Retired military captain alleges discrimination by Canadian Armed Forces due to service dog

A decorated, retired Captain and Sergeant with the London Police Services has filed a complaint with the Canadian Human Rights Commission (CHRC), alleging discrimination and differential treatment once his Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) became a visible disability because of his service dog.

Captain (Ret.) Andrew Gough joined the Canadian Armed Forces (CAF) as a military police member in 1999. His career was on an escalating trajectory.

He earned awards and commendations for his work, including being named Reserve Military Police Member of the year, and was deployed to Libya in 2014 where he escaped a kidnapping attempt, was fired at by terrorists and helped to execute a difficult and dangerous evacuation of the Canadian embassy.

”There were very real incoming threats. I’m not necessarily going to suggest it was direct, but we were in the line of an approaching civil war,” Gough explained to CityNews from his home in St. Thomas, ON.

When Gough returned to Canada, his career was thriving, but he was struggling mentally. “I became increasingly hypervigilant, irritated and isolated. I withdrew from family and friends, spending all my time in the basement of my house unless I had to work. My alcohol use became dangerous and consistent. I needed it to function,” Gough wrote in his complaint to the CHRC.

By 2015, he started to experience suicidal ideation. He was diagnosed with PTSD in early 2016.

He kept his diagnosis secret from the Armed Forces and was promoted to Lieutenant, he was on track to be promoted to Captain when he got Riggs, a white German Shepard support dog who was trained to assist Gough with his anxiety, hypervigilance and suicidal interventions.

“Its not an exaggeration to say Riggs has saved my life everyday,” Gough said.

“I worked so hard to get to where I was. I loved being a soldier. I worried about coming out about my mental health injury would destroy my career. And it did,” Gough told CityNews.

Gough told his supervisors about his PTSD diagnosis, but once he started bringing Riggs with him, he claims things changed dramatically.

“As of November 2021, I was promotable to Captain. However, it would become clear to me that CAF would make sure that I never received further promotions. I also began to experience discrimination as a result of using a service dog.”

“The change for Andrew happened when his invisible disability became very visible because of Riggs,” explained Susan Toth, Gough’s legal counsel. “Certainly, there are individuals involved, but this is really systemic.”

“We’re talking about obstacles being placed in Andrew’s way when he was seeking promotion, not being able to train with his platoon members being placed two kilometres away from his team,” Toth claimed, citing a training weekend where staff at CFB Kingston told Gough upon arrival that it couldn’t accommodate his service dog and he was sent away from the team.

“He was not being provided meaningful work when he had a disability,” Toth said, adding Gough was “told he couldn’t parade with his peers because he has a service animal.”

Gough voiced his opposition to the decision to bar him from parading with Riggs, and ultimately, he was allowed, but only at the rear.

Gough said he was heartbroken by the way he was being treated by CAF but shortly thereafter, a public relations officer within the organization wrote a web article about Gough and Riggs, celebrating the army’s work to accommodate soldiers with varying disabilities

“The reality of what he was facing behind the scenes was constant humiliation, differential treatment and harassment,” Toth claimed.

Gough was medically released, taking an early retirement from his military career, earlier this year.

He’s seeking nearly $140,000 in lost wages and pain and suffering but he’s seeking systemic changes, including mandatory training for leadership on disability discrimination, a third-party review of department policies to eliminate discrimination and moving to ensure that all accommodations on bases are accessible to those with service dogs.

“It’s not about the dollars and cents. I won’t keep a cent of it if any comes my way,” Gough said. “It’s about changing so that a person that might come after me won’t have to feel this way, so they can feel included in their profession. I wanted to be a soldier my whole life. And the way it ended was unkind.”

The Canadian Armed Forces declined to comment on Gough’s allegations