The nation's top court won't hear the appeal of a former Mountie who was fired after blowing the whistle on allegations of corruption at a diplomatic mission in Hong Kong.
The Supreme Court of Canada gave no reasons for its decision, as is customary in leave-to-appeal cases.
Robert Read, an RCMP corporal and a 26-year veteran of the force, went public through the media in 1999 with his allegations of corruption and cover-up at the Canadian High Commission in Hong Kong.
Read was investigating allegations that staff members at the mission were selling visas to an immigration consultant through a back channel.
The former Mountie said he provided media with documents detailing the allegations after he was urged by his superiors to turn a blind eye.
"This is water under the bridge, why go over this again," Read said he was told.
After he encountered more and more roadblocks thrown up by his bosses and government bureaucrats, he told W-Five in 2004 that he "arrived at the opinion that the progress I was making was not that pleasing to my superiors."
In 2002, an internal adjudication board ruled that Read was guilty of disgraceful conduct after he broke his oath of secrecy.
He was ordered to quit or be fired.
The RCMP reacted quickly and dismissed the veteran Mountie.
But Read appealed the dismissal and one year later, an RCMP review committee issued a scathing indictment over the handling of the Hong Kong affair.
"The RCMP was walking on eggshells whenever it conducted an investigation into activities at a Canadian mission abroad and basically restricted to what the Department of Foreign Affairs was willing to allow it to investigate," the committee wrote in its decision.
"What is at issue was a deliberate choice made by the RCMP not to pursue an investigation into possible wrongdoing even though the numerous examples had been drawn to its attention of incidents that suggested an immigration fraud ring was operating within the very premises of the mission and possibly involved employees of the Government of Canada."
The committee ordered him reinstated after finding Read was justified in his actions.
But senior RCMP officials rejected that decision and upheld the dismissal.
In 2005, the Federal Court refused Read's application for judicial review. The Federal Court of Appeal also dismissed the appeal last fall.
