Ex-Mountie who violated secrets act gets 14 years

OTTAWA, Ontario — A judge Wednesday sentenced a former senior intelligence official in Canada’s national police force to 14 years in prison for breaching the country’s secrets law.

Cameron Jay Ortis led the Royal Canadian Mounted Police’s Operations Research group, which assembles classified information on cybercriminals, terror cells and transnational criminal networks.

Ontario Superior Court Justice Robert Maranger said Wednesday that Ortis will be credited with time spent in custody, and he must now serve another seven years and 155 days.

A jury last November declared Ortis, 51, guilty of three counts of violating the Security of Information Act and one count of attempting to do so. They also found him guilty of breach of trust and fraudulent use of a computer.

Ortis had pleaded not guilty to all charges, including violating the secrets law by revealing classified information to three individuals in 2015 and trying to do so in a fourth instance.

The prosecution argued Ortis lacked authority to disclose classified material and that he was not doing so as part of a sanctioned undercover operation.

While there were suggestions that a possible financial incentive was the reason for the crimes, “in truth, there was no tangible evidence of a motive for what Cameron Ortis did,” Maranger told the court.

“He was never paid anything by anyone. The ‘why’ here in my mind remains a mystery.”

At a January hearing, prosecutor Judy Kliewer said a sentence for Ortis in the range of 22 to 25 years would be appropriate. Defense lawyer Jon Doody said his client should be sentenced to a little over seven years.

At trial, Ortis testified he did not betray the RCMP. Rather, he said he offered secret material to targets in a bid to get them to use an online encryption service set up by an allied intelligence agency to spy on adversaries.

The prosecution could not pinpoint a motive, but argued Ortis had no authority to disclose classified material and that he was not doing so as part of a legitimate undercover operation.

Kliewer told the January hearing that Ortis deserved a sentence that would show the public and Canada’s international partners that the system intended to protect sensitive information “has teeth.”