TORONTO -- An injured veteran had her insurance benefits temporarily pulled just days before Christmas after she says Manulife mistakenly determined she was capable of working.
Kelsi Sheren served in Afghanistan in 2009 and was medically released from the Canadian military in 2011. She founded the jewelry company Brass and Unity in 2016, but says she does not take a paycheque from the business and instead uses it as a way of coping with her post-traumatic stress disorder.
“I’m not employable and that’s why I do what I do,” she told CTVNews.ca in a phone interview.
“I’m just the face of it, because it’s my story that the company’s built on,” she added. “This is my therapy. This isn’t anything else.”
Sheren said she recently received a call from Manulife, where the representative told her that her insurance payments would be taken away because it appeared she had a successful business.
“I won’t be able to pay my mortgage and I have a three-year-old son right before Christmas,” she said on Monday.
Sheren receives payments through Manulife’s Service Income Security Insurance Plan (SISIP), which offers income protection to military members who are released for medical reasons or who qualify as being “totally disabled.” The plan is also designed to provide skills training to military members with the goal of obtaining gainful employment.
“We pay into this. We’re owed this,” Sheren said. “They put all these stipulations on you and if you don’t follow them, they drop just you. That’s how quick it happens.”
After CTVNews.ca reached out to Manulife, Sheren was informed that her benefits would be reinstated, but only until the New Year, where they would then be “re-evaluated.”
In a phone interview, Manulife spokesperson Shabeen Hanifa said the company has been in contact with Sheren, but is unable to comment on the situation.
“We strive to do everything within our powers to serve our customers and we have been in ongoing contact with this particular plan member to provide the appropriate assistance,” she said. “We do take the responsibility of protecting the privacy of our customers very seriously and so we can’t discuss the specific details of any individual.”
Brass and Unity offers a variety of fashion accessories, but is most known for creating bracelets and necklaces featuring recycled shell casings. Twenty per cent of net profits are sent to veterans and charities that support veterans, while the remainder goes back into the company.
On Tuesday, Brass and Unity was featured on the CBS daytime television program “The Doctors.”
Sheren believes Manulife cut her SISIP payments because these television appearances and her public persona make it look like she gets paid by a successful business, while her medical records and tax returns indicate otherwise.
“They Googled me and made their decision based off of outside perception of what social media looks like, instead of looking at my doctor’s eight years of paper work,” she said.
Sheren said that while she can handle this situation, losing these payments could be life-threatening for some of her fellow veterans who are in a worse position.
“I’ve got enough of a support system and fortunately I have that, a lot of people don’t,” she said. “This is a chronic problem that nobody talks about.”
“What if this was somebody that (Manulife) called and did this to and they had nowhere to go?”
