Canada's top spy reflects on his uneasy year in the spotlight

The head of Canada's intelligence agency spent much of 2023 where spies don't like to be — in the spotlight, on the back foot.

Canadian Security Intelligence Service Director David Vigneault spent the first half of the year fielding questions about whether CSIS responded properly to Chinese election interference. He's ending the year facing questions about whether security services could have prevented the death of Hardeep Singh Nijjar, the Sikh activist India is accused of killing outside a temple in Surrey, B.C.

These questions cut directly to CSIS's reason for existing. So is Canada's leading intelligence agency still capable of keeping up with a bewildering range of threats both new and old?

"We are being challenged," Vigneault said during a sit-down interview with CBC in Winnipeg earlier this week.

Those challenges, he said, are affecting CSIS "in terms of recruitment, in terms of our authorities, but also in terms of our budget."

"With technology changes, our ability to collect foreign intelligence has diminished," he added. "In the context of geopolitical tensions, it is critical that we regain that."

The director blamed many of the service's problems on CSIS's enabling law, the Canadian Security Intelligence Act, which was written in 1984. He said CSIS employees are handcuffed by a law drafted "when the fax machine was cutting-edge technology."

For example, he said, CSIS must secure a warrant from a judge to learn who is behind an online account — a process that eats up a lot of investigators' time.

"Back in the day, if you had a phone number, we could use the phonebook and see what was the name associated with that phone number," he said.

"Now, with IP protocol and IP addresses and social media communications, we have to use more intrusive powers to do that. And absolutely, we need a warrant. But the way that the CSIS Act is constructed now just makes it so time-consuming ..."

The federal government has launched consultations on whether the law needs to be updated to, for example, allow CSIS to share information about national security threats with people and institutions outside the federal government.

"It is a good time for Canadians to essentially make sure that their intelligence service is fit for purpose to protect them in this very challenging environment," Vigneault said.

Vigneault said one of the major factors holding his people back is how the law limits CSIS's use of data analytics. While he acknowledged safeguards are necessary, he argued the CSIS Act slows down the work of analysts tasked with making connections in the data.

Depending on where the data originated, he said, CSIS sometimes has to seek permission from the minister of public safety or a judge to retain, handle and review datasets. The intelligence commissioner also has to sign off on the minister's decision. It's a process CSIS says can delay data analysis by "up to six to nine months."