Police won't investigate leak
News
Posted By Paul Jankowski
Posted 1 month ago
The Sun Times
The Ontario Provincial Police will not launch a criminal investigation into the leak of a letter sent to South Bruce Peninsula's chief administrative officer that ended up on a blogger's website.
The April 11 letter from Michael Squier to Rhonda Cook set out "some of the issues and obstacles I have faced during my time with the Town and which eventually led me to resign my position as Recreation Programmer." The letter was posted on bruceonthebruce.wordpress.com in its entirety on April 13.
Council members voted unanimously at a meeting that night to ask both the OPP and the provincial ombudsman's office to investigate the leak.
The ombudsman's office wrote the town in May saying it would not be looking into the matter because "the Ombudsman does not have the authority to investigate complaints about municipal breaches of confidentiality."
A letter from OPP Det. Sgt. Scott Boulton that councillors received with the agenda for Tuesday's committee of the whole meeting said that "the case facts do not meet the requirements to fulfill any type of criminal prosecution or further investigation."
Boulton's letter, dated July 13, lists a host of materials he reviewed and interviews he conducted during his investigation surrounding the leak.
In it he noted that Squier "was interviewed and indicated that it is possible that the memo involved may very well have been accidentally attached" to an e-mail and forwarded inadvertently to someone by Squier himself.
Boulton noted that at the time of the leak the town's computer system did not require users to change their passwords from time to time, that Squier had never changed his password or username during his employment with the town, that it had no e-mail tracking system or encryption system of any kind.
"The criminal law that most closely applies to this situation is breach of trust Section 122 of the Criminal Code. Upon close examination of the section and facts in issue it is clear that this situation does not meet the facts in issue that must be proven for this section to apply," Boulton's letter says.
Boulton also said he had consulted with the OPP anti-rackets branch, the force's political corruption unit and representatives of the Ministry of the Attorney General during and after his investigation.
