Ortis Was Leaking State Secrets. His Light Sentence Is Far From Appropriate

Commentary Some countries execute traitors. In Canada, however… I will never forget my first day in the Canadian intelligence community. It was July of 1983 and I had just moved to Ottawa from my home in southern Ontario to start a job with what I had been told was the Department of National Defence. Except that this was not really the whole story: I had been hired by something called Communications Security Establishment (CSE). That day, I learned all about CSE and SIGINT (signals intelligence) from the organization’s head of internal security, an imposing ex-RCMP officer who put the fear of God into me. At the end of my “indoctrination” into the hyper sensitive world of spydom I was reminded that if I were to breach the secrecy of what I knew I would get “14 years in the slammer.” Fourteen years.  Remember that....