Don't overload CSIS: The case for a separate foreign spy agency

With each new round of terrorist scares, Canada's supposedly domestic spy agency, CSIS, has taken more steps to becoming the de facto foreign intelligence service the country has always lacked.

But now is where things will start to get murky, as they tend to in the secret world of espionage and intelligence gathering.

CSIS already has a recent and highly-secretive overseas operation to sniff out potential security threats to Canada.

And Ottawa's new counterterrorism initiatives, unveiled yesterday, will grant our sleuths even more powers to track suspected terrorists abroad and to link their operations to other spy networks.

• CSIS powers beefed up under new bill 
• Ottawa shooting: RCMP, House security radios on different frequencies 

A more far-reaching CSIS may make sense in strict security terms, but there can be problems if its core mandate, to protect us at home from terrorism and espionage (known as security intelligence), is inflated to take on the very different challenge of foreign intelligence gathering.

For foreign intel covers a far broader area involving diplomatic secrets, national and international politics, economics, trade deals, high-tech technology, military analysis and the global strategic competition between powers.

This is a dense and often treacherous thicket for spy operations, and something for which CSIS has neither the resources nor experience to handle.

It's a bizarre fact that Canada is the only G7 country without a dedicated foreign intelligence service, but our overstretched CSIS is probably not the answer to this vacuum in our dealings with a crisis–prone world.

'Contagion in our democracy'

Still, this is the direction we've been headed in for several years now given official Ottawa's lack of interest in its own secret organizations, according to one of the country's most prominent intelligence experts, Wesley Wark.

"CSIS has been allowed without any public debate or much clear thinking to become a hybrid service with eyes on both domestic threats and overseas targets," Wark says.

These are "two very different fields of operation requiring very different skill sets and oversight."

It's also a trend most of our Western allies would see as a huge mistake, indeed even intelligence heresy.

That's why the landmark McDonald inquiry into the RCMP, whose 1981 report led to the setting up of CSIS, warned that such a union can bring "contagion in our democracy," for without a real distinction between these two types of intelligence gathering the often shady aspects of foreign spying can infect security operations at home.

This is a key reason our allies keep such a firewall by clearly differentiating the skills, tactics and even legal powers of their respective home and foreign operations.

Hence Britain has its famous MI5 (domestic) and MI6 (foreign), the U.S. has an FBI and CIA divide, and France its home (DCRI) and external (DGSE) services.

Even Australia, a more apt example for Canada, has its domestic Security Intelligence Organization, and then its quite separate, foreign Secret Intelligence Service.

A bit of a jumble

CSIS was long restricted by its mandate from directly seeking overseas intelligence about Canadians or other threats. But since 9/11, it was given two massive legislated loopholes that have allowed it to expand abroad.

Under Section12 of the CSIS Act, it can travel anywhere in the world in its investigations and, thanks to controversial Section 19, it can scoop up any non-threat related intelligence it "incidentally" acquires. (As in "oops" what's this secret document I picked up by mistake?)

How much of this happenstance spy material is shared with the rest of government is not known. In a new report, the independent Security Intelligence Review Committee has just criticized CSIS for in some areas not always working well with other departments, like Foreign Affairs.

• The Security Intelligence Review Committee annual reports
• Public Safety Canada: Proposed changes to CSIS Act

It also raised concerns about CSIS's ability to "confirm the value and veracity" of the intel it collects.

From CSIS's point of view, though, these loopholes are seen as essential, and in bureaucratic turf wars they are cited as reasons why a separate foreign spy agency is no longer required.

As befitting the espionage world, it's a slippery argument and many security experts are skeptical.

How can it make sense that our primary domestic spy service collects "incidental" foreign intelligence while answerable to Public Safety Canada, a department that has no experience in foreign intel and little time to consider it?

Meanwhile, other foreign intelligence flows in though our super-secretive eavesdropping service, the Communications Security Establishment, but its operation answers to the Ministry of Defence.

That leaves what's likely a more natural home for foreign intelligence, the highly experienced Foreign Affairs department, with only a very modest intel unit of its own, which is largely dedicated to the security of its own missions.

This jumbled reality of Canadian intelligence comes with a price. Canada has often suffered from dangerously weak intelligence when it sent troops abroad.

In Somalia, Rwanda, Afghanistan and the bombing of Libya, Canada relied for the most part on U.S. and allied intel briefings.

We are in the same position now with the coalition against ISIS in Iraq — we get hand-me-down intelligence because we've little of our own of value to share, and others naturally tell us what they want us to hear.

In 2006, the Conservatives made an election promise to set up a foreign intelligence service, but since then have apparently found the prospect too expensive or cumbersome to launch.

There also seems to be a reluctance to sully Canada's image by openly joining in the often dodgy, clandestine world of aggressive espionage.

The greatest deficiency is in the area of developing human sources, as electronic eavesdropping is often limited and far from reliable. And the need for both sources and sophisticated analysis is certain to expand enormously in the months and years ahead.

There is always the possibility, I suppose, that a thoughtful government will heed all those worries about a spying monolith and finally create fully separate domestic and foreign agencies.

But the past suggests such clarity is unlikely, that the muddle will remain and that CSIS will go on using stealthy steps and the opportunities that crises afford to steadily expand to cover both needs pretty much on its own, with all the problems that will entail.