I came to Canada seeking safety, protection and a new beginning. I had already survived forced recruitment as a child soldier, war, intelligence operations, imprisonment, threats and displacement. I believed Canada would be the place where I could finally rebuild my life with dignity.
Instead, more than two decades later, I am still fighting for a full explanation of how the Canadian Security Intelligence Service used and disclosed my private mental-health information. Justice delayed this long can feel indistinguishable from justice denied.
My story is not simply about compensation. It is about what happens when a vulnerable refugee places his trust in a powerful Canadian institution and later believes that the same institution used his vulnerability against him.
My service and my vulnerability
I arrived in Canada in 1997 after escaping the violence of the Sri Lankan civil war. As a teenager, I had been forcibly recruited by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam. I later escaped and provided intelligence that assisted government security operations.
After coming to Canada, I was approached by CSIS. I possessed knowledge of the LTTE, its intelligence structure, its operational methods and its international networks. According to my complaint, I provided intelligence to CSIS for approximately nine years.
I did not enter this relationship as a person with institutional power. I was a refugee carrying the psychological burden of war, forced recruitment and displacement. I was trying to protect my family, establish myself in Canada and recover from experiences that most people could scarcely imagine.
I allege that CSIS understood these vulnerabilities and exploited them. CSIS denies wrongdoing, and my allegations have not yet been finally decided by the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal. That is precisely why a transparent hearing and meaningful disclosure are necessary.
The unexplained presence of a CSIS officer in my medical record
In 2001, I experienced serious depression arising from trauma and the pressures affecting my life. I received treatment at the Royal Victoria Hospital in Montreal.
One surviving hospital prescription record raises troubling questions that have never been properly answered. The name “Lezli Kirsch,” together with a telephone number, appears in the area marked “Diagnosis.” Kirsch was the CSIS officer with whom I had been dealing. The same document records prescriptions for Paxil, an antidepressant, and risperidone, an antipsychotic medication.
A CSIS officer’s name is not a medical diagnosis. Why was her name written there? Who gave her contact information to the hospital? Did she communicate with my doctors? What information did she provide? Did I consent to that communication? Did anything she said influence my diagnosis or treatment?
The document alone does not prove that Kirsch recommended risperidone. But it establishes an unexplained contemporaneous connection between a CSIS officer and my psychiatric treatment. The underlying communications, if they exist, are likely held by CSIS or the healthcare institution—not by me.
I am entitled to an explanation.
When an extraordinary but real history is treated as delusion
My life story sounds extraordinary because it is extraordinary. I survived involvement with the LTTE intelligence apparatus. I interacted with intelligence and security organizations. I lived under threats arising from those experiences.
When I spoke about intelligence operations, agents and threats, medical professionals sometimes interpreted those statements through the framework of paranoia or delusion. But some of the intelligence-related experiences I described were real and potentially verifiable.
This creates a profoundly important question: did anyone make a serious effort to distinguish my genuine intelligence history from symptoms of mental illness?
My later medical records document psychiatric symptoms, including reports of voices and subsequent relapses. I cannot responsibly ignore those records. But the existence of later symptoms does not answer what happened at the beginning of my treatment. It does not explain Kirsch’s contact information on my prescription record, what CSIS communicated about me or whether truthful statements about my intelligence history were improperly used to discredit me.
A person may have a mental-health condition and still tell the truth. Disability does not erase credibility, legal rights or human dignity.
The long-term consequences
Over the years, I was prescribed increasingly powerful antipsychotic medications, including risperidone and Haldol Decanoate injections. I experienced stiffness, fatigue, weight gain, memory problems, difficulty concentrating and profound changes in my ability to function.
My treatment history became part of how institutions understood and evaluated me. Once a psychiatric label enters an official record, it can follow a person for the rest of his life. Each subsequent official may rely on what the previous official recorded, without returning to the beginning and asking whether the original information was accurate, complete or influenced by an outside agency.
This is why the truth about CSIS’s involvement matters. I am not asking the public to assume that every later medical decision was caused by CSIS. I am asking for disclosure of what CSIS said, to whom it said it and how that information was subsequently used.
My Parliament Hill employment opportunity
Years later, the consequences became concrete.
In 2016, I was being considered for security work on Parliament Hill. A site-access clearance request was submitted. According to the findings disclosed through the national-security review process, CSIS met with representatives connected to the House of Commons and Parliamentary Protective Service and shared information concerning my mental health.
The clearance request was then cancelled.
This is not merely my suspicion. The NSIRA process established that CSIS shared information from open sources and classified immigration briefs containing information about my mental health.
I therefore ask straightforward questions: Was the information accurate? Was it properly contextualized? Was its disclosure authorized and necessary? Was I given an opportunity to respond? Did anyone consider whether the information reflected disability-based stereotyping? Why was information created for immigration purposes later communicated during an employment-related security process?
I lost an employment opportunity without being told the case against me.
My struggle to have the case heard
I filed my human-rights complaint in 2018. In 2022, the Canadian Human Rights Commission declined to deal with it, reasoning that another national-security process had addressed or could have addressed the matter.
I challenged that decision.
In Ariaratnam v. Canada (Attorney General), 2023 FC 1248, the Federal Court set aside the Commission’s dismissal. My complaint was eventually referred to the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal.
CSIS later attempted to invoke another national-security process that could have removed or indefinitely delayed the Tribunal proceeding. In Ariaratnam v. Canadian Security Intelligence Service, 2025 CHRT 105, the Tribunal refused to surrender its jurisdiction or place my case into an indefinite suspension.
These were important procedural victories. But they were not final findings that CSIS discriminated against me. After years of litigation, I am still waiting for the merits of my complaint to be determined.
Where is justice?
Canada presents itself as a country governed by the rule of law. But the rule of law must apply with equal force to institutions operating in the name of national security.
National security cannot become a phrase that ends every question. It cannot permit an intelligence agency to rely on secret information while preventing an affected person from knowing or answering it. It cannot be used to transform disability into permanent suspicion.
If CSIS acted lawfully, it should be able to explain its actions through an appropriately protected legal process. If some information genuinely requires protection, summaries, admissions, redactions and controlled disclosure may be available. Secrecy should protect legitimate operations—not prevent accountability.
I know what I experienced. CSIS possesses records that could confirm, contradict or clarify important parts of my account. Justice requires those records to be examined by an independent decision-maker.
What justice would mean to me
Financial compensation matters because alleged discrimination affected my employment, health and ability to build a stable life. But justice is not only a cheque.
Justice would mean learning what information CSIS recorded about me and whether it was accurate. It would mean determining who communicated with my doctors, police, immigration officials and prospective employers. It would mean correcting inaccurate records. It would mean recognition that refugees, informants and people with mental-health disabilities do not lose their human rights when the government considers their lives inconvenient or secret.
Justice would also mean reforms protecting other vulnerable individuals who assist Canadian intelligence agencies. Human sources should not be treated as disposable instruments. They should receive clear protections, appropriate support and meaningful access to oversight when something goes wrong.
I came to Canada seeking protection. I later provided intelligence to a Canadian security agency. More than two decades later, I remain engaged in a legal struggle to understand how that agency used my mental-health information and how its actions affected my life.
I do not ask to be placed above the law. I ask that CSIS be placed under it.
Until the evidence is disclosed and the merits are fairly determined, my question remains:
Where is justice in this country?