RCMP officers quit after being asked to arrest national security target with no details, report says

Information-sharing between intelligence officers and police needs an overhaul — and it could start with informing police of the reasons behind national security arrests — says a newly obtained internal report looking at the often fraught relationship between Canada's spy agency and the RCMP.

In one instance, officers in one of the RCMP's national security units quit their jobs after being asked to carry out an arrest without being told the reasons, says the redacted report, which was released through an access to information request.

The document is the end result of a behind-the-scenes review of how the Canadian Security Intelligence Service and the national police force share information — or don't.

In 2018, at the request of both agencies, two outside national security lawyers — Anil Kapoor and Dana Achtemichuk — were brought in to look at the problems, conduct interviews and make recommendations. A copy of their final review was released recently to CBC News a year after it was requested.

The incident that led the officers to quit arose during a case of "catch-and-release" — a technique that sees police arrest an individual to thwart an national security incident or attack, even if it means releasing them later without charges.

The report says that catch-and-release operations demand exchanges of information between the agencies involved. That didn't happen with the RCMP Integrated National Security Enforcement Team (INSET) involved in the incident cited in the report.

INSETs are multi-agency teams — sometimes made up of RCMP officers, provincial and municipal police service members and federal agencies — scattered across the country to investigate cases concerning national security, extremism and terrorism.

"We learned of a case where the INSET was tasked with carrying out an arrest but not given the reason why. This caused great conflict in the investigative team, causing some officers to quit," said the report.

"On balance, it was morale depressing for the INSET."

Details of that case are blacked-out in the report.

The authors said that while police officers in a national security investigation might not know all the details, they still need to be brought into the loop by their intelligence counterparts.

"Being a player in the national security world involves both respecting the 'need to know' principle and understanding that more RCMP officers do in fact 'need to know,'" they wrote.

University of Toronto professor Kent Roach, who studies national security and anti-terrorism law, called the incident troubling.

"The report recognizes that the RCMP officers are often kept in the dark by CSIS and this could affect the validity of the arrest," he said.