Cameron Jay Ortis, right, a former RCMP intelligence director accused of disclosing classified information, leaves the Ottawa Courthouse following a break in proceedings in Ottawa on Oct. 3.Spencer Colby/The Canadian Press
A specialized national security unit in the RCMP operates separately from criminal investigations, a veteran of the force has told the trial of his former boss who allegedly leaked secrets.
The RCMP’s Daniel Morris, who started to work for the force in 2003, was a Crown witness in the criminal proceedings against Cameron Ortis, whom he worked for in a unit known as “operations research” (OR).
During Mr. Morris’s testimony Monday, journalists were excluded from the courtroom pursuant to a court order. A consortium of the media opposed being excluded. Mr. Morris’ testimony was released Tuesday in a transcript.
According to that text, Mr. Morris told court that the OR was set up to be “completely separate” from criminal investigations. The role of the unit was “exclusively to develop intelligence research projects to brief senior decision-makers on threats and opportunities,” he said.
“It wasn’t for OR to be even close to a criminal investigation,” Mr. Morris said. “The kind of material that operations research works with couldn’t be used in criminal investigations or … even become close to criminal investigations because of the risk of potentially exposing that intelligence in court.”
Mr. Morris said that the material used by the unit is classified and therefore comes with caveats that restrict its use in a judicial process.
Mr. Ortis, who first joined the RCMP as a civilian member in 2007, was appointed as the “officer in charge” of the operations research unit in September, 2012 and then was promoted to director of it in April, 2013. His role in the OR, as well as how the unit functioned, is key to his trial, which began this month.
Mr. Ortis’s defence team said that he was a “compelling story” to tell and that he had the “authority” to do everything that he did. The Crown disputes this and told jurors during opening arguments that he had no such authority.
Mr. Ortis faces a total of six charges, including four related to allegedly breaching the Security of Information Act. He also faces a computer-related charge and another alleging breach of trust. He pleaded not guilty to all charges at the outset of his trial.
One of the charges that Mr. Ortis faces relates to allegedly sharing information in 2015 with a man named Vincent Ramos, who was the chief executive officer of a company called Phantom Secure. The company produced encrypted communications devices used by criminal organizations. Mr. Ramos was charged in the U.S. with conspiring to distribute narcotics and racketeering, and was sentenced to nine years in prison.
Prosecutors also allege that Mr. Ortis secretly sent information to individuals in the Greater Toronto Area who were considered of interest to police in a money laundering investigation.
Mr. Morris, a civilian member of the force, told court he came to work for the OR after he was contacted by Mr. Ortis, and they met to discuss a unit that he was looking to build. Mr. Ortis then went on to hire him.
Mr. Ortis left on language training in March, 2015 and never returned to operations research, Mr. Morris added.
During his examination-in-chief, prosecutor John MacFarlane asked Mr. Morris if any civilian members of the OR are trained in taking part in undercover operations. (A civilian member of the RCMP is not considered a regular member of the force. They work in roles to support front-line officers.)
Mr. Morris said there was one regular member of the team who had training as an undercover operator. The mandate of the unit was to analyze classified information and non-classified information, he added.
“By classified information, I mean information that comes from our security intelligence partners,” Mr. Morris told court. " So, that would include CSIS and that would include CSE, or the Communications Security Establishment.”
He said the role of the OR was to take all of the information, both classified and non-classified, and build a picture of what it thought might be going on as it related to a particular threat to Canada.
Mr. Morris said information was then presented to decision makers to better allow the RCMP to potentially address or mitigate the risk around that threat. He told court that the material, for the most part, related to counterterrorism, but also some elements of transnational organized crime.
“Our intelligence partners share this information or make it available to the RCMP” for consumption, Mr. Morris said. But there were restrictions of what could be done with the material, he added.
Mr. Morris gave the example that if the unit received classified information about a person of interest, such as an individual potentially planning to conduct a terrorist attack in Canada, the unit couldn’t launch a criminal investigation.
“That’s obviously a real problem for the RCMP,” he said. “We need to be able to do something about that.”