Selling Out Canada's Intelligence Operations

"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."

Crown Prosecutor John MacFarlane

"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."

"Canada was warned in 2013 that unless it tightened security procedures, Five Eyes would withhold the shared classified information."

Retired CIA official, American Military News

 

"The intelligence that Mr. Ortis had stolen and sold was largely the work product of the NICC [National Intelligence Co-ordination Centre] employees he had targeted. The work product transmitted by Mr. Ortis to third parties contains information which identifies the plaintiffs personally."

"[The analysts] were subject to an investigation into whether they were complicit in Mr. Ortis's actions, which caused them distress and  further isolated them in the workplace."

"While ultimately cleared, they were provided no information about the level of investigation to which they were subjected, including whether they were subject to any monitoring and whether any monitoring was ongoing." 

"The plaintiffs have received no reassurances or transparency around the degree to which the RCMP may have been or may still be intruding on their privacy in order to 'clear' them."   

Civil suit filed against the RCMP by three analysts who worked under Ortis at the NICC

Ortis walks away from the courthouse in Ottawa with his lawyer Ian Carter, left, after being granted bail on Oct. 22, 2019. (Justin Tang/The Canadian Press)

 

The unsteady reputation of the present-day Royal Canadian Mounted Police suffered a head blow in September of 2019 when its highest-level civilian intelligence official was arrested on charges of revealing secret level intelligence to an unnamed recipient while planning to send on top secret Canadian intelligence shared with other members of the international intelligence group called the Five Eyes, to a foreign agency.

 

That startling revelation of espionage at the highest reaches of Canada's intelligence agencies has damaged reliance on Canadian integrity and law-enforcement with other members of the Five Eyes military-intelligence alliance, consisting of Canada, the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand. Since his arrest, 48-year-old Cameron Ortis and his benighted covert actions have been shrouded in secrecy. 

 

Originally from British Columbia, Mr. Ortis became an expert in cybersecurity; in 2015 appointed director general of the RCMP's National Intelligence Coordination Centre. He had held high-level security clearance as the highest-ranking civilian on the force with access to information on anti-terrorism and crime-busting operations globally, shared with all members of the Five Eyes alliance. 

 

Among his many credits, Mr. Ortis also spoke fluent Mandarin, a talent that might have been viewed as a bonus in his position, but which is now considered a lead in his private sympathies. Since Mr. Ortis's imprisonment, very little has been released about the man, his position with the RCMP, the long investigation and search for incriminating evidence launched by the RCMP against one of their own. But it has been revealed that while he was under investigation no move was made to remove him from office.

 

Appointed director general in April 2016, he was a civilian analyst in 2007 with the RCMP post-completion of a PhD at the University of British Columbia. He had held positions in the Operations Research and National Security Criminal Investigations Directorate at the RCMP previously, so he was well versed in RCMP operations. He now faces eight counts under the Security of Information Act, along with breach of trust.

 

All the while the international investigation was in motion, Mr. Ortis was permitted to remain in his highly sensitive position, privy to every secret file, all intelligence received routinely by Canada as a member of the Five Eyes group. And during that period, 2018 to 2019, he is held to have accessed, obtained and retained guarded information. He is as well held to have possessed a "device apparatus or software useful for concealing the content of information or for surreptitiously communicating, obtaining or retaining information".

Although Canadians know little of the investigation and the man whose covert exploits have put Canada's security and intelligence rating with its colleague countries at risk, foreign media appear to have accessed information on the matter. An article appeared in American Military News that a retired CIA official wrote, spelling out just how seriously the mismanagement by Canada's federal government is viewed internationally.

In 2013 an earlier security scandal had erupted when an officer with the Canadian Navy was revealed to have sold intelligence of a classified nature to a foreign body. At that time Canada was given fair warning that its security lapse was seen as troubling to its place of trust within the foreign intelligence community. From 2015 to 2019 as director general with the RCMP Cameron Ortis had unlimited access to Canada's allies' secrets.

"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", stated RCMP commissioner Brenda Lucki. Suspicions surrounding Ortis first emerged in 2018 when the RCMP was helping the FBI with a case and investigators discovered documents pointing to the existence of "a mole", according to a story aired by the BBC. 

More latterly, in August of this year, three RCMP analysts who had worked under Ortis filed a civil suit in which they accused their former director general of workplace harassment, and accused RCMP management of neglecting their responsibility to address his poor management, alleging privacy breaches as well. All documents and proceedings in this hushed case have been sealed by the courts to maintain secrecy.

• Unanswered are prime questions such as: Were Canada and its allies placed at risk? 
• What malevolent nation-states, organizations and individuals are involved? 
• Are reports true that the RCMP reviewed security protocols following the case, but none has yet been implemented? 
• Did the complaint of 2013 lead to reforms?
•  Is Canada now on a Five Eyes' watch list? 

All of which leads one to contemplate government incompetence in the most critical of issues; as well as the critical issue of Canada's sovereignty, security and reputation in the opinion of peer nations of the democratic community. 

"A year is a very long time."

"If the RCMP is publicly saying that they haven't done anything or haven't implemented any of the changes that maybe need to happen in terms of increasing the security posture, what are they telling allies? Because they're obviously still receiving intelligence from the allies. So is the messaging the same to them? And if so, how are they taking that?" 

Jessica Davis, former senior intelligence analyst, Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS), head, Insight Threat Intelligence   

 
"An internal investigation is fine up to a point but Ortis sat at the centre of an intelligence and communications web that reached to many domestic and international partners." 
"The bigger issue is that the RCMP on its national security side is not currently under any regular scrutiny from external, independent review bodies." 

"But NSIRA [National Security and Intelligence Review Agency] is not required to conduct annual or even regular reviews of the RCMP [as it is for CSIS and CSE]. It can simply look at aspects of RCMP operations when it chooses."

Wesley Wark, national security, intelligence and terrorism professor, University of Ottawa

Cameron Ortis walks with his lawyer Ian Carter, obscured at left, after leaving the courthouse in Ottawa on Oct. 22, 2019. (Justin Tang/The Canadian Press)