MPS PREPARE TO INVESTIGATE WITNESS PROTECTION PROGRAM

The Commons public safety committee is set to probe the witness
protection program and the case of Agent E8060 -- a paid RCMP
informant who manufactured evidence, became a protected witness and
then committed a heinous killing under his new identity.

The committee's Conservative members support the call for a review
made by the NDP's Joe Comartin and Liberal Sue Barnes, and it is
expected to be approved in a vote tomorrow.

A story published by The Globe and Mail and the Ottawa Citizen
reported last week that Richard Young, an unemployed man from
Victoria, B.C., was paid hundreds of thousands of dollars for
information about a crime that he concocted.

His evidence was called a "cruel charade" by British Columbia Supreme
Court Judge Dean Wilson.

Despite the exposure of his lies, Mr. Young was placed in the federal
witness protection program and, under his new identity, he was
convicted of killing someone. It is a criminal offence under the
Witness Protection Program Act to disclose anything about Mr. Young's
new identity or who he killed. Even the victim's family cannot be
told the truth.

The committee has yet to decide on a witness list, but members said
yesterday that it will likely include the Mounties who oversaw Mr.
Young, who was known on paper as Agent E8060. The affair should have
made it to the committee a long time ago, Mr. Comartin said.

"My overall reaction was one of anger. I was angry because I think
Parliament, in the form of our committee, should be informed of this
and we're not. We find out about it through . . . a news story or
some other leak that comes to our attention. We never get it from the
RCMP or any other police force," he said.

"It seems to me that when you've got a foul-up, which I think
everyone agrees this was, we should be told."

The review, committee members conceded, will face major restrictions
because of the witness protection laws. The act, which was created in
1996, was designed to encourage reluctant witnesses to come forward.
It ensures that their new identity can never lawfully be revealed to
the gangsters or bikers who might want to exact revenge. There were
an estimated 700 people in the program at the end of 2006.

Tom Bulmer, the Victoria defence lawyer who exposed Mr. Young's lies
and phony crime in 2002, called upon legislators to amend the act so
that protected witnesses who commit serious crimes can be identified.

Mr. Bulmer said the committee isn't going far enough unless it
explores whether the RCMP failed to protect someone by unleashing Mr.
Young on an unsuspecting community.

"There's an elephant in the room and it's silly," he said. "How can
we have an intelligent conversation about what happened and how we
could prevent it unless we can talk about what happened?"

Ms. Barnes acknowledged yesterday that it will be difficult to
reconcile uncovering the whole story and upholding the law.

"That's a question that I've been trying to come to terms with," she
said. "Realistically, as we have people before us, they're not going
to break the law to give us the material that some of us may wish to
have. I think this is something as a group we're going to have to
address," she said.

Meanwhile, in a letter to The Globe, assistant RCMP commissioner Raf
Souccar said that the public shouldn't be left with the impression
that the Mounties have lost control of the program.

"In short, the integrity of the RCMP witness protection program is
not in question . . . and we as a police organization have a
responsibility to protect those whose lives are endangered was a
result of assisting us in that fight."

However, Mr. Bulmer said the Mounties should have no responsibility
to someone who invented a crime and took taxpayer's money.

"[Mr. Young] not only did not assist them, he actually hampered and
subverted justice," the lawyer said. "And they have a responsibility
to protect innocent people from people who do such things."

Mr. Bulmer also attacked Mr. Souccar's defence of the program.

The lawyer pointed out that it was Mr. Souccar who announced last
week that the RCMP would launch an internal probe of its handling of
Mr. Young, yet in his letter, he said there isn't a problem.

"This guy's making a conclusion that makes his call for a review a
toothless tiger," he said.