Envelope of files discussing a classified computer database run by Environment Canada was found on an Ottawa street corner.

Envelope of files discussing a classified computer database run by Environment Canada was found on an Ottawa street corner. "It's a disturbing pattern developing about the accountability and administration of confidential documents," said NDP MP Pat Martin, vice-chair of the Access to Information Privacy and Ethics committee. "It's either a cavalier and sloppy disregard for privacy issues or incompetence and neither bodes well for the government's image," said Martin who will ask his committee to probe the matter when it next sits. The envelope was turned into reporters at the CBC who reported that the papers were a risk assessment of Environment Canada's classified NEMISIS database. NEMISIS is used by officials to track and prosecute people or companies who break the law by polluting the environment. According to the CBC, the assessment described in precise detail how hackers or organized crime could attack the database. The papers also explained that such a breach would impede the government's ability to enforce the law. Environment Minister John Baird told reporters yesterday the incident was "certainly bizarre" but dismissed suggestions that secret government information had been compromised. "I'm told two things: that it's neither classified nor secret and that it's stuff that could be available under access to information," Baird said. Nevertheless, Baird said his department takes document security seriously and he's asked officials to find out how this 131-page document came to be found by a passerby on a street in a rain-stained, tire-marked, brown envelope. "It's a bit of an odd story for someone to find something like that on the side of the road, " Baird said. In March, a document containing what appeared to be blueprints for a building at the Canadian Joint Incident Response Unit under construction at Canadian Forces Base Trenton turned up in a recycle bin in Ottawa. In May, Maxime Bernier was forced to resign as Foreign Affairs minister after it became known that he left sensitive documents at the apartment of his then-girlfriend Julie Couillard who had ties to the Hells Angels biker gang.
"One of the basic attributes of government is that information remains secure," said Liberal Environment Critic David McGuinty. "This is part of a pattern and yet another incident of people wondering if they now have to be more concerned than they were before."