Gillian Burnside
The RCMP has issued a formal apology to Ottawa commercial real estate professional Gillian Burnside for “any damage caused to her reputation” after her help with a covert security project turned into a publicity nightmare.
“It started out as an honour – an opportunity to secretly assist the RCMP’s Technical Investigation Services Branch with commercial real estate services to secure and lease premises for a national covert security project identified only as project RAVE,” says a news release by Burnside. But it turned into negative publicity when a front-page story appeared in the Ottawa Citizen’s City section in 2011. The headline was, “RCMP lease case leads to search of realty office.”
The article followed a series of earlier stories beginning on Feb. 5, 2010 that linked Burnside’s then boyfriend, an RCMP superintendent and “top covert operations expert”, to an alleged fraudulent $3-million lease agreement, and falsely stated among other things that his “realtor girlfriend” benefitted from a $70,000 commission on the deal, says Burnside’s release.
Burnside started legal action to defend her reputation and recently reached a mediated settlement with the RCMP.
“The RCMP hereby offers a public apology for any damages caused to Ms. Burnside’s personal and professional reputation as a result of the publicity garnered after an unknown source provided RCMP information to the media about her acting on behalf of the RCMP in a 2009 real estate transaction,” says a statement released by Burnside and the RCMP. “Further and in hopes of correcting negative publicity when Ms. Burnside was named in media reports, the RCMP acknowledges that Ms. Burnside acted professionally and provided valuable commercial real estate services to the RCMP. The RCMP has never asserted that Ms. Burnside acted improperly when providing those services. The RCMP would not hesitate to recommend Ms. Burnside’s commercial real estate services to others.”
Burnside says that “what happened after that newspaper story came out has been a nightmare. The article and associated negative comments spread on news sites and blogs across the Internet.” She says she couldn’t defend herself against any of the allegations due to her agreement with the RCMP.
“With this agreement in place, and with the incorrect and biased tone of the disclosed information given to the media, I felt defenseless,” she says. “Anyone who did an Internet search on my name with the words ‘Ottawa’ or ‘real estate’ would incorrectly assume that I was involved in some sort of fraudulent activity with the nation’s police force. My reputation as a Realtor was tarnished, something that I have had to overcome.”
In her news release, Burnside says, “The insult in all of this is that it took years to disclose the truth – that the process of my selection as a Realtor to help the RCMP find a location for project RAVE was completely legitimate. I was a strong candidate because I had the right skill set, and in fact I represented the key ‘known and trusted’ element of a covert operation,” she says.
The investigation of Burnside’s then-partner garnered no criminal charges and all internal RCMP charges were dismissed. The final verdict was announced and published in the Ottawa Citizen on Jan. 31, 2014. The RCMP told Burnside they have not yet identified the “unknown source” that prompted the writing of a series of stories for the newspaper.
Michael Church, managing director of the Ottawa office of Avison Young Canada and Burnside’s current boss, says, “All we have to trade on is our reputation and integrity. A story like the one that appeared in the local paper, and now lives in perpetuity on the Internet, can cast a long shadow.”
“I have turned the page on this difficult time,” says Burnside. “I needed the RCMP to act on the integrity they stand for, and I am pleased that in the end, they did the right thing.”
She says details of any financial compensation are not available under the terms of the mediated settlement.
