saying is

that this was about ensuring that Rebecca was not

recognized as his widow and she did not get

anything.

A. Not that she didn't get


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anything. It was what was right since she was not

his widow; she was not his primary next of kin.

She was accorded rights and privileges to which she

was not entitled.

Q. You have reviewed the

military documents. You are aware that under the

military policy for determining whether or not they

were in a common law relationship, they would have

to have been living separate and apart for

threemonths to dissolve that relationship.

A. Or they could make a

declaration.

Q. And no declaration has ever

been found.

A. They made a verbal

declaration, and I tell you, I just find it

extremely concerning that Stuart would go into a

clerk, be given paperwork to reverse his status,

and somebody else said that, not me, that he had

the paper work, but he was only given four out of

what would logically be a package of five forms,

the fifth one being a statutory declaration undoing

it.

Q. You believe that he made a

verbal declaration to Major Jared.


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A. I know what Major Jared told

me.

Q. You heard Major Jared come

and testify and you know that he does not agree

with that.

A. Of course.

Q. And you also agree that there

has never been any form found where the common law

relationship was revoked.

A. No, there has never been that

form found.

Q. I'm in the homestretch now

and I'm going to turn to the police investigations.

Just very briefly because we haven't talked much

about the sudden death investigation.

I just want to address the issue

of thoroughness because I know that that was one

thing. On one hand, you had concerns about, but on

another thing, that both you and your husband were

grateful to some extent for the thoroughness of

that first investigation. Is that a fair

characterization?

A. At the time.

Q. And in a number of meetings

with the National Investigation Service, you


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actually expressed to them that you were

appreciative that it had been so thorough because

you got some extra information out of it that you

might not have gotten otherwise.

A. We didn't have all the

information when we made those statements that we

have now.

Q. About the thoroughness?

A. Yes.

Q. You also mentioned in one of

those interviews that one of the -- I'm going to

call them a by-product of the thoroughness of that

investigation was that Master Corporal Ritco had

taken a number of photos of Stuart's jeep, and as a

result of those photos, you were able to pursue or

at least have some more information about your

concerns about the condition that Stuart's jeep was

in when it arrived.

A. Right.

Q. I just want to close off that

loop on the questions I was asking you about the

request to stop providing assistance to Rebecca.

In that little book, it's at tab 18, and I

apologize, I see now why I couldn't find it. They

are separated by yellow divider pages, and there is


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an e-mail and it's dated April8, 2008.

It's the third e-mail in. It's at

tab 18. If you look at the divider sheets, it's

the third e-mail in. Just to go back, I had been

asking you two questions about that. The first was

that this is an e-mail dated April8, 2008. You

will see at point 1, there is a reference here to

the Alberta legislation.

It appeared to me from this

legislation that at this point in time by April8th,

you had consulted a lawyer about the common law

status of Rebecca and Stuart.

A. I'm not sure where it says

that.

Q. If you see under point 1 in

the bracket, it says:

"They do not believe they did

as there is a three year

co-habitation requirement for

this document. It is

important to them as they

have been informed, via

lawyer, that this trumps the

military's six month

co-habitation for recognition


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of common law status, which

in turn would reduce Rebecca

to ex-girlfriend status."

A. Right.

Q. So that's where I was

assuming that you had at this point in time--

A. Actually we did. We had

consulted-- I recall we talked to a lawyer in

Victoria just very briefly. We never hired him.

Q. And then the second point was

that:

"If the above supposition

about Rebecca's status is

correct, then Sheila and

Shaun would like any further

assistance to Rebecca

stopped."

A. I'm not quite sure what that

sentence -- what it means.

Q. I understand this to be a

request from you to the regiment that Rebecca not

receive any further assistance from the regiment.

A. That would be my assumption

as well.

Q. Is this an accurate


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reflection of something that you asked the

assisting officer to convey to the regiment?

A. I'm sure I must have. It

would make sense.

Q. Sorry. I thought in fairness

I should go back to that.

A. Actually, can I refer back to

something you were talking about, the funeral?

Q. Yes.

A. On page 195 of this same

section. When I go through each of those things

here that we had asked for that you touched on, I

notice that everything that we had suggested had to

be OK'd by Rebecca before it was...

Q. Right. I understand that.

A. It's just-- okay.

Q. The clarification, Ms Fynes,

just to be clear as I started out was I understand

that you object very strongly to the fact that

Rebecca had to approve or had any say in what

happened, but the point that I was seeking to

clarify is that in your earlier testimony, you said

you had almost no input, and I'm drawing the

distinction between decision making power and

input.


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A. I'm drawing the distinction

between input and what the final decision maker --

who that person was, and while we did have some

input, we did not get to make the decisions, so

that's my clarification.

Q. Understood. Just to be

clear, the point I was making was in that in fact

you did have some input.

A. I understand.

Q. In terms of the 2008

investigation and the issue of the suicide note,

there is just, I guess, two points that I want to

go back to with you. One is that I understand your

testimony that you don't feel that you ever got a

full apology.

A. We didn't get a full apology.

Q. I don't necessarily want to

take you to all the transcripts, but you would

agree with me that Major Dandurand in three of the

interviews with him spoke to you about the suicide

note.

A. I'm sure he must have. I

don't recall.

Q. He expressed to you his

regret about what had happened.


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A. Yes.

Q. You acknowledge that he

expressed that to you.

A. Yes.

Q. And that he told you, for

example, that he would never stop feeling horrible

about the fact that you hadn't received the suicide

note?

A. He may have, if you say.

Q. He told you that it was

completely inappropriate that you did not receive

the note.

A. Yes.

Q. But in your view, that

doesn't constitute an apology?

A. No, and especially when I

hear him later on talking to the assisting officer

saying he has explained it twice, why don't we

understood.

Q. Am I correct as well, you

mentioned the fact that you had a phone call from

Lieutenant Colonel Sansterre.

A. By mistake.

Q. By mistake. During that

call, you just said you spoke about the suicide


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note?

A. I think we did have some

conversation about the note, but don't recall

specifically what was said.

Q. Lieutenant Colonel Sansterre

believed that he had apologized to you about the

note during that call. Do you disagree with that?

A. We have never an apology for

--

THE CHAIRPERSON: I'm sorry. I

missed the end. Never received an apology from...

THE WITNESS: For the suicide

note, from anybody.

MS RICHARDS:

Q. I understand you also had a

meeting or a phone call with the Minister of

National Defence?

A. Yes, I did.

Q. During that meeting, did the

Minister apologize to you about the suicide note?

A. No, he kind of talked around

it, but no one has ever admitted responsibility for

or said, "I am so sorry for this." Ever.

Q. You were asked about what you

knew about changes to the policy and you said you


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weren't told anything.

A. In terms of what?

Q. Changes to the policy, going

forward for how the National Investigation Service

would treat suicide notes.

A. I guess there has been

discussions, but I can't tell you specifically what

they are.

Q. So just to be clear, because

I understand your earlier testimony, and perhaps I

misunderstood you. I understood your earlier

testimony to be that you were never told that there

had been changes to the policy.

A. No one sat down specifically

with us and said there were changes to the policy

because of what has happened and this is what the

changes are.

Q. So I'm going to put to you

that Major Dandurand did do that, and it's in the

transcripts of your interviews with him, that he

sat down with you and he explained to you that

there had been changes to the policy as a result of

this.

A. I don't recall himself

explaining changes to the policy. Perhaps he said


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there were changes, but I don't recall the

conversation.

Q. I'm also going to suggest to

you that in one of those interviews, Shaun referred

to the fact that you had actually seen an e-mail

about changes to the policy previously.

A. Perhaps. I don't recall.

Q. Moving on to the 2009

investigation. You had stated, and I know that

this is one of the allegations in your complaint,

you object to any reference that you and Mr. Fynes

were the complainants in the 2009 investigation.

A. I'm not saying I object to

it. What I'm saying is that we voiced our

complaints to the military ombudsman and eventually

he told me that he had spoken to the NIS and there

would be an investigation done and then when we met

with Major Dandurand, we did voice our complaints

with him.

Q. Did the ombudsman go to the

NIS at your request?

A. No.

Q. Do you know whether or not

when he went to the NIS that that was based on the

information that you had given him?


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A. I would expect so.

Q. During that first meeting

with the NIS about that complaint, in fact, Mr.

Fynes stated that he had already made the complaint

a year ago and he wasn't going to stand behind the

ombudsman in terms of who had made the complaints

in this case. Do you recall that?

A. We complained about the fact

that the paperwork and the next of kin issue was

wrong all along.

Q. I just want to show you that

comment. It's in the March 3, 2010 transcripts on

page 1, actually. At the bottom of the page, it

states:

"I made that allegation a

long time ago, so I won't

hide behind anybody else. I

made the allegation over a

year ago that they knew or

they should have known

because they stood beside her

while she was giving the

false information." (As read)

A. I believe my husband was

referring to the discussions that we had with


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various people at the DND.

Q. It's also true that in the

course of this interview with the National

Investigation Service that you identified to Major

Dandurand various people who you thought should be

investigated as part of the 2009 investigation.

A. Perhaps.

Q. I can take you through the

transcripts if you would like, but you have

identified throughout here that you felt that

Captain Lubiniecki should be investigated, that

Master Corporal Fitzpatrick should be investigated,

Chief Warrant Officer Ross, Warrant Officer Suzanne

Doucette and Lieutenant Colonel King.

A. Yes. I missed out Major

Jared.

Q. Okay. I may have missed it

too. Maybe he was in here. I don't want to go

back to the discussion that you had with Commission

counsel about your concerns about these transcripts

and whether they are an accurate reflection of the

interview that you had with the police officers.

A. Yes.

Q. Isn't it true that at the end

of each of your interviews, you were actually given


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a copy of the recording?

A. One of them we were given a

copy, one was mailed to us when we requested it.

The video one, we got through an Access to

Information request. We may have been given a

voice recording at the time, I don't recall. I

don't think so. I think the first one we were

given, and after that, they were sent to us, but

the video recording we didn't get until we did an

Access to Information.

Q. So the first one, you will

agree with me, at the end of it, you got a

recording.

A. I believe it was the first

one, yes.

Q. In the second one, you made

that same request and said, "Can we have a

recording like we did last time."?

A. Yes.

Q. And you were told that they

would.

A. Yes.

Q. And I believe there is a

reference in here to them stopping so that they can

provide you with a copy of that tape.


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A. I'm not sure it was provided

at the time. I think it was mailed to us.

Q. Have you compared that

version against the transcripts?

A. No, I think it was the third

one that-- we actually don't have the transcript.

We have the recording. I have never seen the

transcript before today.

Q. Just on that issue about the

transcripts, you understand that they have been

produced to your counsel.

A. Yes.

Q. And you had referred to the

fact that the transcript of Major Parkinson, the

version that you have is heavily redacted.

A. Yes.

Q. The version that has been

filed with this Commission is not heavily redacted,

and I'm wondering --

A. There are sections of Major

Parkinson's testimony that is missing.

Q. That's missing?

A. Yes.

Q. In the copy that you have?

A. Yes. In fact, the comment


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that I made when Mr. Freiman was talking to me,

there was even more to it than that when I was

saying about Master Corporal Mitchell's piece

that's missing. There was more to that as well.

When he said that Stuart was only

living at the duty desk for twodays, and I said to

you the conversation got silly, it got so silly

that in the end, I said -- he kept referring back

to the summary investigation, and I said, "Well,

you know, does it not bother you that you are being

lied to by officers when you do this?" This is how

big the -- and he said, "That didn't happen." I

said, "Well, clearly it did because, then, your

documents here now -- you are saying that Stuart

did live at the duty desk." So somebody was lying,

and that conversation was quite big, and is it

missing? It appears to be. Did it happen?

Absolutely. I would go to my grave and bet me kids

on it.

Q. When you talk about Major

Parkinson's transcripts, I just want to be clear:

Are you saying that there are redacted pages? Are

you saying you believe there are portions of his

interviews --

A. There are portions where he


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starts a sentence and then there is, I think, at

one point, the sixminutes, we timed it, where there

are pieces like that that were missing in the one

we got from the Access people and we have provided

that.

Q. You have provided that to...

A. To our lawyer.

Q. And has he provided that to

the Commission?

A. I would expect.

Q. You have been asked twice now

about your view on the testimony before this

Commission about the sufficiency of medical care

that that Stuart was provided, both by Commission

counsel and by your counsel, and I think it's fair

to say you have made your opinion very clear that

you didn't think too much of the medical care that

he was provided.

A. He is dead, so what else

would I think.

Q. It's fair to say that you had

formed that view long before this hearing.

A. Yes.

Q. And that a lot of the

evidence that you heard here was not really new to


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you.

A. Some of it was.

Q. What was that?

A. I came into this hearing

knowing that each of the people who would be

testifying would have their own little piece of

turf to protect, they have their own take, they

have their own opinion and everybody sees things

differently.

What I did not expect was that all

of the medical people would give virtually the same

testimony. It's like they were all singing from

the same songbook. I expected to see differences

and I truly felt that my son has been thrown under

the bus. I have yet to hear oneperson say anything

really good about Stuart and he had such a great

career.

Q. Just to be clear on what you

are saying, because, again, it's a serious

allegation.

A. It's very serious.

Q. Are you saying that the

medical personnel who appeared before this

Commission have not been truthful in their

evidence?


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A. I think that they have done

the best that they could given the circumstances

they find themselves being in.

Q. As I understand your

testimony earlier, you believe that if the funeral

director who is going to testify this week has told

Commission counsel that he doesn't recall the

conversation that you say he had, that he is not

telling the truth because the military pay for

funerals at his facility.

A. He also had a conversation

along those lines with David Wright, the original

executor of the estate, when he talked to him as

well.

Q. If he doesn't recall that

conversation, you believe it's because he is being

pressured because of the fact that the military

paid for funerals at his --

A. Yes.

Q. As I believe your earlier

testimony, you believe that the Royal Alex Hospital

destroyed discharge papers that Stuart signed on

February4th?

A. No.

Q. You gave some testimony that


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when Stuart was discharged from Dr. Chu that he

signed the form and he said that -- he signed it,

"I hate this place."

A. Yes.

Q. You will agree with me that

that form doesn't appear anywhere in his medical

records.

A. That's right.

Q. Isn't it true that you

believe that the Royal Alex has removed that

document from the records to protect themselves?

A. I don't know. I don't know

where the document is. If it's not in the medical

file, I don't know. Where is it?

Q. You have also testified

before this Commission that you have concerns about

a medical record on March13th that the Royal Alex

has about a meeting that Dr. Block had with Stuart.

A. This document?

Q. That's right.

A. Yes.

Q. So you believe that that has

also been falsified.

A. No, I'm not saying it's being

falsified, but when you read the nurse's notes that


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come prior to this and you look at it in context of

the medical file, it appears it's written as if Dr.

Block saw Stuart at this point. Stuart refused any

treatment from him and left, but we know from the

nursing notes that he did not see Stuart at that

time.

Q. So you think that that's not

an accurate document.

A. I don't know. Do you think

it's accurate given what I have just said? I

didn't write this and I didn't write the nursing

notes that came before it.

THE CHAIRPERSON: I'm afraid Ms

Richards can't answer your question. She can't do

that. It's her that asks the question.

THE WITNESS: I'm sorry.

MS RICHARDS:

Q. You believe that Stuart's

leather chair that had been missing that the

military lied to you about where it had been and

that in fact, Rebecca had had it.

A. I believe -- I know that

Corporal Rohmer who was one of the two people who

was doing the committee of adjustment took two

young ladies a couple days after Stuart's death


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into the regiment in off hours into where that

general area. I know that Stuart's leather chair

which had been in storage was missing.

I know that after many, many

months, and when we finally just were so frustrated

and I said, "Why don't you go ask Rebecca to give

it back?" Lo and behold it appeared. You can draw

whatever conclusions you would like from that.

Q. What I'm going to put to you

is that you believe that the military had been

lying to you and that Rebecca had the chair and it

wasn't until you threatened a police report that

they brought it back.

A. Yes, that's what I believe.

Q. Based on your testimony

today, you also believe that the National

Investigation Service maintained two separate

investigation files for the 2008 investigation

report, one that they would disclose to you and one

that they had in their offices.

A. What I know is that we have

three separate copies of the NIS report, and two of

those reports, the numbering is wildly off in many

different areas. That's what I know.

Q. I believe your earlier


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testimony was you believed when you got the one

that was wildly off, you said they are running

double files here.

A. We questioned whether or not

they are running double files because we can't

think of any other reason for that numbering

discrepancy.

Q. Finally, you believe that the

National Investigation Service modified or

destroyed audio recordings of your interview to

remove embarrassing or difficult parts of that

interview.

A. I know that there are chunks

missing out of an audio recording.

Q. But isn't it true, based on

your testimony, that you believe that the National

Investigation Service are the ones who modified

that audio recording?

A. I don't know who modified it,

but I know that it's their recording and I knew it

came through Access to Information. I know there

are chunks missing.

MS RICHARDS: Those are all my

questions. Thank you.



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THE CHAIRPERSON:

Q. You are obviously aware, this

Commission is not to find fact whether or not your

son had PTSD. That's not our finding here.

A. No, I understand that.

Right.

Q. But I am interested in some

of the information around that because it has been

discussed. In your testimony earlier, I can't put

my hands on it right to the word, but you said that

your son told you he was diagnosed with PTSD.

A. Yes, he did.

Q. When did he tell you that?

A. We talked about it in the

early winter.

Q. Of...

A. 2007, and again in 2008 when

he was in the hospital.

Q. Early winter 207.

A. And in 2008 when he was in

the hospital.

Q. And 2008 in the hospital.

A. Yes.

Q. When did he tell you this in

early winter?


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A. If I my memory serves

correctly, it would have been when I came out in

November and met with him and when we were talking

and he was going to be going to --

Q. Did he tell you who diagnosed

him?

A. He said that he was just

seeing doctors at the base.

Q. So he had already been seeing

the doctors then.

A. He had been going to the

medical clinic. He wasn't working full-time then

or anything, so we had a general discussion, and he

said that he had been told that he had PTSD, and

then again when he was in the hospital, the Royal

Alex, and then we talked more in depth.

Q. In depth. What did he tell

you then?

A. He told me that he had gone

through a series of tests with Dr. Lai, but he

didn't name the doctor. He just said it was a

doctor at the base.

Q. Why do you say it's Dr. Lai?

A. Because I have seen the

medical charts and I have seen the tests. There


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was also the tests.

Q. You have seen the results of

PTSD test.

A. What it said was that

everything pointed to PTSD and it should be

considered and examined further, and then again --

Q. There is a difference between

being pointed toward something and having diagnose,

so I just -- because you said he had been diagnosed

with PTSD.

A. Stuart said he had been

diagnosed with PTSD and the testing was done by Dr.

Lai, and then when he saw Kim Buchanan at the

Alberta Hospital, she did a number of tests over a

number of days and said the same thing.

Q. We just went through a whole

series of question, I think, with Ms Richards where

you believed that Stuart would tell anybody all

kinds of things, once about drug abuse, once about

alcohol abuse, about different circumstances, and

those things weren't to be believed, so why all of

a sudden is it now where to -- he says he has PTSD

or he was diagnosed with that. Why now, when all

the other stuff was not true?

A. I'm not saying all the stuff


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wasn't true, but I think there were levels of --

like I think he was a recreational drug user. I

don't think he was a drug addict. I don't think he

could have been as successful as he was if he was a

drug addict going back years. I mean, his

performance appraisals were unbelievably good right

up until and through the beginning of 2007.

Q. Would it surprise to you know

that there are a lots of drug addicts that are very

successful?

A. Not in a continuing basis

especially doing what he did, and I think one of

the things that came out in the medical files was

that there were times when he denied the medical

community that he had PTSD because it's a career

ender and he said that to me as well, and there

were other times when he exaggerated his symptoms

that he said to one of the medical professionals.

I don't know. Did he do it to get

help? I don't know. I see my son as being like a

hamster on a wheel who is just scrambling like

crazy and he knew that he was really sick.

THE CHAIRPERSON: Re-exam Mr.

Freiman?

MR. FREIMAN: I'm going to be very


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brief. Perhaps in fairness, after I have done my

re-examination, we could give Colonel Drapeau a

couple of minutes to think through because the way

we usually do things, we allowed one more line of

questions.

MS RICHARDS: Sorry. I do have

one issue arising from the questions you just

asked, Mr. Chairman, so I don't know if we want to

do it a little bit out of order in fairness to Mr.

Drapeau --

THE CHAIRPERSON: Leave Mr.

Drapeau to the end. That's fine. We will go with

Mr. Freiman and yourself.

RE-EXAMINATION BY MR. FREIMAN:

MR. FREIMAN: Since, Mr. Chairman,

you have asked most of the questions I was going to

ask. This is going to be extremely brief.

I want to focus on one area, and

it's one that I believe that certainly Commission

counsel takes very seriously and that in the end,

the Chair will have take seriously in his report,

and that's on the issue of the integrity of the

tapes.

You have told us that you have

certain evidence and certain analysis that you have


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done and you have shared that with Corporal

Drapeau.

What I'm going to ask is, if you

would, we don't have to do this during this go-

around, if after this go-around, you would share

with Colonel Drapeau all of the evidence that you

and your husband have been able to put together.

We may be able to do it in Mr. Fynes's testimony,

so it's not to call you back, but if we are going

to be looking at this issue seriously, we would

greatly benefit from having all the information

that is available to you and the entire analysis

that's available to you.

THE CHAIRPERSON: I understood she

said she had already given it to Colonel Drapeau.

COL (RET'D) DRAPEAU: We will go

through it and I will discuss it with Ms Fyes when

I get a moment.


MR. FREIMAN: My request, really,

was whatever you have given to Colonel Drapeau,

certainly we would like to have shared to the

extent that you instruct him to, but we would also

like you to think again if you have any additional

evidence, it would be helpful to have it all in one


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place.

We will try to have the questions

come in through your husband. If that proves not

to be possible, then we may have to ask you to come

back to help us, but we will try and not to do

that. Those are really all my questions.


FURTHER CROSS-EXAMINATION BY MS RICHARDS:

MS RICHARDS:

Q. I'm sorry. I'm just trying

to find the document to help you, but I will put it

to you, and then if we need the document, I will

pull it up. The Chairman had asked you some

questions about Stuart's reporting to you that he

had PTSD and whether or not it was possible that

that was not truthful at the time.

Are you aware that he reported in

June 2007 during that first admission to the

hospital that he told the doctors at that time that

he had been diagnosed with PTSD?

A. No.

Q. You have reviewed his medical

records, and you will agree with me that he didn't

undergo testing for PTSD until August2007.

A. Right.


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Q. When he was telling the

medical professionals in June2007 based on

everything we know from his medical reports, that

was not true.

A. I don't know if it was true

or not.

Q. You have reviewed his medical

records.

A. Okay. I don't know if it was

true or not whether he had been diagnosed with PTSD

in June. I'm telling you when I became aware.

Q. Just for the record, I will

give you the reference if it helps. We could pull

it up, but that was the only thing that I wanted to

draw to your attention since the Chairman had asked

about it. It's document1294, and by my numbering,

it's page 32. There is a consultation report.

Before we leave today, I will make a copy so that

everybody has a copy of it, and the consultation

report just for the record is dated June27, 2007.


Colonel Drapeau? Do we need a couple of minutes,

or are you ready?

FURTHER CROSS-EXAMINATION BY COL (RET'D) DRAPEAU:

COL (RET'D) DRAPEAU: No, I'm


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fine. I just have a couple of questions.

Q. Ms Fynes, when was Stuart

deployed to Afghanistan?

A. I think it was August2004

till February2005.

Q. And you were in touch with

him before and during this deployment?

A. I was in touch with him

before, and I think I got one or two calls when he

was away.

Q. And he did pay a visit during

his deployment tour? Did he not have a moment of

leave back home?

A. He did, but he didn't come

home. He went to his girlfriend's and her family

had him for Christmas and that's when he became

engaged to this girlfriend.

Q. What happened after that?

A. They were a happy young

engaged couple. When he came back from

Afghanistan, he just was different. He just wanted

to be with the guys that he served with and

eventually their relationship fell apart.

Q. Is that something that you

have learned or observed yourself that he would


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want to go and be with his camaraderie as opposed

to having a normal relationship with his fiancée?

A. He just was different when he

came home. He was so settled when he went away and

he just was-- he was quite successful with his job

when he came back and then it just kind of all fell

apart.

Q. Did you have communication

with his fiancée and their family concerning his

changed behaviour in his return?

A. Yes. The comment that was

made to us at the funeral was -- the young lady

didn't come to the funeral; she was in the

hospital. But her grandmother came and her mum

came and they spoke to me at the church and they

said how terribly sorry they were because they had

loved Stuart and that he just was so different when

he came back from Afghanistan that he just was a

whole different young man.

Q. Did Stuart confide in you or

our husband as to what he may have seen, what

traumatic events he might have been witness to or

been informed of or whatever?

A. He talked very little about

his tour except that he did a lot of work up in the


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mountains. He talked a little bit about the

poverty. There was one other comment that he made:

There was a thing in the paper that there being

this Canadian team that was working over there that

had this huge success working with the Brits and

the Americans about this finding some Talibans and

bombs and all of that stuff, and there was an

article in the paper.

When he had called and I said,

"Was the thing about the Canadians, you know, about

how great you guys are doing over there," and he

immediately went, "You know about that?" And then

he went, "That was me," and I think he actually got

a commanders coin for that afterwards.

Q. Ms Fynes, could you turn to

this booklet that you have before you with the

white cover at tab 7. My friend has taken you

there before. I'm going to draw your attention to

the e-mail from then Captain Lubiniecki to Major

Parkinson, Padre Hubbard, Chief Officer Ross and

Second Lieutenant Brown.

A. Am I at the right place?

Q. Sorry. Tab 10.

A. Which e-mail? The bottom

one?


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Q. It's the second one from

Major Lubiniecki and basically responding to some

of the e-mails and giving instructions to the two

assisting officers, Major Parkinson and Second

Lieutenant Brown. He says in here, so the

instruction is:

"Please contact Sheila and

Shaun tomorrow to discuss the

funeral service that you will

be providing."

Second:

"Please also ensure that you

follow up with Rebecca to

ensure that she is happy with

the whole ceremony."

The way I'm reading this is

contacts you to get whatever, but make sure above

all that Rebecca is happy. Is that fair?

A. That's exactly what happened.

Q. Would it be for me to

conclude that basically you are going to be looked

to as the second fellows in that particular

ceremony?

A. We were.

Q. You were. Thank you.


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MS RICHARDS: Just one house

keeping issue. For the sake of the record, do we

want to enter the index as an exhibit?

THE CHAIRPERSON: Probably

wouldn't hurt.

MS RICHARDS: I apologize. I

don't want a loose copy. I'm happy to -- I can

bring copies for the Commission for tomorrow.

THE CHAIRPERSON: We have a copy

here.

THE REGISTRAR: The index will by

Exhibit P-60.

EXHIBIT P-60: Index

THE CHAIRPERSON: Thank you. I

believe that concludes the issues for today.

Ms Fynes, I don't think there is a

person in this room that can -- as parents, we all

share that terrible feeling of burying a child

before their time. None of us ever wants to go

through that regardless of the circumstances,

whether it be through tragedy, an accident, a

suicide, a criminal act or whatever the case is.

The bottom line is the loss of a child is

incredibly traumatic, both for you and Mr. Fynes

and for your family and extended family as well.


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Unless somebody has been through

that, you really probably can't share that pain and

I can't do that, but I can understand the pain that

you would go through.


THE CHAIRPERSON: Tomorrow

morning, 9:30. Thank you.

--- Whereupon the proceedings adjourned

at 4:16 p.m.

A.S.A.P. Reporting Services Inc.

(613) 564-2727 (416) 861-8720

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I HEREBY CERTIFY THAT I have, to the best

of my skill and ability, accurately recorded

by shorthand and transcribed therefrom, the

foregoing proceeding using real time computer

aided transcription.

____________________________________

Marion Liang, Court Reporter

and

I HEREBY CERTIFY THAT I have, to the best

of my skill and ability, accurately recorded

by Stenomask and transcribed therefrom,

the foregoing proceeding.

_______________________________

Suzanne Hubbard, Stenomask Reporter

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