The Senate heard a lot of testimony yesterday regarding Bill C-44 – the other bill to boost CSIS’ powers, in case you’d forgotten about it. Those new powers include being able to operate abroad and break laws in other countries, which might be a bit of a problem, and raises a bunch of questions when it comes to how you oversee those kinds of operations, particularly given the limitations that SIRC faces when they can only visit one CSIS foreign posting per year to look into their operations. There was also testimony from Ray Boisvert, the former assistant director at CSIS, who described the internal processes of conducting investigations and getting warrants, painting a pretty robust system of high bars to proceed with investigations or operations – but again, we have to take his word for it, because we no longer have the in-house oversight of the Inspector General’s office, and SIRC does an annual review. SIRC, incidentally, said they have enough resources to do the job they’re supposed for now, but if they’re going to need to take on new responsibilities such as overseeing a far more robust and empowered CSIS, well, they’ll also need more money, which this government seems pretty unwilling to give. Curiously, the deputy minister of Public Safety said that the Auditor General also provides oversight of CSIS operations, which is pretty wrong – he looks at value-for-money, which is not the kind of oversight that CSIS requires.

Continue reading →