Fired CSIS worker sues over mental-health issue
A former spy-agency employee with ties to the Paul Bernardo murder case is suing the federal government after being fired in the wake of a mental health crisis that resulted in criminal charges.
A judge stayed those criminal harassment charges in October 2013, but by that time Martin McSweeney had already lost his top-secret security clearance and his job as a technologist with the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS).
McSweeney had spent a decade with the national spy agency. He’s now suing CSIS and the federal government for damages related to what he contends was his wrongful dismissal.
Federal lawyers, however, want the lawsuit dismissed as an abuse of process. They argue that McSweeney didn’t challenge his loss of security clearance through the CSIS internal grievance process when he had the chance and so shouldn’t be allowed to use the court system now to do the same thing.
McSweeney’s lawyer, Ron Segal, has argued that the case is properly before the courts.
In a newly released decision, Judge Ian Nordheimer granted the federal government’s leave to appeal a lower-court ruling that said the case should be heard. That issue now goes to an Ontario appeal court panel to decide.
According to court documents, McSweeney suffers from several mental health issues, including extreme anxiety and post-traumatic stress — something brought on, in part, by Bernardo’s murder of Burlington schoolgirl Leslie Mahaffy.
McSweeney, then 15, walked Mahaffy home after a bush party on the night that Bernardo abducted her from her yard in Burlington.
McSweeney testified at Bernardo’s 1995 murder trial. He told court that they had been at a wake for a schoolmate who had died in a car crash, and that he had walked home with her at 1:50 a.m. When he left her, McSweeney said, she was standing in front of the garage. He assumed she would be going in the front door.
He told court that she was worried about a confrontation with her parents because she had exceeded her curfew by several hours. “Don’t worry,” he quoted Mahaffy as telling him. “They’ll just yell and yell at me. Don’t worry. Call me in the morning. We’ll go to the funeral together.”
Mahaffy was locked out of the house. Two weeks later, her dismembered body was found encased in cement in a lake near St. Catharines, Ont.
After high school, McSweeney went on to earn a degree from the University of Western Ontario and obtained a PhD in software engineering from Royal Military College. He was hired as computer programmer with CSIS in June 2003.
He saw a therapist for his mental health issues, and in April 2012, she broke off contact with him due to her concern that he had developed a romantic attachment. He was charged with criminal harassment after leaving the therapist a profanity-laced voice mail.
That September, he was charged a second time with criminal harassment in connection with an email sent to Ontario Court Justice Lesley Baldwin, who had been one of the Crown prosecutors in the Bernardo case. The email allegedly contained a threat.
CSIS placed McSweeney on paid leave. In February 2013, then-CSIS director Richard Fadden informed him by mail that his top-secret security clearance had been suspended. McSweeney was also told that he could formally challenge the suspension within 30 days, but he did not take advantage of that opportunity.
Without a security clearance, McSweeney couldn’t work for CSI, and he was dismissed in April 2013. Two months later, McSweeney asked to have both his security clearance and job reinstated, but those appeals — and subsequent grievances — were denied.
In October 2013, all of the criminal charges against him were thrown out of court when a judge ruled that he had been denied the right to a trial within a reasonable amount of time. The judge said McSweeney’s mental health challenges played a role in the allegations and reduced the seriousness of them.
The McSweeney case holds the potential to further define the government’s responsibilities to its mentally ill employees.
Earlier this year, the Public Service Labour Relations and Employment Board reinstated a mentally ill public servant who slapped his boss across the face. The board ruled that the employee’s mental health problems should have been considered when deciding what kind of discipline to impose.