Protecting a pedophile's privacy
Jeffrey Epstein's 2014 visit to Vancouver remains a mystery
Canada’s privacy laws are supposed to protect ordinary citizens from unwarranted intrusions into their personal lives.
But they can also protect pedophiles. Dead pedophiles. Dead pedophiles from America.
Serial child abuser Jeffrey Epstein – convicted and jailed in 2008 for prostitution, including soliciting prostitution from a minor – was allowed to visit Vancouver in 2014, despite his U.S. criminal record.
His travel to Canada was revealed in the millions of documents released by the U.S. Justice Department and reported on by CBC and others.
CBC journalist Mike Crawley wanted to know how Epstein got into the country. He was told by a spokesperson for the responsible agency, the Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA), that “we cannot provide comment on specific cases as a person’s immigration and border information is considered personal information and is protected by the Privacy Act.”
Epstein again sought entry to Canada as a temporary resident, but in 2018 the Government of Canada got it right: our consulate in Los Angeles refused to issue a permit, citing his criminal record. That’s also in the Epstein files, which the U.S. government released with no apparent concern for Epstein’s privacy. (American privacy laws are less restrictive than ours.)
Given the lack of explanation for Epstein’s mysterious 2014 visit to Vancouver, I asked under the Access to Information Act for all CBSA records on the case.
I recently got a response, if you can call it that: “Nothing disclosed.” The agency cited Section 19(1) of the Access to Information Act, which protects the personal information of another individual. You can read the rejection here:
And so one of the most notorious pedophiles in modern history carries his privacy to the grave, at least in Canada. People are guaranteed privacy for at least 20 years after their death, which means we might not get the full story of Epstein’s sojourn in Vancouver until 2039.
But what’s really being protected here is the government. Someone screwed up. Canada’s immigration minister in 2014, Chris Alexander, told Crawley he knew nothing about the Epstein visit, calling the matter a “serious lapse in immigration enforcement.” And because Epstein’s privacy is being protected, so are the public servants who for whatever reason allowed a convicted pedophile into the country.
Many journalists crash into Fortress Privacy while trying to do their jobs, and many bureaucrats are only too happy to use privacy as a shield for their decisions.
I ran into this problem when writing about Basil Borutski, a violent abuser who in 2015 murdered three of his former women partners, in Renfrew County, Ontario. Many justice system records about Boruski’s long history of abuse were unavailable to me because of privacy, even a police photo of him.
And Borutski’s 2024 death, like Epstein’s in 2019, made little difference. The circumstances of his death in prison were entirely withheld from me, leaving unanswered questions. (I wrote about these privacy roadblocks here; CBC’s ace reporter Kristy Nease later found a way to overcome some of them.)
We need to reform our privacy laws. In the case of Borutski, potential victims could not be properly warned about his predatory behaviour because the justice system valued his privacy over their safety.
And we need to stop using privacy as an excuse to protect governments from the public scrutiny of their decisions, such as why a convicted pedophile was allowed into Canada, for purposes one can only shudder to imagine.
Head shaking rationale to bury the truth! Well done Dean. Patty
Great piece. Thanks for all you do.