Now that it can be told - sort of - it should be noted how close a call it was.
When Saad Khalid, one of the notorious and now-shrunken group once known as the Toronto 18, this week abruptly pleaded guilty to participating in a terrorist plot to build and detonate bombs in the country's largest city, it should have been obvious that this was a matter of enormous public importance.
With 12 other adults and five young persons, Mr. Khalid was arrested on June 3, 2006, in the case that was at the time Canada's first brush with the spectre of so-called "homegrown terrorism" and which immediately caused a national and international uproar.
Charges were later stayed against some alleged members, with the accurate moniker becoming the Toronto 11, one of whom, a youth, was convicted last year of participating in a terrorist group; he will be sentenced later this month. Nine other men, all adults, await their trials.
In the intervening almost three years, as the wheels of justice ground - barely - forward, young Mr. Khalid was not only de facto proclaiming his innocence by his participation in the process, but also was properly presumed to be innocent.
Indeed, in the mainstream press and on the Internet, there were many Canadians, commentators and private citizens both, who asserted the innocence of all the accused men in the most vigorous manner possible. A sophisticated Toronto 18 website and a "Presumption of Innocence Project" sprang up, and supporters even organized occasional solidarity rallies at the Brampton courthouse.
Yet when in the face of all this, Mr. Khalid stood before Superior Court Judge Bruce Durno on Monday afternoon to suddenly enter a guilty plea - a shocking turnaround whereby after all the motions and proceedings that had gone on before, he was effectively saying, "Oh by the way, I did do it" - the matter already had been placed under a temporary publication ban by Judge Durno.
The ban went unopposed that day because media outlets, who are by Supreme Court of Canada dictate supposed to be notified in advance by those seeking such bans, weren't notified, as is too frequently the case.
Only yesterday, with defence lawyers who can't be identified according to Judge Durno's latest order arguing that the whole kit and caboodle should be subjected to a ban of longer duration, was there a media lawyer, Ryder Gilliland, who represented the Toronto Star, Sun Media and the CBC, present in court to make the case that the public should know.
Naturally, the details of the defence application - which lawyers brought it or supported it and what they had to say about it and what Mr. Gilliland said to convince Judge Durno to partially lift the ban - are to remain secret until the jury in the trial on the same indictment begins its deliberations.
The whole shebang might have remained under wraps indefinitely and might never have been revealed had The Globe and Mail not learned on the sly on Monday morning that a surprise guilty plea was in the works.
The Globe's Kirk Makin was the one reporter and media representative scrambled to the almost empty courtroom here when defence lawyers for Mr. Khalid and another accused awaiting trial obtained a temporary but sweeping ban on publication before Mr. Khalid formally entered his plea.
Now 22, he pleaded guilty to a single count of participating in a terrorist organization "with the intention of causing an explosion or explosions that were likely to cause serious bodily harm or death" or damage property.
This charge says that he was acting in support of other conspirators whose names are subject to an earlier ban on publication.
It also links Mr. Khalid to what prosecutors allege was a truck-bomb plot, with the targets allegedly under discussion including the CN Tower, the Toronto Stock Exchange, the offices of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, and a military base.
Another group of the accused are alleged to have participated in a terrorist training camp in 2005, where, prosecutors say, they took weapons training and heard jihadist speeches exhorting them to take action.
The slight young man, sporting a small goatee and fashionable haircut according to Mr. Makin, told the judge he appreciated the legal implications of his guilty plea. Mr. Khalid answered a series of questions from Judge Durno that were aimed at making sure his guilty plea was voluntary (he said it was) and was not induced by threats or favours (he said it wasn't). It was this brief exchange and the formal entering of a guilty plea - the most rudimentary and commonplace business of the criminal courts - which was placed under the ban.
It is unusual, if not unprecedented, for a guilty plea to be put under a publication ban.
Indeed, it was emphasized by the judge in the reportable portion of his decision yesterday that while Mr. Khalid had "entered a guilty plea," no agreed statement of facts was entered or admitted and "there has been no finding of guilt or conviction." Needless to say, it would also be unusual, if not unprecedented, for a person who has pleaded guilty to an offence not to also be found guilty of it.
The legal tip-toeing is aimed at protecting the fair-trial rights of the remaining accused by limiting the information in the public domain that could potentially taint future jurors. Nearly all the publication bans in the Toronto 11 case, which now run into the hundreds and hundreds of pages, are at bottom aimed at keeping potentially damaging information from potential jurors.
Judges and lawyers, for all that they pay lip service to the intelligence and independence of the ordinary men and women who make up juries, repeatedly demonstrate the frailty of that professed faith by seeking such bans.
But already on the public record is Mr. Justice John Sproat's lengthy decision of last year, when he convicted the youth, who can be identified only as N.Y. The judge found that there was "overwhelming" evidence that a terrorist group existed and rejected suggestions that "because certain actions of the group were ill-advised, amateurish or sloppy, this meant that the group was not really dangerous. ... Put differently, the charge is participation in terrorist activities, not participation in terrorist activities on an epic scale."
And put differently, what happened in court this week means this: Two cases down, nine to go.