Insider threats a major risk to Canada’s security: ex-CSIS official

One of Canada’s former top spies says that insider threats are one of the country’s biggest national security threats following three high-profile incidents.

“An insider threat, whether it’s a leaker or a spy — a spy from the inside — is unquestionably the most serious threat to national security,” former CSIS executive manager Dan Stanton told Mercedes Stephenson on The West Block. 

“These are individuals that progress from low-risk to potential to do some leakage to becoming a high-risk where they actually act on these impulses and these plans. And it’s a very serious threat.”

Earlier this month, former RCMP intelligence official Cameron Ortis was sentenced to 14 years in prison for attempting to sell top-secret information to police targets. He will spend seven years in prison with credit for time served during his trial.

This was the first conviction under Canada’s Security of Information Act.

Less than a week after Ortis was sentenced, an RCMP frontline officer in Alberta was arrested and charged for allegedly accessing protected police record systems to help a foreign actor.

Earlier this week,Global News reported a former employee of Ontario Power Generation, the Crown corporation that operates the province’s nuclear plants, has been charged under the Security of Information Act after allegedly leaking “safeguarded information” online.

Stanton says that there can be warning signs ahead of a leak of sensitive information, but the red flags are often overlooked.

“What makes someone leak? What you do is you look at the predispositions of people. You look at how people cope with stress. You look at these external triggers going on in their life professionally, personally. And so, there’s a continuum really from low, medium to