Former Insiders Bemoan Politicization of CSIS, Other Government Agencies

Former Insiders Bemoan Politicization of CSIS, Other Government Agencies
Then-Commissioner of the RCMP Brenda Lucki speaks with Director of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS), David Vigneault as they wait to appear befoer a House of Commons committee in Ottawa on Feb. 6, 2023. The Canadian Press/Spencer Colby
Omid Ghoreishi
Updated:
News Analysis

A 2021 analysis by the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) was recently made public in which the agency presents various concerns related to climate change.

Phil Gurski, a veteran of CSIS and the Communications Security Establishment, is puzzled as to why CSIS would put out such a document.

“That paper, if it was in fact written by CSIS, has absolutely nothing to do with the CSIS mandate,” Gurksi told The Epoch Times.

For him, it was yet another example of the agency deviating from its mandate. Other observers are seeing a similar phenomenon in some of Canada’s other agencies and institutions.

CSIS Reports

The CSIS document, prepared in April 2021 and recently released to The Canadian Press, discussed the impacts of global warming on Arctic, coastal, and border security as well as food and water supplies. CSIS’s analysis, the document said, shows that climate change “presents a complex, long-term threat to Canada’s safety, security and prosperity outcomes.”
Gurski cites Section 12 of the CSIS Act, which sets out the agency’s mandate to collect information when there is a threat to the security of Canada, and references Section 2, which defines what constitutes a threat. He notes that the subject of the climate change report doesn’t fall within any of the four categories that define threat: espionage or sabotage, foreign-influenced activities, violence, and acts intended to destroy or overthrow the government.

“Someone must have put CSIS up to this, because CSIS wouldn’t do this on its own,” Gurski says. “What sources does CSIS have under its current mandate, where we can actually say ‘we think x, y, or z is going to happen because of climate change?'”

A sign for the Canadian Security Intelligence Service building in Ottawa, in a file photo. (Sean Kilpatrick/The Canadian Press)
A sign for the Canadian Security Intelligence Service building in Ottawa, in a file photo. Sean Kilpatrick/The Canadian Press

He says this gives him the perception that CSIS is being told what to do by the government, whereas it’s supposed to be operating independently under its own mandate.

“I’m perceiving, and it’s really a perception, that a lot of outside influences, i.e., the government, are basically telling CSIS what to do and what not to do.”

Gurski commented similarly on a CSIS brief created last year about the flags used during the Freedom Convoy protest in Ottawa in the winter of 2022.
The partly redacted document titled “Freedom Convoy 2022: The Imagery and Significance of Flags,” first obtained by Blacklock’s Reporter, concluded that the Canadian flag was “the most prevalent flag on display in the crowd” and that “a small number of flags” reflected “racist and bigoted worldviews.”

“As with any movement, only a small, fringe element supports the use of violence or might be willing to engage in it,” the briefing said.

Gurski says it’s obvious there was no threat to national security here and that if he was in charge of the CSIS unit that issued that briefing, he would have told them not to proceed with it.

“It wasn’t the kind of paper that I was accustomed to, that my colleagues and I would write at that point [when I was still with the agency]. [We worked on issues] related to actual threats to national security or public safety,” he said.

“They’re saying there’s no threat. So my question would be, if there’s no threat, then why are you writing it?”

He points to the fact that CSIS Director David Vigneault, who testified before the public inquiry examining the government’s use of the Emergencies Act to quell the protest, told the inquiry that the convoy movement didn’t constitute a national security threat under the CSIS Act.

He says his sense is that CSIS has become more politicized in recent years and that he is seeing the same frustration in his former colleagues, many of whom are quitting the agency.

“There’s a real frustration building up in CSIS, and I think part of it might be the perception that there is a little more political interference than it was historically. But again, I don’t have any definitive proof that that’s happening,” Gurski says.

A CSIS spokesperson told The Epoch Times that as the “threat environment” evolves, so do the agency’s assessments.

“That is why CSIS continues to monitor the threat environment and update our assessments as needed,” Brandon Champagne said in an email.

He referred to Vigneault’s comments to the Emergencies Act inquiry on May 10, 2022, where he said the agency is concerned about “lone actors—people who engage in violence spontaneously.”

“This is where we were focusing our activities during the convoy and providing information to law enforcement and to the government,” Vigneault said.

The Epoch Times asked how this focus reconciles with the subject of the brief, “The Imagery and Significance of Flags.” In response, Champagne said to consult sections about “ideologically motivated violent extremism” in the agency’s submission to the public inquiry, and added that he couldn’t comment on CSIS investigations.
CSIS didn’t reply to questions on how the report on the impacts of climate change matches CSIS’s mandate.

Other Agencies

Andy Brooke, a retired RCMP officer who has been involved in counter-terrorism operations, also bemoans what he says is politicization in recent years in the police force he once served, and the government’s interaction with the security forces and agencies.
The RCMP logo is seen outside Royal Canadian Mounted Police "E" Division Headquarters, in Surrey, B.C., on April 13, 2018. (The Canadian Press/Darryl Dyck)
The RCMP logo is seen outside Royal Canadian Mounted Police "E" Division Headquarters, in Surrey, B.C., on April 13, 2018. The Canadian Press/Darryl Dyck

“As the lead Canadian investigator in a major international case, the outcome of which had potential implications for Canada’s bid to win a seat during 1998 United Nations Security Council election, I can categorically state that political interference did not rear its ugly head,” Brooke told The Epoch Times.

But things have changed since then, he said.

“Today, by contrast, we see the spectre of political interference casting its shadow across the administration of justice in the SNC-Lavalin matter, the murder of Canadian citizens in the downing of Flight PS752, the facts emerging from the Nova Scotia Mass Casualty Commission, the context leading up to the invocation of the Emergencies Act—regrettably to name only a few.”

Then-RCMP commissioner Brenda Lucki and the Liberal government came under heavy criticism by the opposition last year after it emerged that Lucki had scolded her subordinates for not releasing details about the guns used in the 2020 mass shooting in Nova Scotia. The Conservatives alleged that Lucki and the Liberals attempted to interfere with the ongoing investigation by seeking to have the details of the guns publicly released in order to support the Liberals’ upcoming gun control bill. Lucki and the government denied this charge.
The RCMP told The Epoch Times previously that its operations are “entirely independent and completely free from any government influence.”
Similar to CSIS, the Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC) also released a report on the effects of climate change on health, in February 2022.
“The report provides a comprehensive assessment of the latest research on how climate-related hazards, including extreme heat events, wildfires, floods, and ice storms are affecting our health and wellbeing,” says a news release announcing the publication of the report. “Bold, urgent action is not only neededthe science is clear that it will make a real difference.”
PHAC’s 2022 “State of Public Health in Canada” report was also on the topic of climate change, with the document carrying the title “Mobilizing Public Health Action on Climate Change in Canada.”
Chief Public Health Officer Theresa Tam emailed a link to the report to an official with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Nov. 1, 2022, boasting that the report provides “equity-focused recommendations“ on how public health systems can capitalize on their experience dealing with COVID-19 to ”respond to the climate crisis.”

The email adds that there is much to be learned from “Indigenous Peoples who have long recognized the interconnected nature between human health and the health of our environment.”

The Epoch Times got a copy of the email via an Access to Information request.

David Leis, vice president with the Frontier Centre for Public Policy, says these reports are another example of government agencies deviating from their specialized roles.

“In Canada, one of the most insidious developments that has occurred in the last several years has been the steady politicization of agencies that have a long and critical tradition of being professional, neutral, and non-partisan,” he says.

“But consistently, there’s evidence after evidence pointing to the dysfunctional politicization of our institutions.”

Leis says the situation also raises the question of whether public resources are being used in the most effective way.

Chief Public Health Officer of Canada Dr. Theresa Tam is seen via videoconference as Minister of Health Jean-Yves Duclos looks on during a news conference on the COVID-19 pandemic and the omicron variant, in Ottawa, on Jan. 7, 2022. (The Canadian Press/Justin Tang)
Chief Public Health Officer of Canada Dr. Theresa Tam is seen via videoconference as Minister of Health Jean-Yves Duclos looks on during a news conference on the COVID-19 pandemic and the omicron variant, in Ottawa, on Jan. 7, 2022. The Canadian Press/Justin Tang

“We do not have unlimited resources. So it begs the question, what are their priorities other than to suit the government and not the people?”

A spokesperson with PHAC told The Epoch Times that the World Health Organization has said that climate change is the “single biggest threat to human health.”

“A strengthened public health system is well-positioned to be a key partner on climate action. This includes helping to prevent and track the spread of climate-sensitive infectious diseases like Lyme disease, promoting healthier and more resilient populations through climate-friendly initiatives like increasing green space, and helping communities understand and adapt to the inevitable effects of a changing climate,” the unnamed spokesperson said via email.

The spokesperson added that PHAC’s 2022 “State of Public Health in Canada” was created in consultation with public health stakeholders in the government, academia, and research and not-for-profit organizations, as well as indigenous and community leaders.

Shift in Focus

Gurski also wonders about whether CSIS resources are being utilized effectively.

“Precious resources, which are finite, are being reallocated to areas that don’t warrant it, because the nature of the threat doesn’t warrant it,” he says.

He notes that there’s also been a shift in focus in the intelligence agency.

Up until the time he retired in 2015, he says upwards of 90 percent of CSIS’s investigations were on radical Islamist terrorism, and just a small portion on “far-right” issues. But he says now it seems the split in focus on the two issues is half-and-half.

Gurski says the topic of the “far-right,” which he says generally refers to supporters of Nazism, fascism, and white-nationalism, has mutated since his time and become more serious, so more attention to it is justified, but he doesn’t think other important issues are getting as much attention.

“I have seen nothing to convince me that the far-right constitutes a threat equal to what the Islamists did when I was there, because they were definitely planning mass casualty attacks across Canada,” he says.

“You have any idea what’s going on outside your borders? Terrorists are killing thousands of people a year around the world. Is Canada immune from this?”

A 2022 report by the University of Oslo said that contrary to recent surveys showing that most experts say “far-right propaganda is [currently] generally deemed to pose a bigger threat than Islamist extremism,” far-right violence is not on the rise in Western Europe.

The report made its assessment based on the Right-Wing Terrorism and Violence dataset developed by the Center for Research on Extremism (C-REX) at the University of Oslo. The university says as far as it’s aware, its dataset is the only one “systematically covering the development of far-right violence in Western Europe since 1990.”

Another area that is not getting attention, Gurski says, are incidents such as the 2022 violent attack by axe-wielding assailants on the site of Coastal GasLink. The pipeline project, which has the support of the elected leaders of the indigenous-owned territories it crosses, is opposed by some of the hereditary chiefs and their supporters.
“It'd be very difficult to sell politically right now,” Gurski says.

Media

Gurski says this shift in focus can also be impacted by where the media puts the most attention, which in turn would have a major influence on political leaders and public opinion.

“It’s all about far-right—far-right this, far-right that,” he says.

Pat Morris of the OPP waits to appear as a witness at the Public Order Emergency Commission in Ottawa on Oct. 19, 2022. (The Canadian Press/Sean Kilpatrick)
Pat Morris of the OPP waits to appear as a witness at the Public Order Emergency Commission in Ottawa on Oct. 19, 2022. The Canadian Press/Sean Kilpatrick
During the public inquiry into the use of Emergencies Act, Supt. Pat Morris, head of the Ontario Provincial Police’s Provincial Operations Intelligence Bureau, talked about the impact misleading media coverage has on their operations.

“I was concerned by comments made publicly by public figures and in the media that I believed were not premised in fact,” Morris told the inquiry on Oct. 19.

Morris said how the media go about news reporting is important, because law enforcement officers “are informed” by those reports. But he said when it comes to news reporting, there are “multiple perspectives, and some of those perspectives seem to be based in confirming a worldview.”

“I saw that information, those assertions, foreign influence, money, etc., being played out by a number of people and talked about. And I would challenge that,” Morris said.

Gurski says when major media report on certain issues, those issues get picked up by MPs in the House of Commons who pose questions to the government. He says during his time with the agency, this increased attention by politicians would not translate into a change in focus for CSIS.

“Historically, that wasn’t us. But, maybe that’s changed.”

Noé Chartier contributed to this report. 
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