OTTAWA—In yet another black eye for the country’s national police force, an Ontario judge has ordered the RCMP to pay $141,000 in damages to a Mountie who was shamefully harassed and bullied by his superiors over the course of several years.

Superior Court Justice Mary Vallée slammed the RCMP’s “outrageous” treatment of Sgt. Peter Merrifield, whose political ambitions to be a federal Conservative candidate in 2005 ran afoul of his bosses’ views of proper conduct.

Vallée’s 174-page judgment is a damning chronicle of how Merrifield’s superiors got their backs up after they believed he had lied to them about his plans to run for a federal nomination in Barrie. It was a nomination that Patrick Brown, now the PC leader of Ontario, eventually won.

Vallée said Merrifield was harassed, bullied, punitively investigated for unfounded allegations of misuse of an RCMP credit card, transferred, and missed out on timely promotions as his reputation was tarnished and the stain spread.

For Merrifield, 50, then a constable and now one of the Mounties leading a national drive to unionize the RCMP rank-and-file, it’s a bittersweet victory.

He learned of the decision while on the road in northern Alberta where he is participating in town halls to urge Mounties to support the National Police Federation which is seeking to certify as the RCMP’s first-ever bargaining agent.

His first reaction, he said in an interview, was “numbness.”

“It’s been 12 years of my life, of my wife’s and of my childrens’ lives. It was never about money, what it was about was accountability and honesty.”

“Because I was a constable and the people I was raising concerns about were commissioned officers, I was shoved aside, I was marginalized.”

Merrifield believes the RCMP’s top cop, Commissioner Bob Paulson, should offer him an apology, which he says would show leadership and accountability. But he’s not holding his breath.

The RCMP had next to nothing to say Wednesday in response to the ruling.

Staff Sgt. Julie Gagnon said in an email “The RCMP (sic) only comment is that we received the decision of the Court and are in the process of reviewing it.”

The judge traced many of Merrifield’s initial problems to 2004, when he was aiming for a Conservative nomination in one of a handful of GTA ridings. Confusion was widespread in senior ranks about the RCMP’s policy requiring employees to take leave without pay to undertake political activity.

She ruled Merrifield suffered severe emotional and mental distress as a direct result of reckless and callous actions taken by Insp. James Jagoe (now a superintendent) and Supt. Marc Proulx, who is now retired.

Other senior officers’ names on the lawsuit were struck but the judge leveled sharp criticism at them and others – all the way up to and including Paulson, for failing to heed Merrifield’s pleas when he tried in vain to go up the chain of command to resolve his concerns outside of court.

Vallée said the treatment of Merrifield “went beyond all standards of what is right and decent. It was outrageous.”

She did not however find that the RCMP’s actions constituted a breach of contract because labour relations at the time between the force and its non-unionized employees were governed by the RCMP Act, a statute, not a contract. Vallée ordered the Mounties to pay $100,000 in general damages to compensate Merrifield “for the harm he suffered because of the RCMP's conduct” and another $41,000 for special damages equal to lost income Merrifield would have earned if he’d advanced in and moved up the pay scale in the usual way.

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Vallée said Merrifield racked up glowing performance evaluations for his work as an officer on the RCMP’s air marshall program, later on its integrated national security team, and even after he was punitively transferred to a criminal intelligence branch, and later to a customs and excise unit.

The ruling shows that Merrifield was repeatedly praised as a “highly motivated, confident member” and an asset to the force. His work included investigating and prosecuting a person who made threats against then Liberal prime minister Paul Martin and U.S. president George W. Bush; tracking down a cyber-attacker who hacked the Oval Office’s electronic inbox, leading an investigation into the proliferation of nuclear-related materials which led to an arrest, trial and conviction in which Merrifield gave all of the evidence for prosecution.

Yet his bosses repeatedly shuffled Merrifield off coveted national security assignments, allowing innuendo to spread, at one point sending him back home in the midst of a critical situation that required “all hands on deck” during a widespread bomb threat in Toronto. The effect on Merrifield, the judge said, was “devastating.”