CSIS was established in 1984 as a civilian security intelligence organization with its own legislation. It was given three basic roles:
to inform government of threats, as defined in our Act, to the security of Canada and Canadians;
to collect intelligence about foreign governments at the request of the Minister of Foreign Affairs or the Minister of National Defence but only within Canada; and
to conduct assessments on individuals requiring a security clearance, be it for immigration to Canada, for employment in sensitive jobs in government, or in some sectors of the economy such as, for example, the nuclear industry.
I should add that it is not a police organization. We do not have the power to arrest or to detain people and we cannot compel cooperation. We collect intelligence and not evidence for use in prosecutions.
That said, we do work very closely with police forces across the country and internationally. In fact, we work very closely with an array of other federal and provincial departments and agencies, as well as with many private-sector companies.
Three-quarters of our legislation is devoted to detailing how both political and judicial control will be exercised over the organization and how its two external review bodies , the Security Intelligence Review Committee and the Inspector General , will conduct reviews of our operations and handle public complaints about what we do.
This was not surprising given the genesis of the Service or its capacity, subject to the Federal Court's approval of warrant applications, to employ intrusive investigative techniques against people.
We also maintain rigorous internal controls over operations and have well-established policies applying to our operations , something that was favourably commented upon by Mr. Justice Dennis O'Connor in his report on the Maher Arar case. This should help reassure those who are concerned about maintaining an appropriate balance between security and rights.
We are in addition, subject to external review like any other federal entity by various agents of Parliament including the Auditor General, or the Commissioners of Access to Information or Privacy, or the courts of the country. As a result, CSIS is the most reviewed intelligence service to be found anywhere in the world and the most scrutinized organization of any in the federal government.
Currently, we have approximately 2600 employees. Most are university and college graduates drawn from every faculty and program offered today , law, social science, liberal arts, science, engineering and others. About half of our staff is female; 40 per cent are francophone; collectively, our employees speak more than 85 foreign languages.
Our employees come from across Canada and across the world. Whether new Canadians or descendents of numerous generations of Canadians, they are very proud to work in an organization that is devoted to trying to ensure the security of this country.
Our staff is located here in the National Capital Region headquarters, at more than a dozen other offices around the country, and in almost 30 foreign countries. In addition, our personnel may find themselves in any number of other foreign countries from time to time carrying out their responsibilities.
We are basically in the information business , not unlike many public media. Like them, we collect information through so-called public sources but, unlike them, we also collect it surreptitiously or covertly through a variety of mechanisms - from the interception of communications to the use of human sources to operate clandestinely in acquiring intelligence.
As well, we receive a great deal of intelligence from foreign partner agencies around the world , something that is an absolute essential these days given the global dimension of most of the issues that we deal with here in Canada.
Today and for the last 15 years or more, our principal operational priorities have been terrorism, foreign espionage and foreign interference in our affairs, and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction or means of delivering them.
Terrorism has been our main preoccupation for some years now; more specifically, we are concerned by four aspects:
the threat of terrorist activity in Canada;
the threat of such activity affecting Canadians outside Canada;
the prospect that Canadians or Canadian residents would be involved in terrorist activities outside Canada; and, finally,
the facilitation of terrorism that occurs here through fundraising, the acquisition of equipment or the recruitment of new militants.
Unfortunately, we have had experience with all of these dimensions of the problem.
Let me now turn to the issue of security, and again begin with a caveat. Obviously, security is a complex matter. Canada's own National Security Policy, issued just several years ago, identified eight types of threats to our security.
They are: terrorism, the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, failed and failing states, foreign espionage, natural disasters, critical infrastructure vulnerability, organized crime and pandemics. If you think back over the last decade, we have some experience in Canada with most of these or their ramifications.
In speaking to security issues today, I will focus principally on those related to what I would term political violence as opposed to "natural" threats to security such as natural disasters or pandemics. That said, I should point out that more people died in the last several years from the Indian Ocean tsunami and the earthquakes in Pakistan than from any combination of political violence.
