A 38-year-old Ontario man who faced an unusual charge under Canada’s state secrets law of leaking confidential information to a foreign entity or terrorist group was found not criminally responsible after he posted a video on YouTube that revealed the vulnerabilities of nuclear power plants and provided instructions on how to cause damage.
James Alexander Mousaly, who worked for provincial electricity producer Ontario Power Generation, was suffering from bipolar disorder and psychosis when he livestreamed the offending information for 22 minutes on Jan. 30, 2024, a judge in Oshawa, Ont., ruled Thursday.
“His delusions included beliefs of being a prophet and a whistleblower about workplace safety,” said Ontario Superior Court Justice Jill Cameron.
The video was only up for less than a day before relatives removed it, and there was no evidence it was viewed by more than a handful of people, the court heard.
Redacted partial transcripts of the audio portion of the live broadcast, presented in court, show someone ranting against the nuclear industry and offering to help “any terrorist or non-terrorist organization… if they want to destroy any nuclear power plant in the world.”
“Fuck the entire nuclear industry,” the person said, according to the transcript. “You can’t use this power source. It’s fucking useless.”
An expert from the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission confirmed that the YouTube video “included at least one vulnerability at a Canadian nuclear power plant” that was classified as secret, according to an agreed statement of facts filed in court. Ontario Power Generation says it believed the information in the video “would allow an adversary to optimize an attack on a nuclear power plant in Canada or abroad,” according to the agreed statement.
It is not known what the vulnerability was because any confidential or classified information is sealed by court order.
Mousaly had worked as a nuclear operator since 2015 at one of Ontario Power Generation’s two nuclear plants east of Toronto, but his site credentials were revoked a month before the livestream incident, the court heard. TO The federal government website specifies who worked at the Pickering, Ontario nuclear plant.
According to Ontario’s public sector salary disclosure, Mousaly earned $127,600 in 2023.
Mousaly’s lawyer, Thomas Balka, told the court that his client did not intend to cause damage to the nuclear plant, but rather his goal was to “keep people safe by getting governments to shut down this energy source.”
“He recognizes that this was not legal and that his mental health issues fueled this disordered thinking,” Balka said, emphasizing that Mousaly’s family knows him as a “hard-working, loving and caring partner, a son and a stepfather.”
The judge ordered his preventive detention until a place is opened for him in a provincial center specialized in mental health. A mental health review board will now take responsibility for your case and decide if and for how long you should be detained at the facility.
The charge against him falls under Section 16(1) of the Canada Act. Information Security Lawwhich has since been renamed the Foreign Interference and Information Security Act. This section criminalizes communicate “to a foreign entity or terrorist group information that the government of Canada or a province is taking steps to safeguard,” if the person believes or is reckless about whether the information is being safeguarded and intends to increase the “ability of a foreign entity or terrorist group to harm Canadian interests.”
It is only the third time that charges brought under the law have reached a conclusion in court.
Previously, top RCMP intelligence officer Cameron Ortis was sentenced in 2023 and sentenced to 14 years in prison for leaking intelligence to law enforcement targets, while former Navy Lt. Jeffrey Delisle pleaded guilty in 2012 to selling top secret information to Russia and was sentenced to 20 years in prison.
