Canadian Security Intelligence Service

The Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS, ; french: Service canadien du renseignement de sécurité, ''SCRS'') is Canada's primary national intelligence agency. It is responsible for collecting, analysing, reporting and disseminating intelligence on threats to Canada's national security, and conducting operations, covert and overt, within Canada and abroad. The agency also reports to and advises the minister of public safety on national security issues and situations that threaten the security of the nation.

CSIS is headquartered in Ottawa, Ontario, in a purpose-built facility completed in 1995. The agency is responsible to Parliament through the minister of public safety, and it is overseen by the National Security and Intelligence Review Agency. CSIS is also subject to review by the Federal Court. CSIS agents are not allowed to make arrests.

The agency is led by a director, the ninth and current being David Vigneault, who assumed the role on June 19, 2017.

History

Prior to 1984, security intelligence in Canada was the purview of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP). However, during the 1970s, there were allegations that the RCMP Security Service – the predecessor to CSIS – had been involved in numerous illegal activities. As a result of these allegations, Justice David McDonald was appointed in 1977 to investigate the activities of the RCMP Security Service. The resulting investigation, known as the McDonald Commission, published its final report in 1981, with its main recommendation being that security intelligence work should be separated from policing, and that a civilian intelligence agency be created to take over from the RCMP Security Service.

On June 21, 1984, CSIS was created by an Act of Parliament. At the time, it was also decided that the activities of this new agency, the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, should be subject to both judicial approval for warrants and to general review by a new body, the Security Intelligence Review Committee, as well as the office of the Inspector General (which was disbanded in 2012). Its ''de facto'' existence began on July 16 under the direction of Thomas D'Arcy Finn.

At first, the main emphasis of CSIS was combating the activities of various foreign intelligence agencies operating in Canada. For example, it has been engaged in investigating economic espionage involving Chinese operations throughout Canada. While the threat posed by foreign intelligence agencies still remains, CSIS over the years since 9/11 has focused more and more on the threat to Canadian security and its citizens posed by terrorist activity, and this has led to the memorable cases of Maher Arar and Omar Khadr.

The institutional focus of CSIS returned to state actors (such as Russia and China) after a February 2021 speech by the CSIS director, David Vigneault, warned that the Chinese "strategy for geopolitical advantage on all fronts — economic, technological, political and military" uses "all elements of state power to carry out activities that are a direct threat to our national security and sovereignty."

Leadership

The leadership position is mostly a political appointment.

Coulombe and Yaworski were promoted from the ranks within CSIS. Vigneault had held a management posting with CSIS. Neufeld had joined CSIS in 1984 after being in the RCMP.

Finn was previously assistant secretary to the federal cabinet for security and intelligence matters in the 1970s.

Neufeld (RCMP) and Vigneault (CBSA, CSE) have law enforcement backgrounds.

# Ted Finn

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