A former Pickering nuclear operator was found not criminally responsible for a dangerous livestream
The employee’s site credentials had been revoked shortly before the incident
A Pickering nuclear operator who went live on YouTube exposing power plant vulnerabilities meant to be kept secret was found not criminally responsible by an Oshawa judge yesterday.
In January 2024, a former employee of provincial electricity producer Ontario Power Generation livestreamed for 22 minutes, providing “instructions on how to cause damage,” as described by a CBC report. His site credentials had been revoked shortly before the livestream.
The video was up for less than a day, says CBC, and the court heard that only a handful of people viewed it.
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A partially redacted audio transcript of the livestream allowed the court to hear a voice offering assistance to anyone wanting to “destroy any nuclear power station in the world.”
According to an agreed statement of facts, Ontario Power Generation believed the video’s contents “would allow an adversary to optimize an attack on a nuclear power plant in Canada or abroad.”
The former employee was living with bipolar disorder and psychosis at the time of the livestream. Ontario Superior Court Justice Jill Cameron said he believed he was “a prophet and a whistleblower regarding workplace safety.”
He had faced a charge of communicating classified information to a foreign entity or terrorist group, but will instead spend time in a specialized provincial mental-health facility.
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Carly Lewis is a journalist whose work has appeared in the New York Times and the New York Times Magazine, Vanity Fair, Wired, Interview Magazine, Pitchfork, Elle, and Maclean’s, where she is a contributing editor. Her work has been recognized by the National Magazine Awards and the Digital Publishing Awards. She reports on city life, culture—including what people do online—politics, art and crime. She received the Dave Greber Freelance Writers Award for “The Murder of Ashley Wadsworth,” an investigative feature about a Canadian teenager who was killed by a man she met on social media, published by Maclean’s.
