OTTAWA—Flags, fakes and in the end, finger-pointing.

That sums up a phony citizenship ceremony staged for Sun News Network last October that featured immigration department officials posing as new Canadians at an event organized at the behest of Immigration Minister Jason Kenney’s office.

Red-faced immigration officials were blaming a Toronto bureaucrat for the debacle but opposition politicians insist Kenney’s staff must have been in on the ruse to “placate” the network.

“They make six bureaucrats actually pose as fake new citizens . . . That is in my opinion an appalling and unacceptable use of our civil service,” NDP MP Don Davies said Thursday.

But Kenney insisted he was in the dark and blamed logistical problems that saw his department bureaucrats stand in as new Canadians.

“It turns out that in the ceremony in question . . . some of the people invited did not arrive. I think the response to that was poorly handled,” Kenney told MPs.

Kenney’s office was sent scrambling Thursday after Canadian Press reporter Jennifer Ditchburn broke the news of how the televised reaffirmation ceremony last fall went awry.

Such ceremonies are an opportunity for citizens to renew their oath of citizenship “to express their commitment to Canada,” according to the immigration department website.

And as cameras rolled at the Sun News event, 10 “new Canadians” held flags and smiled as the TV hosts talked about they had “finally” received their citizenship.

In fact, six of them were bureaucrats, hustled down from Yonge and St. Clair to act as last-minute stand-ins to fill out the crowd.

And it appears clear that Sun workers knew that the ceremony was not part of the normal process.

When a bureaucrat sent Sun News a list of possible citizenship ceremonies to cover in Ontario, a network employee suggested another scenario.

“Let’s do it. We can fake the Oath,” reads an email from an @sunmedia.ca email address, the name blacked out of the document in an attempt at secrecy.

Documents released under Access to Information legislation show that just a few weeks before Canada’s Citizenship Week last October, Kenney’s staff directed departmental officials to add a last-minute citizenship ceremony at the network to their list of scheduled events.

But after having trouble getting new Canadians to attend, organizers turned to their fellow colleagues to act as fill-ins for the televised appearance.

“In the end, we had three new citizens attend — I anticipated that it would be a low turnout after doing follow-up calls yesterday, so I asked six CIC (Citizenship and Immigration) employees to come to the ceremony so that we’d have the right numbers,” wrote one senior communications adviser, according to the package obtained by the news service.

The judge summoned for the purpose, Aris Babikian, said he played no role in selecting the participants and had no idea how long any of them had been in Canada.

“I came to the studio and there were people already there, the communications staff were there, they were making the arrangements with the Sun TV station and with the manager. My role was just to preside over the reaffirmation ceremony,” he told CTV.

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

Kenney’s office confirmed Thursday that it had asked the department to organize the event and was assured they could get about a dozen people to take part.

But days before the event, the department expressed concerns about getting enough people, prompting Kenney’s office to cancel the event, said a senior official, who asked to remain anonymous.

But after the network informed the department of the cancellation, the bureaucrats insisted it was a go.

“The department emailed them back saying, ‘No, the event’s not cancelled. We now have enough people,’” a senior official told the Star.

He said that’s the last Kenney’s office heard of it and they thought it had gone well until this week’s surprise revelations. He said they had “zero idea” that citizenship and immigration staff had been recruited to act as stand-ins.

“The person who made the mistake is actually a really hard-working person . . . she just scrambled last second and got caught,” the official said.

But Davies says it defies logic that Kenney’s office — which had been key in organizing the event in the first place — had no inkling of the deception.

“It smacks of trying to control and manipulate the way these ceremonies are portrayed,” Davies said. “Civil servants acting as fake props certainly raises questions as to what his motivations are.”

An official with Quebecor, the network’s parent company, declined to comment. However, Kenney spokesperson Candice Malcolm says the network was not aware of the ruse.

“We didn’t know about this. The hosts of Sun News Network didn’t know about this,” Kenney spokesperson Candice Malcolm said in an email.

CBC anchor Peter Mansbridge, whose own network has taken its lumps from Sun News, tweeted, “The real ‘state broadcaster’ stands up.”

Read more about: