A former RCMP intelligence officer has been sentenced to 14 years in prison for violating Canada’s secrets law.
Cameron Jay Ortis, who formerly led the RCMP’s Operations Research group that put together classified information on cyber criminals and terror cells, was handed down the sentence from Ontario Superior Court Justice Robert Maranger. He will be credited for having served time in custody, meaning he will serve another seven years and 155 days.
In November 2023, Mr. Ortis was found guilty on three counts of violating the Security of Information Act, and one count of attempting to do so. He was also found guilty of breach of trust and fraudulent use of a computer. He pleaded not guilty to all charges.
On Jan. 11, prosecutor Judy Kliewer implored Justice Maranger to hand down a heavy sentence for Mr. Ortis of 28 years, which would have been the equivalent of two consecutive sentences on the first two counts and concurrent sentences for the other offences.
Ms. Kliewer argued that Mr. Ortis “betrayed the RCMP” and impacted Canadians’ safety, and the justice system needed to demonstrate it had “teeth” when it came to protecting sensitive information.
Disclosing Secrets
Mr. Ortis led the RCMP’s Operations Research group and its National Intelligence Co-ordination Centre, which had access to sensitive information from domestic and international partners. He was convicted of disclosing secrets to subjects of police interest, such as criminals and money launderers involved with terrorist organizations.Mr. Ortis testified that he offered material to targets in an attempt to get them to use an online encryption service, which had been set up by an allied intelligence agency to spy on adversaries. Defence lawyer Jon Doody said Mr. Ortis was using promises of secret material as bait, and that he “was not and is not an enemy to the RCMP, or to the citizens of Canada.”
Crown prosecutors, meanwhile, argued that Mr. Ortis did not have the authority to disclose this material, and that he was not doing so as part of an undercover operation that had been sanctioned.
Mr. Ortis had also extracted sensitive material from the Canadian Top Secret Network—a highly classified network used to share information with Canadian law enforcement and intelligence communities—and stored it on his computer at home. RCMP officers investigating Mr. Ortis feared he was planning to pass these files to Chinese officials, as he had saved a document to his computer that had images of business cards of two diplomats from the Chinese Embassy in Ottawa.
Justice Maranger appeared to agree with these concerns, writing in a summary of the Crown’s evidence that the business cards being found on Mr. Ortis’ computer could be “interpreted as circumstantial evidence of Mr. Ortis preparing to share the documents/classified material with a particular foreign entity.”
Mr. Ortis is the first person to be convicted in a trial under the Security of Information Act. Jeffrey Delisle, a former Halifax-based naval officer, pleaded guilty to passing information to Russia in 2012 and was sentenced to 20 years imprisonment. He was released on full parole in 2018.
The Canadian Press contributed to this report.
