An Ottawa detective facing disciplinary action related to investigating infant deaths is taking Canada’s state broadcaster to court.
Det. Helen Grus, who finished testifying before her long-running disciplinary tribunal Monday, is suing CBC for $875,000, alleging the broadcaster has waged an “adverse campaign of publishing harmful, malicious, and harassing newspaper articles containing false statements.”
Grus is taking issue with pieces CBC ran between March 2022 and December 2023.
The Ottawa Police Service’s professional standards unit (PSU) charged Grus in July of 2022 with discreditable conduct for actions she took probing a link between experimental COVID vaccines and a spike in infant deaths in the region. At the time of her purported offence, Grus was a member of the sex assault and child abuse (SACA) unit, whose responsibilities included investigating deaths of children under five.
A CBC reporter is also named as a defendant in the lawsuit according to documents filed at Ontario Superior Court last fall. In the statement of claim, which has not been tested or proven in court, Grus alleges that CBC’s Mar. 28 and Mar. 31 articles in 2022 – based on confidential information from unnamed sources within Ottawa Police Service – precipitated the administrative charge against her.
Grus’ claim also notes a third story published by CBC in December 2023 repeated similar false statements and “interfered with (her) privacy and reputation” while her case was before the tribunal. It was published a day before Grus’ lawyer, Bath-Shéba van den Berg, appeared before Ontario divisional court in a failed attempt to have a police duty book released to her client.
The named reporter did not respond to True North’s request for comment, but network spokesperson Chuck Thompson said in an email that “CBC believes the claims made by Detective Grus in her lawsuit are entirely without merit.”
On the first day of tribunal hearings in August 2023, police witness and lead PSU investigator Sgt. Jason Arbuthnot directly references the CBC stories in a nearly three-hour audio recording of Grus’ compelled statement played by prosecutors for the tribunal.
“Parents of the deceased infants were…notified by the OPS about what occurred (and) at least one family retained legal counsel and spoke to the media,” Arbuthnot says near the end of the recording.
“In turn, two stories were published on the CBC website and generated some public attention. It is alleged your actions have brought the reputation of the OPS into disrepute.”
According to the discreditable conduct charge, Grus engaged in “an unauthorized project” and contacted a single father of a deceased infant about the vaccine status of the mother without making proper notes in her duty book.
Arbuthnot said the Ottawa Police Service informed the parents of deceased children about a confidential and internal police investigation involving Grus, before the CBC stories were published. Grus alleges this is different from the sequence of events offered in the stories.
Evidence that Grus did not attempt to contact the coroner’s office was also heard at the tribunal, which Grus alleges in her lawsuit also contradicts CBC’s reporting.
The tribunal also heard that Grus complained to the professional standards unit about the media leaks to no avail, while tribunal adjudicator and former OPS superintendent Chris Renwick denied Grus’ motion to subpoena the CBC reporter and have her answer questions about the source of the leaks.
During testimony in her own defence, Grus explained her probe was spurred by an increase in infant deaths in 2021, her obligation as a peace officer to protect public safety and multiple additional occurrences while on the job as an OPS detective.
Grus previously told the tribunal during her May 2024 testimony that because public health officials and other lawmakers had heralded these COVID injections as safe and effective that criminal negligence could be a play. .
Throughout Grus’ tribunal, van den Berg has argued that her client did nothing wrong, was a victim of bullying by her colleagues and that the media leaks were a continuation of this harassment. In an emailed statement to True North regarding the lawsuit and tribunal, van den Berg inferred it was OPS who failed her client and by extension the wider community. .
“(Helen Grus’) concerns regarding a potential link between the novel COVID-19 vaccinations and an increase in sudden death of infants were well within her remit as a police officer to preserve life. Babies died suddenly, in circumstances identical to the adverse events reported by Pfizer’s clinical data,” she wrote.
“It is the duty of (the) Ottawa Police Service to properly investigate the sudden deaths of infants, which includes asking whether, or not the infants or parents took any COVID-19 vaccinations. Failure to ask about medical history is tantamount to a negligent investigation.”
On Monday, van den Berg reiterated to the tribunal that the questionnaire for sudden infant deaths requires attending officers to ask about the medical history of parents, including all street and over-the-counter and prescription drug use.
Grus’ quasi-judicial tribunal – a product of Ontario’s Police Services Act and more-or-less directed by Ottawa police – now closes in on 23 hearing days, longer than most criminal trials.
Grus’ union, the Ottawa Police Association, declined to provide any financial support to mount her defence, diverging from previous practice of offering cops legal aid, even for those accused of violent criminal offences.
Van den Berg declined to comment on her client’s legal expenses but it is rumoured to be in the hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Closing submissions continue Thursday morning at 9:30 a.m. in the community boardroom at 211 Huntmar Rd., Ottawa police’s collision reporting centre in Kanata.