A former Mountie and member of prime minister Justin Trudeau’s safety group has denied an allegation that he leaked the prime minister’s schedule within the months main as much as the self-styled Freedom Convoy protest towards pandemic measures.
An Ontario Provincial Police (OPP) “Person of Interest” (POI) doc, dated January 30, 2022, stated a former RCMP officer — whose identify and picture had been redacted — is “believed to have leaked the prime minister’s schedule just a few months in the past.” The OPP cited the RCMP on the allegation. The doc doesn’t say to whom the data was allegedly leaked.
The doc was tabled publicly as a part of the Public Order Emergency Commission inquiry, which is holding hearings in Ottawa to analyze the federal authorities’s choice to invoke the Emergencies Act to finish an anti-vaccine mandate protest that gridlocked downtown Ottawa for weeks final winter.
In an announcement submitted to the inquiry Friday, Daniel Bulford, a 15-year veteran of the RCMP who resigned from the Mounties in December 2021, acknowledged that he was the topic of the profile. He denied leaking any info.
“In the POI Profile made by the Ontario Provincial Police therein, it states that it’s believed that I had leaked the Prime Minister’s schedule some months previous to January 30, 2022. That is categorically false,” Bulford stated within the assertion.
“The first I’ve ever even heard of this allegation was upon studying the POI Profile on October 21, 2022. At no time have I ever leaked something to anybody or any tradecraft that I obtained in my duties as a member of the RCMP and the Emergency Response Team.”
The RCMP has but not responded to CBC’s questions in regards to the allegation within the OPP doc.
Bulford stated in his inquiry testimony that he served as a sniper-observer on the RCMP’s nationwide division Emergency Response Team for many of his RCMP profession. He stated the RCMP revoked his safety clearance after he spoke out towards the federal authorities’s COVID-19 vaccination mandate for Mounties, which went into impact in October 2021. Bulford resigned from the RCMP in December 2021.
“I knew that I’d be topic to disciplinary motion, and after I reviewed what my choices had been with regard to that, I found that if I used to be terminated for misconduct, which I suspected can be the case, I might probably lose roughly half of my pension switch worth,” Bulford stated in his testimony.
“So I made the choice to resign out of worry that I’d not be capable to set my household up adequately financially sooner or later.”
Bulford informed the inquiry he later joined the self-styled Freedom Convoy protest that gridlocked a lot of Ottawa’s downtown for weeks final winter. He stated he served as a “volunteer safety coordinator” and “police liaison” with the convoy beginning on January 26, 2022.