WPS Let Seal Expire During Investigation. The CBC Went Live. The Outcome Never Did. Despite multiple arrests, a City of Winnipeg employee was never charged, and the public record was left structurally incomplete.

Timeline: the record of what happened

The dates below are the spine of this letter. They show how a sealed investigative record moved into public reach, how media contact and arrests followed, how a WPS spokesperson claimed the investigation was complete, how the story aired, and how a second production order was later sought, all while the outcome remained “no charges,” and no civil action.

If institutions believe any of the above needs nuance, they should provide it publicly. This is precisely what an accountable record looks like: specific dates, specific actions, and a clear outcome.

The outcome that must be stated

When allegation-stage reporting is widely disseminated, the absence of equivalently prominent outcome reporting results in an incomplete public record. With an absence of charges, the ethical burden shifts from “what happened?” to “what was proven?”, and the answer is: Nothing was proven. None of the allegations were proven in court, or anywhere else.

Published during an ongoing investigation, before any court outcome existed

At the time the CBC article was published on February 25, 2019, the police investigation had not concluded, no charges had been authorized by the Crown, and no court outcome existed. Prior to publication, the reporter contacted Richardson regarding the investigation before police had questioned him.

The lead investigator for the case, WPS Detective Sergeant Chris Blain, described a lengthy investigation that began in 2017, and continued even after arrest powers were exercised.

The original CBC article quoted an unnamed Winnipeg Police Service spokesperson characterizing the investigation as "complete" prior to publication on February 25, 2019. That characterization matters, because it framed the story for readers as the conclusion of a finished investigative process.

However, the investigative record shows that this characterization was incomplete. A second production order for Richardson’s work emails was sought by WPS on March 14, 2019, weeks after both arrests and the CBC's article was published. Investigative steps clearly continued beyond the date readers were told the investigation had concluded.

This discrepancy raises a narrow but important public-interest question: how an investigation could be described publicly as complete and charges expected, while further compulsory investigative powers were still being exercised, and no charges had been authorized by the Crown yet.

This second production order was an investigative act that further sought to obtain all of Richardson's workplace emails over a broad period, rather than a narrowly tailored set of communications linked to specific individuals or events. This order was seeking evidence to support the allegations described, after a police spokesperson had publicly described the investigation as complete, after multiple arrests, after Richardson had been named by the media, and before the Crown ultimately declined to authorize charges.

Taken together, these circumstances warrant careful scrutiny of whether the scope and timing of the production order reflected objective investigative necessity or investigative momentum driven by untested allegations.

If the justice process ends without charges, outcome visibility becomes a basic fairness requirement. Otherwise, the public is left with an implied conclusion that was never established in court, and the named person, and their family are left carrying the permanent burden of the allegation record.

Sealing lapse: what enabled release to media

This did not become a story because an investigation had been completed, charges were laid and a case proceeded through court. It became a story because investigative court material that was originally sealed became releasable, and once it was releasable, it could be obtained on request.

Put plainly: the seal expired and the record moved from protected to obtainable. That one transition is what made the rest possible.

This is not a small paperwork issue. Sealing exists to protect the integrity of an ongoing investigation and to prevent premature, disproportionate reputational harm in the absence of charges or a court finding.

When that protection lapses, one foreseeable consequence is the outcome observed here: a permanent allegation record without an equally durable outcome record.

Who owned the sealing responsibility

“The seal expired” is not a force of nature. Maintaining a seal is driven by police action, not Crown initiative, and not media.

The January 2018 production order obtained by Winnipeg Police was accompanied by a sealing order, restricting public access for a one year period, to protect the nature and extent of an ongoing investigation.

The WPS tried to apply for a new sealing order for these documents after the original sealing order had expired.

That means the accountability question is specific: why the seal in an ongoing investigation was not renewed prior to expiry in a matter where the WPS would reasonably have understood that release could trigger publicity, permanently brand a named person, and create irreversible harm in the absence of charges?

Public trust depends not just on investigations being conducted, but on outcomes being clearly communicated. When the public sees only allegations and never outcomes, confidence in both policing and journalism erodes.

If WPS believes the public record is missing nuance (for example, internal registry processes, timing windows, or who had notice), then WPS should supply that nuance publicly; because the reputational harm has already been public for years.

How this actually unfolded, in plain language

Here is the sequence that matters, stated plainly and tied to concrete dates where possible:

• Jan 8, 2018: WPS seeks a production order for Richardson’s emails; it is sealed for 1 year to protect the ongoing investigation. A year later, the seal expires; the record becomes releasable on request despite the investigation was still ongoing.
• Jan 25, 2019: CBC obtains the unsealed ITO / production order.
• After disclosure: WPS attempts to re-seal; the application is denied.
• Feb 8-21, 2019: Barghout's contact with Richardson is followed by police contact, his two arrests and a Promise to Appear, yet no charges are authorized by the Crown to be laid.
• Feb 25, 2019: The CBC publishes their article, detailing an arrest and the investigation. A WPS spokesperson is quoted as saying the investigation was complete, and charges are expected.
• Feb 27, 2019: Richardson is terminated from his position at the City of Winnipeg.
• Mar 14, 2019: A second production order for any and all of Richardson’s work emails sent after January 9, 2018 is sought by WPS D/Sgt Ravi Misir, as part of the same ongoing investigation into the fraud allegations for which Richardson had already been arrested twice and publicly named.
• Apr 2, 2019: No charges are authorized to be laid on the scheduled court date.
• Jun 2020: Manitoba Prosecution Services decides not to proceed with any charges against Richardson. No civil action against Richardson commenced.
• Jan 2021: The grievance Richardson and the union filed concludes prior to the scheduled arbitration.

The foreseeable result is the public record we have today: the allegation moment became permanent and searchable, while the “no charges” and “no civil action” as a result, have not been made equally durable, prominent, and discoverable.

Two arrests, zero charges: the missing explanation

This is where WPS must provide accountable clarity; not investigative secrets, but basic public-interest explanation.

Richardson was arrested in connection with this matter. Charges were never authorized. When a police service uses arrest power and then the file results in no charges, the public, and at minimum the family, should be reasonably entitled to an explanation of what justified those arrests at the time, and what evidence of the alleged crimes police actually found as a result of their investigation.

Nothing in this record suggests the Winnipeg Police Service lacked the legal authority to arrest. Canadian law permits arrest on reasonable grounds even where charges are never authorized. The issue here is not legality, but typical practice and investigative purpose.

The March 14, 2019 production order that sought to obtain "any and all" of Richardson's workplace emails over a broad period, explicitly states police were still seeking these emails in an attempt at "making the evidence more probative and proving the offences in a prosecution", after two arrests, after public naming, after employment termination, and after already telling the public the investigation was complete and charges were expected.

In non-urgent, document-based fraud investigations, arrests are normally preceded by evidentiary consolidation and Crown screening, and are followed by either charges or a clear investigative outcome.

In this case, two arrests occurred without any charges ever being authorized, investigative escalation continued afterward, and no explanation has been provided as to what public-interest or investigative objective those arrests served.

That sequence may be lawful, but it does not appear to be standard procedure. It is the absence of explanation, not the existence of arrest powers, that remains unresolved.

For my family, the absence of charges did not restore what was lost or offer any accountability or closure on the matter. My father's name remained publicly associated with allegations; years passed before the matter was formally closed. The lack of a durable public outcome meant that the reputational consequences for my entire family continued long after the justice system had moved on.

After more than six years, the public record contained no outcome explanation beyond what was reflected in the original production order, and the Crown’s decision not to authorize charges.

The unreported March 2019 production order described Motorola’s update system as operating through a subscription that was held by the City of Winnipeg, while both production orders asserted a per-use financial loss based on “normal“ prices for individual refreshes.

The document does not explain how these two positions were reconciled, whether the City exceeded any subscription-licensed entitlement, or whether any actual financial loss was proven as a result.

Contemporary media coverage relied heavily on police characterizations and estimates contained in the initial January 2018 production order, including assumptions about the number of times software updates were supposedly accessed, and those figures were then used to suggest that Richardson had obtained “millions of dollars worth of illegal software,” or was responsible for tens of thousands of dollars in loss.

This means the financial loss figures cited publicly were based on initial police estimates from this untested investigative document rather than an accurate reflection of how the system functioned in practice. These numbers were not based on any physical evidence from updated radios, or any actual realized loss determined to have taken place.

Neither production order tells us if the police found evidence of any criminal conduct in Richardson's emails, the focus of the two production orders. These documents do mention police had previously found emails that indicate an interest in amateur (HAM) radio activity, which police themselves characterized as seemingly innocuous.

This interest in amateur radios is something that was confirmed in the March 2019 production order for more of Richardson's emails following his second arrest. Here we learn what police discovered as a result of the initial January 2018 production order for Richardson's emails.

These descriptions appear in production orders sought before and after the two arrests, and before the Crown ultimately declined to authorize charges.

Under Canadian criminal procedure, the Crown’s obligation to disclose evidence arises only once an individual is formally charged and becomes an accused before the court. In the absence of charges, no disclosure obligation is triggered, and the evidentiary record remains internal to the investigative and charge-authorization process. As a result, while arrests were publicly reported, the underlying evidentiary basis was never tested in court and was never made available to the public.

This is not a demand for confidential evidence. It is a demand for institutional accountability proportional to the public harm. The story is public; the reputational damage is public; the absence of charges is public. The outcome explanation should be public too, at least in a redacted, high-level form.

The missing investigative outcome documentation

“No charges were laid” is the most important public fact, but it does not answer what WPS concluded, what steps were taken to close the matter, or how the system ensures a person is not left in permanent public limbo after being publicly named.

It is relevant to note a procedural distinction between search warrants and production orders (like the ones referenced in this letter) in Canadian criminal law.

Search warrants require police to file a post-execution “report to a justice”, documenting what was seized, before the details of these investigative documents can be released. This report to a justice document later forms part of the court record.

By contrast, the production orders referenced here do not require a comparable report to a justice setting out what records were ultimately produced as a result of this investigative act. As a result, unlike a search warrant, there is no automatic public record disclosing what, if anything, was obtained by police through those orders once they are unsealed.

This letter does not assume police can release sensitive investigative detail. It insists on something an accountable institution should be prepared to provide:

• A clear explanation of how sealing was monitored and why the protection lapsed in this case.
• A clear explanation of when this investigation was considered “complete.”
• A written outcome statement: no charges laid, and the file’s current status (closed / inactive / open).
• Confirmation of what closing documentation exists (whatever it is called internally), and whether a redacted executive summary can be released.

CBC Ombudsman: unfair “limbo,” editor’s note, and expected follow-up

In February 2020, I filed a formal complaint with the CBC Ombudsman regarding the CBC coverage of this matter. That complaint was not a personal attack, and it was not written with the benefit of hindsight. It was a procedural objection raised in real time, while the case was still unresolved and no charges had been laid.

This complaint to the CBC Ombudsman noted that this case did not arise in isolation. I identified multiple CBC articles authored by Caroline Barghout in 2018 and 2019 in which individuals were named at the investigation or search-warrant stage, prior to any criminal charges being laid.

In several of those cases, no follow-up reporting clearly stating the eventual outcome was ever published, leaving the public record incomplete and the reputational consequences unresolved.

This pattern raised a broader concern: when naming prior to charges becomes routine rather than exceptional, the ethical burden to ensure durable, prominent outcome reporting becomes greater, not lesser. Absent that follow-through, the presumption of innocence is undermined not by a single editorial decision, but by the cumulative effect of allegation-stage visibility without outcome-stage accountability.

Ombudsman Nagler acknowledged that the CBC’s default editorial policy is generally not to name individuals prior to criminal charges being laid.

However, the Ombudsman characterized the decision to name Richardson prior to charges in this instance as a judgement call.

Instead, Nagler's review accepted that journalism can sometimes prompt institutions to act.

This passage from Ombudsman Nagler links media attention to institutional police action without clarifying how such dynamics should be constrained when charges are not authorized by the Crown, and no court adjudication occurs.

That timing is the core harm mechanism: publication occurred while the investigation was still ongoing, at a stage where the justice process had not produced a stable outcome the public could fairly rely upon.

One thing the CBC Ombudsman did agree on, was this need for more context upon conclusion.

That expectation matters because it describes what ethical, outcome-focused journalism looks like: if a story names a person at the allegation stage, it has a duty to report the outcome with comparable clarity and prominence, especially when the outcome is no charges.

Despite Nagler’s stated expectation, this comprehensive coverage never materialized.

CBC editor’s note: outcome acknowledged, prominence unchanged

Months after the legal matter concluded without charges and the Ombudsman expressed his expectation of more comprehensive coverage, the CBC did add an editor’s note to the original article. A note is better than silence, but it is not comprehensive follow-up reporting, and it does not correct the structural imbalance created when the original story remains highly discoverable while the outcome is not.

If the headline-level narrative is “arrest and allegations”, then the matching public-interest narrative should also be “no charges,” stated clearly and prominently, and supported by a significant update to the original article, that is itself still discoverable, shareable, and permanently linked to in web sources.

The editor’s note exists as an annotation rather than as a headline update, body-text revision, or standalone follow-up article, and therefore does not materially alter the article’s discoverability or summary context. As such, it does not satisfy the Ombudsman’s stated expectation for more comprehensive reporting at conclusion.

Outcome-level reporting should be routine, not remedial. Yet when Manitoba Prosecution Services decided not to proceed with charges, the Winnipeg Free Press, CTV, and other outlets offered neither an editorial note nor any further coverage to inform the public of that outcome. It should not require a formal Ombudsman complaint for outcome-level reporting to occur.

Questions that still require answers

This letter is directed at institutions that exercise public power. The standard is not “did we follow a procedure”, it is: whether the public record is fair, complete, and accountable when a person has been publicly named and no charges follow?

What accountability looks like

This letter is not asking the public to assume facts not in evidence. It is asking institutions to complete the record and accept responsibility for foreseeable reputational harm, where the outcome is clear: no charges.

• WPS must acknowledge the timeline surrounding sealing lapse, multiple arrests, spokesperson statement, and second production order plainly. Not as a vague “the record became public,” but as an accountable statement detailing the timeline of events: the seal expired during an ongoing investigation; after expiry the record became releasable; media obtained it; WPS later attempted re-sealing and this was denied; first police contact/arrest occurred the day following media contact; police conducted a second arrest; police claimed the investigation was complete and charges were expected; police later sought a second production order as a further investigative act after this statement.
• WPS must supply outcome-level clarity about the arrests. What justified arrest power, why charges were never authorized, and how WPS prevents a person from being left in permanent reputational limbo when the outcome is no charges.
• CBC must do more than an editor’s note. A one-line note is not comprehensive reporting. CBC should provide a comprehensive update to the original story, including details about how the investigation was still ongoing at the time of original publication, acknowledge the timing of media contact prior to police questioning and arrests, and state the fact no charges were ever authorized, and no civil action was taken against Richardson.
• Both institutions must ensure outcome visibility. The “no charges” outcome must be at least as visible, permanent, and searchable as the original allegation narrative.

This obligation has not been met. Today, the absence of durable outcome reporting does not merely leave a gap in the historical record. It actively allows false allegations to persist, mutate, and be re-amplified through search engines and automated summaries. What follows is not an opinion or an edge case, but a real example of what a reader sees when institutional outcomes are not made as visible as the original allegations.

Conclusion: Accountability requires outcomes, not silence

This letter does not ask the reader to take sides. It asks something far more basic: that when public power is exercised, the public record must reflect the outcome with the same clarity and durability as the allegation.

In this case, the outcome is not disputed. No charges were laid. No trial occurred. None of the allegations were ever tested. No conviction followed. No civil action ensued. Those facts are confirmed by Manitoba Prosecution Services.

What remains unresolved is not guilt or innocence, but accountability. A sealing order expired during an ongoing investigation. Arrest powers were used. A person was publicly named. And yet, when the matter concluded without charges, no equally prominent outcome record was produced.

That gap is not theoretical. It has real consequences. In the absence of durable outcome reporting, allegations persist, and are re-amplified through search engines and automated summaries, even when they are false.

This record shows that arrests occurred, and even after expectations of criminal charges were documented, investigative steps continued, yet no charges were ever authorized by the Crown. Despite this outcome, the public narrative largely stopped at the point of arrest, with little explanation provided as to why the matter did not proceed.

The absence of follow-up reporting or accessible clarification has left an incomplete public record, one that continues to affect reputation without any corresponding criminal finding. This letter exists to document that gap and to ensure that the full investigative outcome is available alongside the initial coverage of the allegations.

Sources

• CBC News (Feb 25, 2019): City of Winnipeg manager in charge of police radios arrested after 2-year investigation
  CBC article breaking the story, naming Ed Richardson prior to charges
• CBC Ombudsman (Jun 10, 2020): “An Arrest But No Charges” (Edited)
  Hosted on CBC. Fairness, editor’s note remedy, and expected comprehensive reporting
• CBC Ombudsman (Jun 10, 2020): “An Arrest But No Charges” (Original)
  The original, unedited Arrest But No Charges Ombudsman review, hosted locally at /docs/2020-06-10-cbc-ombudsman-review-richardson.pdf
• CBC Ombudsman (Jan 3, 2017): Crime Reporting: Naming names in the digital age.
  Prior Ombudsman reporting on naming individuals prior to charges.
• Manitoba Prosecution Services letter (Dec 16, 2025)
  Correspondence from MPS, Hosted locally at /docs/2025-12-16-manitoba-prosecution-service-letter-sealing-order-expiry.pdf
• Manitoba Justice: FIPPA Response (Charges not authorized, Oct 4, 2023)
  Letter from Manitoba Justice noting charges were not authorized by the Crown in this matter, hosted locally at /docs/2023-10-04-manitoba-justice-fippa-charges-not-authorized.pdf
• Relevant Sealing Order - January 8, 2018 (H. Karr)
  Sealing order for the original production order, approved on the basis that disclosure would interfere in an ongoing investigation, hosted locally at /docs/2018-01-08-sealing-order.pdf
• Relevant Production Order - January 8, 2018 (WPS, Chris Blain)
  The original production order, sealed, and then released to the media on Jan 25, 2019. Available on request from Judicial Authorization Registry
• Relevant Production Order - March 14, 2019 (WPS, Ravi Misir)
  A previously unreported second production order, requested after Richardson's arrests, and prior to his scheduled court date. Available on request from Judicial Authorization Registry

FAQ

This letter does not ask the public to infer wrongdoing by any institution; it asks those institutions to correct or complete the public record if any of the facts presented here are inaccurate or incomplete.

This letter is written in good faith, with one goal: to ensure the public record reflects not only allegations, but outcomes, especially when those outcomes involve no charges or civil action against the accused.

Authorship and independence note: This letter was written and published solely by Ed Richardson's son, Dave Richardson in his personal capacity. It was not written by, reviewed by, endorsed by, or coordinated with Ed Richardson. Ed Richardson had no prior knowledge of its publication and did not participate in, or support its preparation in any manner whatsoever. Nothing in this letter should be understood as a statement by Ed Richardson or as a disclosure of any confidential employment, settlement, or legal terms to which he may be subject. Ed Richardson cannot comment on any such confidential matters beyond what is already public.