Covert security operation sparks controversy

Dr. Denis Rancourt, a former physics professor at the University of Ottawa, was fired in March 2009 following a controversy about his grading policies and his instruction of an activism course - the controversy involving Rancourt did not end there.
"Two union grievances (teacher assistants and professors) have been filed against the UofO for extensive covert surveillance practiced between 2006 and 2008," stated a press release on Jan. 12.
These grievances come as a response to academic and civil rights being violated by a covert surveillance campaign at UofO that involved an undergraduate student and student journalist, Maureen Robinson, as well as Rancourt and some of his students.
Robinson was allegedly fired by the university as an "agent of University Legal Counsel [and] took on a false Facebook identity to infiltrate student groups, especially ones supportive of Rancourt's activism course," stated the press release.
The covert surveillance included recordings of Rancourt's lectures on anarchism in pedagogical development that were taken from conferences in Quebec City and Kingston without his knowledge.
"I was shocked and appalled at learning through an access to information appeal that my 2007 talk at Queens University was covertly voice-recorded via a student who was hired by the UofO [...] and that the covert recording was used at the highest levels within the administration," said Rancourt.
Robinson took on the online alias of "Nathalie Page" and used this name to communicate with students involved in a campus group that Rancourt was a part of.
Former UofO student, Daniel Cayley-Daoust was the manager of an E-mail list for one campus group that Rancourt was involved with when Nathalie Page/Robinson, tried to join.
"She alleged that she was interested in joining our list because the subject interested her [.] I followed up with her to find out a little bit more about her and after one or two emails she stopped responding," said Cayley-Daoust.
The direct involvement that Cayley-Daoust had with the issue basically ends there, but he was still aware that it was happening.
"I feel it is highly problematic that a university educational institution resorts to such matters on unionized employees and students," Cayley-Daoust said.
Wayne Sawtell, a current UofO graduate student who supported Rancourt's activism course during his undergraduate years, created an activist group online called the Freedom of Expression Committee.
"[The group was formed] in order to advocate specifically for social justice causes at the UofO and generally for structural change in the governance of the university," said Sawtell. One of the issues they discussed was the support of keeping Rancourt's activism course. Robinson also made her way into this group.
"Robinson assumed a false identity and contacted the group under false pretences. She claimed to believe in the causes we were advocating and said she wanted to help," Sawtell said.
Another former student at UofO, Philippe Marchand, explains that Rancourt did a Freedom of Information request that called for all E-mails exchanged between Robinson and particular UofO officials. The university did not fully disclose the E-mails in their entirety but offered a listing of the records of the E-mails subject lines. This list was posted by Rancourt on his Web site.
Marchand and Robinson had been in communication via email regarding a letter she had written for La Rontonde, the UofO student newspaper that made suggestive allegations about Marchand, Rancourt and other students. Marchand found this E-mail communication on the records that Rancourt received from the university officials.
"The bottom line for me is that some e-mails I was sending privately to other students, which were more or less related to the whole Rancourt case at UofO, were forwarded by one of these students to the administration," said Marchand.
"This is a question on how much the university should be allowed to infringe on the privacy of students or professors, what checks and balances must be in place to prevent excessive invasion of privacy, and how university officials should be allowed to use or share private information about members of the campus community," Marchand continued.
UofO claims that Rancourt's dismissal had to do with the way he was operating his course.
"The facts indicate that my dismissal has little to do with grading in one course and is blatantly political. Such repression violates the most fundamental principles underlying academia - academic freedom professional independence and responsibility, and due process - and is a threat to the integrity of all universities," Rancourt states.
"[The bottom line is that] this is a violation of labour law, academic freedom, and professional ethics rules. I was surprised to learn both the extent of the university's covert surveillance and that it would attempt to describe its surveillance activities as legitimate," Rancourt said.
In addition to the many violations that UofO has allegedly committed here in terms or privacy, academic integrity and labour laws, "The University also enacted an extensive cover up and has steadfastly ignored requests to investigate, including several requests which predated Rancourt's dismissal," states a press release.
For more information, Rancourt has posted extensive coverage of the issue and its developments on his Web site academicfreedom.rancout.ca, as well as blogs about it at uofowatch.blogspot.com