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Cameron Ortis, director general with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police’s intelligence unit, is shown in a court sketch from his hearing in Ottawa on Friday. Image: Lauren Foster-MacLeod via Reuters

Arrested Canadian intelligence official Cameron Ortis had access to allies’ secrets, head of police agency says

  • ‘Unsettling’ charges faced by director general of RCMP’s National Intelligence Coordination Centre leave many in police agency shaken
  • Ortis worked in operations research and national security criminal investigations, and had access to information from Canada’s international partners
Canada

A top Canadian intelligence official charged with violating the nation’s rarely used secrets law had access to high-level intelligence from Canada’s international allies, the head of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police said on Monday.

Cameron Ortis, 47, served as director general of the RCMP’s National Intelligence Coordination Centre, a unit that deals with national security risks ranging from financing terrorism to nuclear threats.

Ortis, a civilian, was arrested and charged last week with obtaining information to give to a foreign entity or terrorist group, communicating “special operational information” and breach of trust.

RCMP Commissioner Brenda Lucki said on Monday that the “unsettling” charges had “shaken” many in Canada’s federal police agency.

“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 in a statement. She said that “mitigation strategies are being put in place as required”.

Officials have disclosed few details about the case that could have wide-ranging implications for Canada and its allies. The country is a member of the Five Eyes intelligence-sharing network with the United States, Britain, Australia and New Zealand.

The charges stem from activities alleged to have occurred between 2015 and this year. It is not clear what information Ortis is accused of trying to leak, whom the recipients might have been or whether he was successful.

Lucki said Ortis joined the RCMP in 2007 and worked in operations research and national security criminal investigations. That gave him “access to information the Canadian intelligence community possessed” and “to intelligence coming from our allies both domestically and internationally”.

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According to his LinkedIn profile, Ortis earned a doctorate in international relations at the University of British Columbia in 2006 and speaks Mandarin. His doctoral thesis was “Bowing to Quirinus: Compromised Nodes and Cyber Security in East Asia”.

The Security of Information Act, the law under which Ortis was charged, was passed after the September 11 attacks in the US. It addresses espionage and the protection of government secrets.

The law was used to convict Sub-Lieutenant Jeffrey Paul Delisle, a navy officer who pleaded guilty in 2012 to selling secrets to the Russian military. Russia paid him US$3,000 per month for secrets that he smuggled out on a memory stick he kept in his pocket. He was sentenced to 20 years in prison.

Ortis is expected to appear in court on Friday. Prosecutor John MacFarlane said last week that the government would ask that his bail request be denied.

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