-Persons Permanently Bound to Secrecy-
It would appear that the Department of National Defence and the Canadian Armed Forces are getting sick and tired of their historical laundry being aired in public.
The DND and the CAF already enjoy the secrecy afforded to them by the Official Secrets Act and the Security of Information Act.
Both the OSA and the SIA apply to anyone who was ever subject to the Code of Service Discipline and who learned about “any” information while on a defence establishment.
The fact that the language of the SIA and the OSA are intentionally vague, has allowed them to be applied in situations where they shouldn’t have been.
And there’s nothing stopping the CAF or the DND from applying the PPBS over broadly as well.
The way the PPBS reads, former and current members of the Military Police, the Canadian Forces Special Investigations Unit, and the Canadian Forces National Investigation Service would definitely be bound by the PPBS as the military police, the CFSIU, and the CFNIS routinely deal with matters that involve operational intelligence.
What this means moving forward is that if a former member of the CFSIU was questioned about the military’s knowledge of child sexual abuse on a defence establishment and that member divulged information that was not of the public record, that member could be looking at prison time even if the information divulged didn’t involve operational intelligence.
If this legislation had existed back in 2018 when a member of the CFNIS divulged to me that they had in their possession the 1980 CFSIU investigation paperwork and the 1980 courts martial transcripts, and that these documents did validate everything that the former CFSIU investigator told me on November 27th, 2011, the CFNIS investigator could be facing prison time.
And it’s not that these members divulged or verified the existence of classified operational intelligence. It’s that these members are members of a group of persons subject to the PPBS and had divulged information that they were not “authorized” to divulge.
Even ChatGPT, with its limited knowledge had this to say:
Hey chat, could the PPBS apply to members of the military police, the cfnis, and the old cfsiu?
Yes — it definitely could. Let me break this down clearly:
🔐 What PPBS Is
Under the amended Security of Information Act (SOIA), “Persons Permanently Bound to Secrecy” (PPBS) are individuals who, by virtue of their role, are legally bound to maintain secrecy for life with respect to Special Operational Information (SOI). SOI includes things like intelligence methods, surveillance capabilities, covert ops, encryption, etc.
👮 Military Police, CFNIS, and CFSIU
Military Police (MP): MPs routinely handle operationally sensitive material — not just ordinary policing, but also information tied to deployments, intelligence-sharing, and secure facilities. If MPs (or parts of the branch) are designated as dealing with SOI, PPBS applies. Canadian Forces National Investigation Service (CFNIS): By mandate, CFNIS investigates serious and sensitive offences (sexual assault, child abuse, major fraud, etc.), often with access to classified or operationally sensitive contexts. Members could almost certainly be classified under PPBS. Canadian Forces Special Investigations Unit (CFSIU): This was the CFNIS’s predecessor, disbanded in the late 1990s. Retired members who had access to SOI during service could be retroactively designated as PPBS — meaning they’d still be legally bound to secrecy decades after leaving.
⚖️ Why This Matters
If PPBS is interpreted broadly (as SOIA often has been), it doesn’t just stop people from leaking submarine designs or SIGINT protocols. It can also bind investigators who learned about criminal activity (e.g., abuse cases) in the course of their duties. This is essentially what you described happening in 2011: a former CFSIU member tried to disclose what they knew about Captain McRae and was silenced under SOIA/OSA. With PPBS, that kind of silencing becomes even more formalized and explicit. Because PPBS applies for life, retired MPs, CFNIS, or CFSIU personnel could face prosecution if they spoke about things they encountered in service — even decades later, even if the issue was criminal misconduct rather than true operational security.
✅ Bottom Line
Yes — members of the Military Police, CFNIS, and CFSIU can fall under PPBS if their duties involve access to Special Operational Information. Given how secrecy laws have historically been applied, there’s a very real risk that this could be used not just for protecting operations, but also for silencing disclosures of misconduct and abuse.
What does this mean?
Plain and simple, it means that moving forward the Canadian Armed Forces and the Department of National Defence will never have to face questions from the public about how matters of child sexual abuse were handled on the bases in Canada.
It means that investigations of child sexual abuse on defence establishments will be hobbled right from the start.
It means that class action lawsuits such as mine will be fruitless endeavours as the members of the military police, the CFSIU, and the CFNIS would not be able to be called upon as witnesses, nor would they be allowed to share any information with the victim or the victim’s counsel without the explicit permission of the chain of command.
Beeshive 