Nuanced. - 216. Can We Trust CSIS to Protect Our Democracy?

Episode Date: December 10, 2025

Chief Pete breaks down the history of CSIS, what it actually does, how it differs from the CIA, and key CSIS files involving China, India, Russia, Iran, cyberattacks, election interference, Indigenous surveillance, and the politics of security briefings.Send us a textSupport the shownuancedmedia.ca

You know, CESIS is one of those Canadian institutions everyone knows exists in the same way that you know your neighbor probably owns a lawnmower. You've never seen it, you don't know how loud it gets, and you're not totally convinced it's being used properly. For the record, CISS stands for the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, Canada's National Intelligence Agency, not the Canadian Spy and Interrogation Squad, not the Canadian Secret Investigation Society, and definitely not. the Canadian Society for interfering subtly. Most Canadians couldn't tell you what CIS does, where it came from, or why it keeps showing up in the news. And honestly, that's partly the point.

A good intelligence service is supposed to work quietly in the background. If you hear about them, it's usually because something has gone sideways. And right now, a lot is going sideways. We've got allegations that India may have carried out assassinations on Canadian soil. We've got CIS warning about China, Russia, Iran, and even Arctic espionage. We've got internal memos saying the agency inherited a mess. We've got reporting that CIS monitored indigenous communities, environmental activists, and resource conflicts. And we've got election interference allegations that have shaken public trust. At this point, it feels like

Canada is living through its own quiet spy thriller. Except instead of James Bond, our big reveal is usually a heavily redacted committee report. But here's the real issue. This isn't just a spy story. This is a democracy story. If the public doesn't understand what ceases is doing, who oversees it, what powers it has, and where it has gone too far, the national security stops being a public institution and becomes a black box. And in 2024 and 2025, the stakes are higher than ever. foreign interference, election manipulation, cyber attacks, disinformation campaigns, a growing distrust in our institutions, and a country still deciding whether it wants an intelligence service that is effective or polite. So today, we're going to unpack CISS with nuance.

No fearmongering, no cheerleading, just clarity. We'll explore where CIS came from. What they actually do, how much money they get, how many people they employ, whether they're spying on Canadians, and whether they're capable of protecting a country that is changing faster than ever. And then we'll ask the big question, is CSIS built for the world we're in or the world Canada wishes we still lived in? Let's get into it. What is CSIS? If you want to understand CSIS, the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, you have to start at the beginning, and the beginning is messy. CIS didn't emerge because Canada suddenly wanted a modern intelligence service. It emerged because the RCMP's old intelligence branch imploded publicly, forcing the government

to act. In the 1970s, a national security was handled entirely by the RCMP's security service. And according to the McDonald's commission, a massive public inquiry launched by Prime Minister Pierre Elliot Trudeau in 1977, the RCMP crossed illegal and ethical boundaries so often that it started to resemble a Cold War sketch comedy trope with access to flammable materials. The commission documented that the RCMP security service burned down a barn to stop a political meeting, broke into offices, stole and forged documents, committed illegal surveillance and mail opening, infiltrated indigenous movements, Quebec separatism, and, anti-war groups, left-wing organizers, and anyone who made the federal government nervous.

The McDonald report was clear. Mixing policing and intelligence had become a constitutional disaster. It recommended separating intelligence work from the RCMP. So in 1984, under Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau's government and finalized under Prime Minister John Turner just months later, the federal government created CIS. a civilian intelligence service with judicial oversight, a clear mandate, and explicit limits on its powers. CESIS's job was to be everything the RCMP intelligence branch wasn't cautious, lawful, boring, and predictable, the kind of agency that would surveil you, but only after filing

out the right forms and apologizing for the inconvenience. So what does CIS actually do? Their mandate covers espionage for an interference. terrorism, and cyber threats. But the key point is, CIS gathers intelligence. They don't arrest people. They don't run paramilitary operations. They don't topple governments, and they can't run rogue international missions.

They're not Canada's CIA or Mossad. They're the early warning system. The RCMP still handles enforcement. But here's where the story gets complicated. Canada has built this early warning system on a budget that wouldn't cover one month of the CIA's cafeteria bill. In the 2024-25 main estimates, CISS received about 869 million, roughly one-70th of what the U.S. intelligence communities get.

Even Australia, a smaller country, invests more per capita in intelligence. Staffing follows the same pattern. CIS has around 3,200 employees, according to federal reporting. For context, the CIA. has about 21,000. MI5 has about 5,000. ASIO has 2,000 and CSIS

trying to monitor China, Russia, Iran, India, cyber warfare, election interference, and the Arctic, with 3,200 people. Canada wants big country security on a mid-sized budget with small agency staffing. Despite this,

CIS has had real successes, interrupting major terror plots like the Toronto 18, countering espionage in universities and tech companies, and issuing warnings about foreign interference long before it became front-page news. Their best work is invisible precisely because it prevents crises the public never hears about. But the failures matter, too. CESIS illegally retained metadata for 10 years.

They monitored indigenous communities and environmental groups, something now documented by the CBC and the narwhal. They didn't warn certain MPs directly when foreign actors were targeting them, and according to an internal memo reported by the National Post, the new director admitted he inherited a mass, outdated technology, low morale, and bureaucratic gridlock. These problems don't reflect an agency that is too powerful, if anything, they reflect an agency that might not be powerful, modern, or coordinated enough for the threats Canada now faces. CESIS was built to avoid the abuses of the RCMP's past. The irony is that in trying so hard to avoid yesterday's mistakes, Canada may have created an intelligence service that struggles to keep up with today's world, one where foreign interference, cyber warfare, and geopolitical rivalry move faster than our bureaucracy.

What does CIS actually do in Canadians' lives? If you ask most Canadians what CESIS actually does for them, you'll usually get a shrug. We're not a country obsessed with national security, we're a country obsessed with privacy, sometimes to the point of comedy. Canadians will panic if Google suggests the same shoes they looked at yesterday. We cover up our laptop cameras with tape, we whisper our pin numbers like we're negotiating a hostage release, and we get offended, deeply, personally offended. when asked for our postal code from Best Buy. So when the topic of intelligence agencies comes up, the default Canadian reaction isn't patriotism or fear.

It's, okay, but are you watching me? And that instinct matters, because unlike the United States, where national security often overrides privacy debates, Canada has built an entire identity around cautious government, strong civil liberties, and a healthy suspicion of any institution that wants to know too much. So when Canadians hear about CIS, the question isn't whether the agency is strong enough, it's whether it's too strong.

The truth sits somewhere in the middle. CESIS does have the legal ability to collect information on Canadians, but not casually, broadly, and not without judicial approval. They need warrants for intrusive surveillance. They can't do mass metadata collection like the NSA. In fact, one time CIS kept metadata improperly, the courts came down on them like a ton of of timbits. Canada's privacy regulators are aggressive and our courts treat state surveillance like it's a loaded weapon. And Canadians prefer it that way. We don't want a spy agency that casually scoops up our data. We don't want a five-eyes surveillance state. We don't want

an intelligence service with unlimited power. That skepticism is especially strong among indigenous communities because for indigenous people, the idea that the government might be watching isn't paranoia, it's lived experience. The RCMP and federal agencies spent decades surveilling indigenous activists, leaders, and nations. CBC's reporting on CIS monitoring indigenous communities in the 1990s is an ancient history. It's part of a long pattern where indigenous political movements were treated as political threats rather than rights holders. So when CES shows up around land conflicts or resource projects, indigenous nations aren't just asking, is this legal, they're asking, is this happening again?

This is why oversight matters and why Canadians care so much about privacy. We don't just distrust surveillance on principle. We distrust it because we've seen what institutions can become when the rules are loose. But steel manning matters here too. We also live in a world where foreign states routinely target diaspora communities in Canada, Chinese Canadians, Sikh Canadians, Iranian Canadians, Russian dissidents, and Uyghur activists, Hong Kong democracy supporters, these people come to Canada for protection and they deserve to be protected, but protecting them requires intelligence gathering.

Sometimes it requires monitoring foreign actors. Sometimes it requires monitoring the Canadians those foreign actors are targeting. And that's where CIS walks that tightrope. protecting Canadians from foreign surveillance by doing a limited form of surveillance. This is why Canadians struggle with CIS. We want them to stop foreign interference. We want them to expose election meddling. We want them to protect vulnerable communities.

But we don't want them watching us. Or collecting our data or mislabeling political activism as extremism. We want security without giving the state too much power. We want privacy. without becoming naive about modern threats. That tension is baked into Canadian political culture, and it's why CISIS is nothing like CIA, NSA, or Mossad. They have fewer powers, more oversight, more restrictions, and more judicial barriers.

When CIS does get something wrong, it doesn't disappear into the shadows. There are court rulings, public rebukes, watchdog investigations, and detailed reports. Canadian intelligence operates under a microscope because, Canadians expect it to. The question now, as cyber warfare ramps up, foreign interference grows, and geopolitical tensions intensify, is whether Canada can maintain this privacy, first culture, without weakening our ability to detect serious threats. Because the real debate isn't, is CESIS spying on Canadians?

It's how do we protect Canadians without compromising the privacy that Canadians value so deeply. That's the line CIS has to walk, and it's not getting any easier. Recent Stories with CESIS When you put all the recent CESIS stories under the same light, the picture that emerges is much bigger than a few headlines. It's the story of an intelligence agency under pressure from every direction, political, ethical, geopolitical, and technological, and trying to do its job in a world where the threats are multiplying faster

than the laws or budgets or the political courage required to deal with them. Start with a story that resurfaces again and again. The history of CIS monitoring indigenous communities. The recent CBC report focused on the 1990s, but the truth is, the surveillance didn't magically stop in 2001 or 2005. These files span decades. The CBC obtained documents showing CIS investigated indigenous activists during moments of political conflict, like Oka, Gustafson, Lake, Micmac, Fisheries Dispute,

what to went blockades, I don't know more. These weren't fringe events. These were political movements often grounded in constitutionally protected rights, court rulings, and nationhood. But inside the intelligence apparatus, they were often lumped into the same category as threats to critical infrastructure. One internal CIS assessment from the 1990s categorized indigenous sovereignty movements as subversive. Another memo tracked agitators, a term so vague it could include anyone from hereditary chiefs to university students. The logic was that protests could be exploited by foreign actors, a theory that was rarely supported by facts, but deeply convenient for governments wanting to frame political conflict as a security issue. And when the Narwhal's investigation expanded on this history, it became clear that CIS didn't simply observe.

In some cases, they briefed corporations concerned about blockades or land defenders interrupting pipeline construction. You see the same dynamic, national security becoming shorthand for protecting major industrial projects. Now, zoom out. Around the same time, the Globe and Mail published multiple stories showing that CIS has been sounding the alarm about China and Russia in a way that Canada has largely ignored for years. In one interview, the CIS director warned that Canada is a target, not an observer, and that China and Russia have dramatically increased the scale of their cyber operations. operations influence campaigns, academic infiltration, and political pressure. These warnings weren't abstract. In 2020, the Canadian government confirmed that China was behind a major cyber attack on the National Research Council. In 2021, Microsoft reported

that Hathnium, a Chinese state-linked group, targeted tens of thousands of organizations, including Canadian infrastructure. CESS quietly provided briefings to universities about espionage risks in research labs, especially around AI, quantum computing, aerospace, and biotech. And still, Canada found itself unprepared. Then, the foreign interference story exploded. Global news revealed that CIS had identified efforts by the Chinese government to influence the 2019 and 2021 federal elections, not necessarily changing votes, but shaping candidate nominations, funding local networks and intimidating diaspora voters. This was followed by reports that MPs were targeted, including Conservative MP Michael Chong,

whose family in Hong Kong was allegedly threatened. CIS had this intel, but it never reached him. The agency briefed senior officials, but the political system never passed a warning down to the people at risk. This becomes even more disturbing when you consider the documents leaked through the parliamentary inquiry in 2023-24. C-Syses briefings showed patterned. of foreign influence, but Canada's political system failed to respond cohesively, and this points to a deeper structural problem. CIS collects intelligence, but it doesn't decide what happens next. That's left to politicians, who may have partisan incentives not to act. Now enter the India

story. When Prime Minister Trudeau stood up in Parliament and said there were credible allegations that agents of Indian government may have been involved in the killing of Hardip Singh Najjar in Surrey. The intelligence behind that allegation came from CIS, the communication security establishment, and five-eye partners. But the story didn't start in 2023. For years, CIS has flagged concerns about India's growing intelligence footprint in Canada, especially around sick organizations. In 2018, a CIS report warned about increasing activity from India's research and analysis wing, or raw, on Canadian soil. That report went nowhere publicly. The Najjar case changed everything. Suddenly, Canada wasn't just talking about

influence operations. It was talking about a foreign government carrying out an extrajudicial killing here. That's the type of event that leads to sanctions, international inquiries, or criminal prosecutions. And it set off a chain reaction, expulsion. Explanation. Expulsion intelligence briefings to allies, criminal investigations, and now a pending testimony from the RC&P Commissioner and CIS Director about what they knew and when. This is unprecedented in Canadian history, and we still haven't fully grasped the implications. But the threats keep multiplying. Global News published in an interview with the CIS Director where he listed four major active threats to Canada, China, Russia, Iran, and India, each with its own

playbook, each with its own targets, each with its own incentives. For CIS, to publicly name four countries, especially two states in the G20, is extraordinary. The agency normally avoids specifics. This was not subtle. This was CESA saying, Canada is behind the curve. And then you get the internal crisis. The story reported by the National Post, the leaked memo from the CIS director admitted bluntly that he inherited a mess. He described an agency burdened by ancient IT systems,

lethargic internal processes, recruiting challenges, cyber security vulnerabilities, and technology that simply cannot keep pace with the adversaries they're supposed to be tracking. Imagine trying to counter Russian cyber operations using software that crashes when you upload a PDF. That's the scale of the problem. And in the CBC story about terrorism investigation shifting, CESIS said they are dealing with more complex, less predictable threats, loan actors, radicalized by algorithmic content, micro communities of extremism online, and foreign states, amplifying domestic grievances for geopolitical gain. This isn't the era of Toronto 18. This is the era of decentralized rage, and CIS is trying to track individuals who may operate entirely online outside traditional networks. moving from ideology to action in weeks, not months. Meanwhile, CBC also reported that CIS has warned about referendums being a prime target for foreign interference.

Why? Because the referendums often hinge on small margins, lower turnout, and emotionally charged framing. A perfect environment for cheap influence operations that can be run from overseas, anonymously, and at scale. And then the Arctic story, the Guardian, revealed that Russia and China have increased military and surveillance activity in the circumpolar region. Russia's build-up along its northern coast is the largest since the Cold War. China calls itself a near Arctic state, investing in scientific stations, shipping routes, and potential dual-use infrastructure. CES has warned that Canada's slow-moving Arctic policy, combined with underfunded intelligence capabilities, leaves the region exposed. For decades, Canadians treated the Arctic as a postcard, a distant place with beautiful photos, and slow news cycles. But for Russia and China, the Arctic is the next global

contest for shipping, minerals, and energy, and strategic leverage. And then, look at the domestic side. In the past five years, CIS has also investigated extremist threats, including attacks like the 2021 London-Ontario terrorism, killing of a Muslim family, the in-cell-inspired Toronto van attack, and ideologically motivated violent extremism tied to online subcultures. CIS warned that Canada faces a mix of far-right, religious, misogynistic, and grievance-inspired violence. Threats that don't fit neatly into the post-9-11 frameworks we built our intelligence system around. All of this.

All of these stories point to a country that is being squeezed. from multiple angles. Indigenous nations are fighting for rights and land. Foreign governments are running influence campaigns. Cyber threats are constant. The Arctic is becoming a geopolitical hotspot. Diaspora communities are being intimidated. Elections are vulnerable. Technology is involving faster than legislation. And CIS is trying to manage all of this with 3,200 people, a budget under a billion dollars, outdated tech, and a legal framework designed in the 1980s. stories aren't random. They're connected by one question. Can Canada protect privacy, rights, sovereignty, and national security at the same time with the institutions we have today?

Right now, the answer is unclear and the world isn't waiting for us to figure it all out. The Politics of CISS. One of the most revealing and honestly one of the most misunderstood parts of the CIS story is how deeply political intelligence has become in Canada. And I don't mean political in the sense of partisanship, although there's plenty of that. I mean politics in the literal sense. Who gets to know what? Who gets access to classified information and how intelligence is used or not used to shape a public debate? Take Pierre Pahlia, for example, for months.

The liberals, the media, and the intelligence community have been urging him to accept a high-level security clearance so he can read the same classified documents the government is using to assess for an interference. This is not optional homework. This is the core of how Westminster democracies function. Opposition leaders are given access to sensitive intelligence so they can hold the government accountable without accidentally setting the country on fire. But Paliyev said no. Not because he doesn't care, but because the moment he accepts the clearance, he's bound by the security of information act. He would no longer be able to publicly criticize the government using details from those documents.

He couldn't comment on leaks. He couldn't say whether the intelligence matches the government's narrative. He couldn't push back on the framing of foreign interference cases because even acknowledging the contents of those briefings would break the law. And that's his argument. The minute I take the briefing, I lose my ability to speak freely. This is classic Poliev. He wants to keep his hands free, keeping his message sharp. keep the pressure on. But here's where the nuance comes in. In Canada, intelligence oversight

actually depends on opposition leaders receiving those briefings. Without it, the government becomes the sole interpreter of national security information. And that's dangerous, no matter who's in charge. This is why every previous opposition leader, conservative, liberal, NDP, has accepted the clearance. Andrew Scheer did. Erno Toul did. Jake Meet Singh did, even though it restricts what they can say publicly, it gives them insight into what the government is dealing with. It keeps the political system tethered to reality. So when Pahliav refuses, it creates a problem. It turns intelligence into a political weapon. Suddenly, every brief, every leak, every allegation becomes partisan ammunition instead of something Canada deals with

collectively. But there's another layer to the story, a far more uncomfortable one. CESIS itself has been accused of being politicized, or at least, of being pulled into politics against its will. When intelligence was leaked to the Globe and Mail and global news about Chinese interference, some liberals accused CIS of trying to undermine the government. When the conservatives said the leaks proved the government had ignored warnings, liberals said the intel was being weaponized for partisan gain. Meanwhile, Cesis insisted the leaks weren't theirs and that they were deeply concerned the revelations would compromise sources.

So you have three actors, the government, the opposition, and the intelligence community, all saying different things, all protecting different interests. And the public is stuck trying to figure out who's telling the truth. Add to that the fact that the prime minister receives a classified briefing every day, Pierre Paliov does not, the NDP leader does not. The public definitely does not. Canada's intelligence system is built around the Privy Council and the Prime Minister's office, which gives the incumbent government enormous interpretive power over what counts

as a threat and what doesn't. Here's an example. When CIS told the government that certain MPs were being targeted by foreign states, some of those MPs didn't find out from CIS. They found out from journalists. That's not how oversight is supposed to work. that's how governments get accused, fairly or unfairly, of managing intelligence for a political advantage. So now Canadians are asking, is CIS too political? Is it dependent? Independent? Does it leak to shape policy? Does it get muzzled when its findings are inconvenient?

And the answer is complicated. CESIS is not partisan. There's no evidence of that, but it is deeply influenced by the political system around it because it has no choice. The government of the day sets the mandate. The government decides how to use the intelligence. The government decides what to make public. And when an opposition leader refuses clearance, the government also decides what the opposition is allowed to know. And then there's the last layer. The layer no one wants to talk about. Some intelligence documents involve accusations, suspicions, or unproven assessments that could ruin lives if mishandled. These documents can never be released to the public. Not because of secrecy for security, for secrecy's sake, but because they rely on fragile human sources, intercepted communications, or information

shared by allies. If someone slips up, a dissident could die, a source could vanish, a foreign partner might stop sharing intel. So when politicians fight over who gets to see these documents, what we're seeing isn't just messaging. It's a fight over the soul of Canadian democracy? Should intelligence serve the public? Or should it serve the government? Or should it serve a broader national interest that nobody can fully explain because the details are classified? That's why Polyev's refusal matters. It tests the limits of how intelligence fits within our political system. It forces the question, is transparency more important than secrecy? Is political accountability more important than national security

protocols and what happens when the world becomes so complicated that the public can't keep up with the classified reality. In the end, the issue isn't whether Pierre Pahliav is right or wrong. The issue is the Canada's intelligence system was built for an era where trust in institutions was high. Political polarization was low and national security was not a partisan football. That era is gone. The world is changing faster than our politics.

politics, and CIS is caught in the middle of a political tug-of-war that it was never designed to referee. Conclusion. In the end, CISIS is a mirror. When it's messy, underfunded, and pulled in every direction, it reflects a country that is also messy, underfunded, and in the places that matter, and pulled in every direction. When it surveils indigenous land defenders, it reflects a Canada that still hasn't fully decided whether indigenous sovereignty is a legal reality or an incituary.

convenience. When it scrambles to respond to China, Russia, Iran, and India, it reflects a candidate that hasn't taken its own strategic importance seriously. When it gets weaponized in partisan fights over who knew what and when, it reflects a political culture that would rather win the next news cycle than build a durable national security framework for the next 30 years. We built, CIS, because the RCMP proved what happens when you give one institution too much power and not enough oversight. So we split the baby, an intelligence service that is cautious, tightly constrained, and constantly looking over its shoulder at the courts, and privacy commissioners at watchdogs that has

real benefits. Canadians should be proud that we treat surveillance like a loaded weapon. We should be proud that privacy still matters to us, that indigenous nations are demanding a say, and that journalists can expose the failings of our spirits. by agency without disappearing. But the world has moved. Foreign states now run complex influence operations. Online radicalization happens at the speed of TikTok.

The Arctic is becoming a chessboard, and diaspora communities are being targeted by governments they thought they'd escaped. So we are left with a hard question, and it's bigger than Pierre Elliott Trudeau, bigger than Poliev, bigger than Mark Carney, bigger than any one director of CIS. what does a mature, democratic, treaty-based, privacy-respecting countries actually owe itself in terms of intelligence, not in theory, in practice? How much are we willing to spend? What powers are we willing to grant and to limit? What protections to indigenous peoples, dissidents, activists, and ordinary Canadians need to feel safe from the state, even as they're asking the state to keep them safe from everyone else?

Because this isn't just about spies. It's about the kind of country we want to be in a world that is getting harder, not easier. A country where privacy and rights still means something. Where indigenous nations aren't treated as security files. Where diaspora communities aren't left alone to face foreign threats. Where opposition leaders can see the intelligence and still speak honestly to the public. Where an agency like CIS is neither a political prop nor a faceless black box. but a tool we design carefully, fund properly, watch closely, and argue about openly.

CIS will never be glamorous. It shouldn't be. But it should be clear, accountable, and fit for the world we actually live in. Not the quieter, simpler, Canada, we sometimes pretend still exists. And whether you lean left, right, or somewhere in between, that conversation doesn't belong to the spies. or to the government or to one party belongs to all of us.