A media-relations spokesperson for the Vancouver 2010 Integrated Services Unit has denied that his team passed information to British authorities regarding North Shore resident and Olympics opponent Chris Shaw.

The Straight previously reported that Shaw was detained at Heathrow on June 7, in the same week two ISU officers approached him in a West Broadway coffee shop close to his workplace and asked him about his opposition to the upcoming Vancouver 2010 Olympic Games. In London, Shaw was kept waiting for an hour before being released.

“As far as I know, we’re not sharing any kind of information with them,” Cpl. Bert Paquet told the Straight. “Mind you, Mr. Shaw’s views on the Olympics is quite well known and quite public, which might have put him on their radar. But as far as I know, we have not done that ourselves.”

In response, Shaw told the Straight he did not want to compare himself to Maher Arar—“that was far more dramatic and traumatic and a much more egregious violation of civil rights”—but the comparison still jumped out at him.

“They said the same thing then too,” Shaw said of Arar’s detention in New York City after the RCMP shared information about Arar with U.S. authorities. “So the simple statement that they don’t know if anyone has passed anything to the British could well be true, but it might well not be true.”

Shaw said he refuses to be quiet about his Olympic opposition, even as one online comment at Straight.com, signed in as Duke21, referred to the ophthalmologist as a "turd" in reference to last week’s story on Shaw.

"I guess because I rub some people the wrong way with the continued opposition to the Games, when many people think that the opposition should just go away and just enjoy getting sodomized," Shaw said. "And I don’t happen to share that view. I think that, frankly, when you’re getting sodomized—and no disrespect to anybody who likes it—when that’s happening, then you need to keep fighting back. The Olympics for me is a moral issue."