Meng Wanzhou hearing: Canada border boss warned officer not to create more records, in case they were accessed via information law
- Border officer Nicole Goodman said she was told that creating a summary of Meng’s case was ‘probably not a good idea because evidence should be tested in court’
- She told Meng’s extradition hearing that there was nothing nefarious about the instruction, and it was not intended to conceal anything
A senior Canadian border officer, whose team examined Meng Wanzhou before her arrest at Vancouver’s airport two years ago, was told by her superiors not to create more records about the case, because they might be accessed under freedom of information laws.
Nicole Goodman, the Canada Border Services Agency’s chief of passenger operations at the airport, said she was told “that was probably not a good idea because evidence should be tested in court”, as she testified at Meng’s extradition case in the Supreme Court of British Columbia on Wednesday.
Goodman described a meeting with her supervisor John Lindy and CBSA regional director general Roslyn MacVicar in late December 2018 or early January 2019. “It was in relation to creating records or additional information that may not be necessary. There were concerns with ATIP, access to information [and privacy],” she said.
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The meeting came after Meng’s arrest on December 1, 2018. Goodman said that she wanted to create a summary of Meng’s case, as a “kind of ‘lessons learned’” document. But MacVicar deterred her.
She said she could not recall the exact wording, but “the context was ‘well we shouldn’t be creating additional records’,” said Goodman, before correcting herself to say “unnecessary, not additional” records.
Meng’s lawyers have depicted her treatment by the CBSA and Royal Canadian Mounted Police as an abuse of process, and part of a covert evidence-gathering exercise directed by the American Federal Bureau of Investigation.