Federal worker arrested for allegedly leaking environment docs

Edmonton Sun

OTTAWA — The arrest of an Environment Canada employee for allegedly leaking the government’s environmental plan should serve as a warning to other bureaucrats, says a Conservative cabinet minister. The man was arrested Wednesday for allegedly divulging details of a draft version of the Tory government’s regulatory framework for climate change. The unidentified man was led away in handcuffs early Tuesday from his office as co-workers looked on. The arrest is a signal to other government employees that future leaks of information won’t be tolerated, suggests Environment Minister John Baird. “I think we signal that the code of values and ethics in the public service are important,” said Baird. “Obviously we get very concerned when people on an unauthorized basis release information.”

Police said they received a complaint on April 17 that a secret draft copy of the climate change section of the government’s Eco-Action Plan had been released publicly. On April 17, reporter Dennis Bueckert of The Canadian Press wrote about the leaked climate change plan, quoting from the federal draft, marked Secret and dated April 13. The Tories have also been scouring through other departments looking for anyone who may have leaked information to reporters about other pending legislation.

---- The plan has been roundly criticized by environmentalists for not going far enough. An earlier plan announced last October by former environment minister Rona Ambrose used an earlier base year when emissions were lower to calculate cuts. That plan would have cut emissions 45 to 65% from 2003 levels. The draft federal plan leaked in April said that Canada’s rapid growth in emissions would stop by 2012 and total emissions would be 20% below 2006 levels by 2020. The arrested employee was merely a “whistleblower,” and therefore should have been thanked, not arrested, for making public the government’s legislative plans to curb greenhouse gases, argues Cullen. “What (the employee) did was exposed what was eventually seen as a failure of a government plan and the government has been roundly embarrassed on it,” he said. “They clearly saw things in this plan that we have all now seen, which is the government attempting to get out of the Kyoto protocol to leave obligations behind