Public Safety Minister Stockwell Day says he's launched a probe to find out how blueprints for a new military counterterrorism unit ended up in a downtown
Ottawa garbage can -- in an area with no defence department buildings in close proximity.
The Ottawa Citizen reported on Thursday that a local couple found seven rolls of 26 blueprints -- stamped with Department of Defence markings and dated March 5,
2007 -- on a trash pile on Bank Street on Oct. 13. The couple took one of the rolls home to try to find out what it was.
The Department of Defence has not said if the documents are classified. A military analyst says he's been told the matter is not being considered a security breach
because the plans were part of a rejected draft for a new building, which will be the home of the Canadian Joint Incident Response Unit at CFB Trenton. "After
(the engineering firm) didn't get it, I assume they just threw the plans in the garbage,'' said Alain Pellerin of the Conference of Defence Associations.
The Canadian Joint Incident Response Unit is the military's first response team in case of a terrorism attack involving nuclear, chemical or biological agents.
Day warned the public against jumping to conclusions about the contents of the documents until a report comes out. "We'll wait for the actual report in terms of
what exactly these documents are," he said. "If there is some kind of security breach . . . that's of huge concern. We're going to wait for all the details."
But opposition members pounced on what they said was a major lapse. "This government is so secretive, it's Mister No Comment," Liberal Defence Critic Coderre said.
"And then they have this shocking lapse." Coderre called on someone to lose their job over the matter. His NDP counterpart Dawn Black called the situation "absolutely unbelievable." "It's quite incredible," Black said. "It's kind of a black farce."
