SPY SCANDAL BURNED US
Canada's Five Eyes alliance membership suffers blows, Diane Francis writes.
This country's membership in the Five Eyes military-intelligence alliance — which consists of Canada, the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand — has been damaged by a lingering espionage and law-enforcement scandal in Ottawa that's been shrouded in secrecy.
In September 2019, the RCMP'S highest-level intelligence official, Cameron Ortis, was arrested and remains in jail in Canada.
No trial date has been set and court documents have been sealed.
Ortis, 48, grew up in British Columbia, speaks Mandarin and is an expert in cybersecurity. In 2016, he became the director general of the RCMP'S National Intelligence Coordination Centre (NICC), held high-level security clearance and was the highest-ranking civilian on the force. As such, he had access to information on crime-busting and anti-terrorism operations worldwide.
Ortis has appeared in court once and, afterwards, prosecutor John Macfarlane outlined the case against him: “The allegations are that he obtained, stored, processed sensitive information, we believe with the intent to communicate it to people that he shouldn't be communicating it to.”
Canadians have been kept in the dark ever since, but foreign media seem to have access to more information. In May, an article in American Military News written by a retired CIA official spelled out the seriousness of the federal government's mismanagement.
“A potential Chinese spy infiltrated the highest levels of the Canadian intelligence service, which is part of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. The implications extend far beyond the borders of Canada,” wrote Brad Johnson. “Canada was warned in 2013 that unless it tightened security procedures, Five Eyes would withhold the shared classified information.”
In other words, Canada was warned in 2013 following another scandal, involving an officer with the Canadian Navy, and this incident has only made things worse.
After his arrest, RCMP Commissioner Brenda Lucki told The Washington Post that, from 2015 to 2019, Ortis had access to our allies' secrets and that the allegations against him had “shaken” the RCMP. “We are aware of the potential risk to agency operations of our partners in Canada and abroad, and we thank them for their continued collaboration,” she said.
According to a story in the
BBC, suspicions about Ortis were first voiced in 2018 when the RCMP was helping the FBI with a case and investigators came across documents that pointed toward the existence of “a mole.”
Then, in August of this year, three RCMP analysts who worked under Ortis filed a civil suit, accusing him of workplace harassment and RCMP management of failing to address his bad behaviour. They alleged privacy breaches, as well, because
“the intelligence that Mr. Ortis had stolen and sold was largely the work product of the NICC employees he had targeted,” and that “the work product transmitted by Mr. Ortis to third parties contains information which identifies the plaintiffs personally.” None of these allegations have been proven in court.
Ortis remains accused of eight counts of violating the Security of Information Act and two criminal counts, though none of the charges have been proven in court. All documents and proceedings have been sealed by the courts and no one is commenting on the matter.
The process has crawled along in secrecy for many months now, but the public deserves answers to the questions raised by this affair, such as: Were Canada and its allies put at risk? What malevolent nation-states, organizations and individuals are involved? Are reports true that the RCMP reviewed security protocols after the case, but has yet to implement them? If so, why not? Did the 2013 complaint lead to reforms and why didn't they work? And is Canada on a Five Eyes' watch list?
Most important, the public deserves assurances that the country's security architecture has finally been fixed, and that it is being supervised by an independent, ongoing oversight mechanism in order to prevent future lapses.
This is not about politics. This is about our economy, government competence and Canada's sovereignty, security and standing in the democratic world.