Cameron Ortis, a former director general with the RCMP, leaves an Ottawa courthouse after getting out on bail, October 22, 2019.Church Brewing: where the customers are the congregation and the choir | SaltWireOTTAWA – When Cameron Jay Ortis, the former RCMP intelligence director general accused of leaking top-secret information, steps into an Ottawa courtroom on Tuesday he won’t be the only one on trial.
Four years after his arrest, Ortis, 51, will face six charges when his trial begins Tuesday. Four are under the Security of Information Act for allegedly “intentionally and without authority” sharing “special operational information” to four unnamed individuals in 2015. Two others charges are under the Criminal Code, for breach of trust and misusing a computer.
The arrest for alleged leaking of classified information by a Mountie who had some of the most extensive access to Canadian and allied intelligence raised questions about how the RCMP protected its classified information, the quality of the continuous vetting it did of high-ranking employees, and why it did not utilize polygraph tests as part of its security checks the way other national intelligence and law-enforcement agencies in Canada and the U.S. do.
“The process by which the court tries to thread that needle doesn’t just matter for spy cases, it matters for all cases that involve national security intelligence,” West said, noting that the issue also often comes up in terrorism cases.Paul Cavalluzzo, a seasoned national security lawyer, said it will be important that Ortis’ case be conducted in public as much as possible.
But previous media reports by the CBC and The Walrus have detailed a Hollywood-esque tale that involved a high-stakes gambler, an American college football player turned drug trafficker, a B.C.-based tech company that sold hyper-encrypted phones to a Mexican cartel and an FBI tip to the RCMP that eventually led to Ortis’ arrest.
Crown prosecutors will likely be tabling a list of witnesses that will be heard during the trial on Tuesday. Crown attorneys declined to comment for this story.Somewhat unusually, Ortis is also expected to testify in his defence. His lawyer, Mark Ertel, told reporters Thursday while at the courthouse that his client looks forward to his day in court.
Source: Law Daily Report (lawdailyreport.net)
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