OTTAWA—A Royal Canadian Navy intelligence officer stands accused of sending top secret information to a foreign entity as recently as last week in one of the rarest and most closely guarded investigations to have rocked the military.

Court documents filed in Halifax allege that Sub-Lieut. Jeffrey Paul Delisle, 40, broke the federal Security of Information Act and committed criminal breach of trust when he passed restricted information to a foreign agency over the span of more than four years.

The married father of a young daughter and two boys allegedly committed the offences between July 6, 2007, and Jan. 13, 2012, in Halifax, Ottawa and Kingston, according to information filed in court by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police on Monday.

The maximum penalty if he is found guilty is life in prison.

A defence source said Delisle joined the military in 2001 and was later promoted as a non-commissioned officer settling into the secretive world of military intelligence. His promotion from within the ranks was apparently a testament to his talents and ability.

Delisle worked at CFB Stadacona’s Trinity section, a naval communications and intelligence centre in Halifax that was a multi-national base with access to secret data from NATO countries.

Many of the facts of the case are shrouded in mystery. No one has named the recipient of the allegedly secret information, nor have they outlined how Delisle allegedly passed the information along.

But the defence source said that the sensitive investigation into Delisle has been restricted to a tight group of senior defence department officials who guard the details of the probe.

Police have said only that, contrary to federal laws enacted to cover espionage and terror threats after Sept. 11, 2001, Delisle “did . . . communicate to a foreign entity information that the Government of Canada is taking measures to safeguard.”

A spokesperson for Public Safety Minister Vic Toews said the minister had been briefed on the arrest.

“Minister Toews has been briefed and congratulates the RCMP and security agencies for their collaboration. As this matter relates to national security and is before the courts, we have no further comment,” Julie Carmichael said Monday.

It’s the first time that someone has been charged under section 16 (1) of the Security of Information Act, said RCMP Commissioner Bob Paulson. He added that there is no threat to the public, but the case underlines that Canada is a target country for foreign governments, businesses and individuals.

“We must be ever vigilant to the real threat of foreign espionage, and continue investing time and resources into the prevention, detection, investigation and prosecution of such acts,” he wrote in a statement.

Paulson added that the investigation involved police, the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, the military and the Canada Border Services Agency.

The charges against Delisle weren’t announced publicly by the police or the military. The first word of it came when he appeared in court Monday morning, though investigators swept down on his home in the Halifax suburb of Bedford on Friday afternoon.

“I just noticed a bunch of vans parked and a bunch of navy police get out. There was a Mountie and it looked like they were detectives to me,” said Ron Denis, a neighbour on Delisle’s street.

“I just live next door and you could see the guns outside their jackets.”

Officers sifted through Delisle’s home, which the Halifax Chronicle Herald reported was purchased in 2005 for $240,000. They also took pictures of the house as part of their investigation.

Denis said that Delisle “kind of kept to himself” and wasn’t known well by many on the street.

Another neighbour said people are shocked and that Delisle never raised any suspicions.

“He’s your average nieghbour who mows his lawn and shovels his driveway. You see that in the movies but you don’t usually expect it on your street.”

Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading...

The arrest and serious charges the naval officer now faces have set tongues wagging, even though no one knows what sparked his arrest.

“I really can’t imagine a person doing that to his family because of what his family’s going to go through, I feel bad for them,” Denis said. “It’s disgusting.”

The charges suggest the security breach was “significant,” said security expert Wesley Wark.

He said the case could have been such a flagrant violation of security rules that the government felt it had no choice but to lay charges or it may have been truly a nefarious plot to share sensitive information with one of Canada’s adversaries.

More information may come to light Tuesday when Delisle is expected back in court. Crown prosecutors refused his release on bail and he is currently being held in custody.

“The big concern in recent years has been anyone’s version of Bradley Manning,” Wark said, referring to the case of the U.S. military analyst accused of a leaking classified American diplomatic cables to Wikileaks, a whistle-blowing website.

Delisle was based in Halifax, home to the Royal Canadian Navy’s east coast operations, raising questions whether information related to naval operations was involved.

The Halifax-based HMCS Charlottetown was involved in NATO operations last year off the coast of Libya as pro-democracy forces fought to end dictator Moammar Gadhafi’s regime.

“The Canadian Navy is involved in a lot of joint operations so it could be a lot of Canadian-owned or even Canadian-generated information — anything from anti-piracy operations, anti-terrorism operations to join military operations of various kinds,” Wark said.

“It could be information that does come from our allies. Could be highly sensitive signals intelligence or information about various intelligence gathering techniques.”

As for the recipients of the information, Wark said the Chinese would be the “obvious suspects . . . . They do a lot of foreign information collection.”

But he also wouldn’t rule out the Russians or even a Middle East country as the recipients of the alleged information sharing.

With files from Bruce Campion-Smith

Read more about: