The issue of what's in the possession of the Government of Canada is a crucial one. SIRC has a statutory right to everything except cabinet confidences. What is in the possession of CSIS, though, will vary. I can only tell you this based on hearsay, never having seen it.
My understanding is that often we're dealing with an analyst's report, which might be piled on another analyst's report from an allied agency, which in turn may be piled on a series of other analysts' reports, which then in turn might have an extract from some communications intercept.
It's hearsay piled upon hearsay piled upon hearsay. That's the kind of information that may, as far as we know, be being used in the security certificate cases, which then SIRC would have access to.
Would they have access to the raw transcript that's supplied by and might still be in the possession of an allied service, but which is in the possession of CSIS? I would presume not.
One of the concerns that special advocates in the U.K. expressed to us is that the work product they're looking at tends to be cherry-picked—that is, because it's piled hearsay, there's something that looks exculpatory that's been used in one of these analysts' reports, and then it's subjective analysis piled upon subjective analysis.
So the issue of the quality of evidence is going to be a live one, irrespective of whether you get full access to what's in the possession of CSIS or not.