Key Challenges to Canada’s Intelligence Enterprise
Testimony before the House of Commons Committee on Procedure and House Affairs — May 30, 2023
On May 30, 2023 I was asked back to Parliament to share perspectives in relation to the question of privilege raised by Michael Chong, the M.P. for Wellington-Halton Hills related to foreign interference. I appeared before the Committee together with Dan Stanton, a former executive from CSIS. The text of my opening statement follows. I also include a series of point form recommendations to address some specific gaps and challenges to an effective intelligence culture in Canada
Thank you Chair for the opportunity to share my perspective with the Committee.
Foreign interference — as experienced by Mr. Chong and other members — is incompatible with democracy. Threats against Members of Parliament are anathema and are a threat to the integrity of our democratic institutions and their ability to effectively represent Canadians.
In his testimony Mr. Chong outlined a range of issues that are essential to addressing the threats posed by hostile state actors like China and Russia. In his report, the Special Rapporteur also identified issues that affect Canada’s ability to respond to foreign interference. The two of them raise key questions.
For many years I was a consumer of intelligence. At Public Safety Canada and at Global Affairs, as Director General, I consumed highly classified intelligence from across the Canadian intel community & international partners. I engaged regularly with Deputy Ministers, Ministers, and their staff to discuss a wide range of issues.
After serving as an Ambassador, I returned to work at the Communications Security Establishment as the Director General of Intelligence Operations.
I was asked to join CSE because of my years as a consumer of intelligence. Part of my mandate as DG Operations was to improve the experience of consumers of CSE’s intelligence products.
I was responsible for CSE’s Client Relations Officer or CRO program. I was the Chair of the Board Governance of the Canadian Top-Secret Network — the platform that provide access to highly classified intelligence to clients across Government.
My experience gave me insight into the collection, analysis, dissemination, and consumption of intelligence.
It is why I agree with many observers that the dissemination, consumption, and use of intelligence in Canada needs modernization.
This is not a new issue. Addressing some of these challenges was part of why I was brought to CSE. Unfortunately, it remains a work in progress.
While some intelligence consumers have effective partnerships with producers — particularly personnel in the Canadian Armed Forces, and other security organizations, there remain significant gaps.
This unfinished business of modernization is why I was not shocked by Mr. Chong ‘s experience or the observations shared by Mr. Johnston. They are familiar complaints of consumers of intelligence and require systemic response.
My work was at CSE — Canada’s foreign signals intelligence agency. Intelligence in Canada is also produced by CSIS, Canadian Forces Intelligence Command, the RCMP, FINTRAC, CBSA, ITAC, the Privy Council Office. It is complemented by classified diplomatic reporting from Global Affairs. That’s just material generated by Canada. We also access intelligence from the Five Eyes, NATO and other arrangements.
This is a vast information ecosystem.
Ensuring the right people see the right information at the right time to make decisions in Canada’s national interests is the goal. There is still much work to effectively achieve that self-evident objective.
We invest heavily in collection of intelligence. We need to invest more in effective assessment and consumption. We need better coordination in the dissemination of intelligence.
As a consumer of intelligence, it is difficult to prioritize classified information coming from multiple sources and at a volume that is almost impossible to effectively manage.
Consumers of intelligence — whether Ministers, their staffs or DMs and other senior officials — need better training to understand what intelligence is, how to effectively use it in their decision-making process. We need a better intelligence culture in Canada.
That culture is comparatively robust in addressing security threats to Canada and Canadians. It is far more tenuous when it comes to new and emerging issues, where new consumers have less experience with intelligence and are deciding how to allocate scarce time to reading highly classified material.
We need greater transparency in intelligence, so Canadians better understand what it is and how it’s used. We need greater coordination of dissemination processes. We need to value and empower the people that share that intelligence with clients and strengthen the systems used to do so. This should be the role of the Office of the National Security and Intelligence Advisor. The Office of the Director of National Intelligence in the US is an excellent model. While much can be done through policy change, I believe codifying the NSIA’s role in law would help.
Finally, I believe that Deputy Ministers should be more accountable for how their organizations use the intelligence they ask for. The accountability currently rests with collectors and assessors who respond to requirements set out by all of government. Consumers should be accountable for providing feedback and saying how the intelligence was used to achieve outcomes in the national interest. Much of that information will need to be classified.
There are systemic challenges in our intelligence systems. I hope we dedicate the time and resources to address them. Happy to share greater details on possible next steps with the Committee.
Potential Concrete Steps to address some gaps
1. Greater transparency for all intelligence organizations
a. Increases intelligence literacy of all Canadians by speaking to them more frequently
2. Greater diversity and inclusion in security and intel
a. Better understanding of the lived experiences of many communities
b. Better insight when undertaking analysis and assessment
c. Better recruitment, development and retention of talent
3. Improve exchanges between intelligence collectors and consumers to improve understanding of each institution’s realities and requirements
4. Ensure that Deputy Ministers who request intelligence are accountable for how they use intelligence.
a. Need more accountability for feedback.
5. Strengthen and codify the role of the NSIA as the leader of Canada’s intelligence community through law
a. Specify their mandate to coordinate intelligence collection and assessment to government — including identification of intelligence priorities
b. Strengthen their ability to coordinate the community by specifying the reporting relationship of agency heads through the NSIA to the PM
c. Broaden the mandate and service of the Intelligence Assessment Secretariat
d. Mandate regular public reporting and testimony before Parliamentary Committees to ensure transparency — in particular regular threat assessments and biennial public statement on intelligence priorities
e. Responsibility for declassification — mandatory release after 25 years unless exempted by NSIA and reported to NSICOP
f. Make NSIA responsible for distribution of intelligence
6. Invest in better access to Canada’s Top Secret Network
a. Build SIGINT secure areas in all government departments
b. Ensure that accountability for the use of CTSN rests with policy leads — not departmental security officiers
7. Improve training in intelligence matters for all Public Service executives
a. Needs to be built into basic training for new executives
b. Needs to focus on how to ask for, use and provide feedback on intelligence
8. Need to modernize and strengthen the intelligence distribution system
a. More Client Relations Officers (CRO) managed by the Office of the NSIA
b. Remove inter-agency competition for having intelligence read
c. Make CRO positions assignments from both consumer and collector organizations.
d. Make CROs more senior. Provide detailed training on the needs of their consumer clients
e. Make feedback easier
f. Make intelligence products more consumer friendly
g. Lower the classification level of more intelligence products
