An unidentified Environment Canada staffer has been arrested for allegedly leaking a draft copy of the Conservative government's climate change legislation.
"I think it is always a concern when someone anonymously and in an unauthorized basis releases information," Environment Minister John Baird told reporters.
The male employee was picked up early Wednesday morning and removed in handcuffs. He has been released and has not been charged, the Mounties said in a statement.
"(Officers) went into his place of work, (in a) marked car, in uniform, arrested him and took him down to the RCMP station," said an RCMP spokeswoman, Sgt. Monique Beauchamp.
In an initial statement, the Mounties say the employee was arrested on an allegation of breach of trust under the Criminal Code for leaking secret draft legislation.
The RCMP later clarified the statement, saying the leak involved a "regulatory framework," and not actual legislation.
The employee's name is not being released by the department, Environment Canada spokeswoman Lynn Brunette told The Canadian Press.
"We can't provide the name because this is under investigation," she said.
The RCMP Commercial Crime Section received a complaint from Environment Canada's security department on April 17 that a secret draft copy of "Climate Change Section of the Eco-Action Plan" had been released publicly.
The complaint came from the department's deputy minister Michael Horgan, Brunette said.
"We take information security really seriously and he wanted to make sure that we would investigate the leak,'' she said.
The Canadian Press filed a story on April 17 about the leaked climate change plan. The story quoted from the federal draft, marked secret and dated April 13.
"The investigation was given to us based on newspaper articles that were identified by the security department of Environment Canada," added Beauchamp.
"As a result of seeing that information out in the public, knowing that it shouldn't have been out there, they referred the case to the RCMP."
The draft showed the Conservatives planned to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 45 to 65 per cent from 2006 levels by 2050.
The leaker was clearly unsatisfied with the plan, and wrote to environmentalists: "Your source objects strongly to the secrecy of the Harper government, its continuous PR campaign and the abandonment of international standards for (greenhouse gas) reductions."
Environmentalists have also said that the plan doesn't go far enough.
An earlier Tory plan used 2003 as a base year, which would have been a slightly harder target than the one in the leaked plan.
The Kyoto Protocol, the global treaty for fighting climate change, uses 1990 as a base year. Canada agreed to cut its emissions by six per cent below that level by 2012.
Under the Conservative plan, that target won't be reached until 2025.
With a report by CTV's Graham Richardson and files from The Canadian Press
