A SERIOUS SECURITY LAPSE

It's worrying that a senior manager at the Canadian Nuclear Safety
Commission was a crack cocaine addict who dealt with a drug dealer.

The death of William Goodwin, in the summer of 2003, was tragic. Mr.
Goodwin was a senior government executive, two years away from retirement,
who hooked up with a 19-year-old man for a party with booze and drugs, and
was then strangled by the young man enraged by the older man's sexual
advances. The killer, Joshua Colpitts, was sentenced to 12 years in prison
this week.

But the case was also disturbing for another reason. Mr. Goodwin worked in
the nuclear safety watchdog agency as director general of information
technology. He was about to become acting vice-president of the
organization on a temporary basis while the vice-president was off duty.

Mr. Goodwin had a "secret" security clearance for his job. Yet he also had
a secret life that could have exposed him and his employer to serious
security risks, including blackmail or simply the leaking of sensitive
information about nuclear facilities and materials in Canada that could be
of interest to terrorist or criminal elements. There's no indication that
such information got into the wrong hands in this case, but we'd be fools
to think it couldn't happen.

This case may be a rare blip in public-service history. But a crack cocaine
addict shouldn't have been able to hold down a secret security clearance
and an executive job in the federal government. For the most
security-sensitive agencies, tougher screening measures will have to be
brought in and strictly enforced.