The upcoming trial of Cameron Jay Ortis, the former director general of the RCMP’s National Intelligence Coordination Centre, will be the first under the Canadian Security of Information Act (SOIA). Ortis was arrested in September 2019 for allegedly leaking top-secret information and planning to provide additional classified information to a foreign entity. He had access to sensitive intelligence from Canada’s security agencies and its Five Eyes allies. Ortis faces six charges, including four under Section 14 of the SOIA.
The charges against Ortis claim that he intentionally and without authority communicated special operational information to four individuals. He also faces charges of fraudulently accessing a computer service and breaching trust. Ortis intends to plead not guilty to all charges and plans to testify in his own defense. Further details about the case are currently unavailable due to a publication ban. Ortis was in custody but was released on bail in December 2022 after his previous bail was revoked in November 2019.
The trial, initially scheduled for September 2022, was delayed for a year when a new defense lawyer took on Ortis’s case. This delay brings into focus the RCMP’s past security vulnerabilities. A review conducted by the RCMP in June 2020 in response to Ortis’s arrest found that security awareness training was not mandatory within the force. The report revealed a lack of standards in managing IT assets and highlighted employees’ hesitancy to report security incidents due to fear of consequences.
Following the release of the review, the RCMP introduced mandatory security awareness training for employees and implemented several changes to address security vulnerabilities. These changes included making it easier to report security issues, enhancing the internal profile of departmental security operations, and developing a program to reduce personnel leaks.
In 2013, Sub-Lt. Jeffrey Delisle became the first Canadian to face charges under the SOIA. Delisle, a naval officer from Halifax, sold secrets to Russia and received a 20-year prison sentence. His guilty plea to one count of breach of trust and two charges of passing information to a foreign entity led to his sentence without a trial. Delisle served at HMCS Trinity, an intelligence facility in Halifax, where he spied on NATO information for four years and provided it to the Russians in exchange for payments totaling $71,817. He was granted full parole in 2019.