Kelowna nurse Ashley Stone sits down at her kitchen table, opens a bulky blue folder containing a paper trail of 10 years of multiple frauds committed in her name by imposters and gets right to the point.

“It's just been a nightmare.”

She says she’s had to repeatedly put out “fires” and convince debt collectors she was innocent.

“It's never over,” she said. “I could be 80 years old and still be dealing with this.”

Stone says her employer, Interior Health, which runs hospitals and medical facilities in B.C.’s southeastern region, needs to be held accountable for a decade of denials of a massive data breach in 2009.

Stone, who works at Kelowna General Hospital in Kelowna, B.C., estimates fraudsters have racked up close to $25,000 in debt in her name. (Jonathan Castell/CBC)

“I thought they would take it seriously,” she told fifth estate co-host Mark Kelley, recalling when, in 2014, she discovered multiple nurses in the maternity ward at Kelowna General Hospital had been victims of identity theft — at the same time.

Today, a former Ontario privacy commissioner is calling for an external investigation into why, for a decade, the B.C. government agency denied the data breach, which a fifth estate investigation shows affected 28,000 health-care workers.

Watch the full documentary, “The Denial Machine,” from the fifth estate on YouTube or CBC-TV on Friday at 9 p.m.

“It's heartbreaking, truly, that this is taking place and the disregard on the part of the government and Interior Health, that's what I find appalling,” said Ann Cavoukian.

WATCH | Kelowna nurse recalls identity theft that affected colleagues: Kelowna nurse describes identity theft that took over maternity ward Duration 0:51 Registered nurse Ashley Stone says when fraudsters stole her identity, she discovered she wasn’t alone as colleagues started speaking up.

According to an eight-month fifth estate investigation, numerous groups of nurses and medical workers in cities and towns across the B.C. Interior began reporting cases of stolen identities more than a decade ago — yet senior management continued to deny responsibility.

Interior Health executives declined interviews, stating “this matter” was “before the courts.”

In a media release, the provincial government agency said its “top pr