Good afternoon.
Thank you for inviting me to speak with you. I also want to thank Stéphanie Dion, director of corporate services for the Security Intelligence Review Committee, or SIRC, who has accompanied me today.
As an introduction, I want to give you some information about SIRC to provide context for the discussion today.
SIRC exists to provide Parliament and Canadians with an assessment of whether CSIS has acted appropriately and in accordance with the law, policies and procedures, and ministerial direction in the performance of its duties and functions. Our objectivity is a direct result of our independence and experience, and results in meaningful accountability.
SIRC fulfills its vital mandate through its three core functions: certifying the CSIS director's annual report to the Minister of Public Safety; conducting in-depth reviews of CSIS operations; and, lastly, investigating complaints.
Accountability is crucial to building public trust, especially in the realm of secretive intelligence work. For more than 30 years SIRC's mandate has been to hold the service accountable by reporting to Parliament—and, by extension, to all Canadians—as to whether CSIS respects the law and rights and freedoms in carrying out its mandate to investigate the threats to national security.
SIRC’s reviews cover all the service’s key activities, in particular targeting, warrants and human sources. The reviews also cover its programs, including counter-terrorism, counter-intelligence, counter-proliferation and security screening. SIRC examines the arrangements made by the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, or CSIS, to cooperate and exchange information with both foreign agencies and domestic organizations. Lastly, SIRC examines the advice the service provides to the Canadian government.
A typical review done by SIRC will require hundreds of staff hours and is completed over a period of several months. As part of this process, SIRC researchers consult a multitude of information sources to examine specific aspects of CSIS's work. Researchers may look at, for example, operational reporting, individual and group targeting files, human source files, intelligence assessments, and warrant documents.
In order to provide a comprehensive and meaningful review of CSIS's activities, SIRC relies on risk-based planning. This method allows us to identify all areas of CSIS activity and rank them annually in terms of risk, which contributes to the focus and coverage of our reviews. Given that it is impractical for an organization the size of SIRC to examine all of CSIS's duties and functions annually, our risk-based planning allows us to ensure that all service activities are in fact reviewed annually and systematically.
SIRC relies on a dedicated team of full-time researchers, lawyers, and other professionals to complete its work. Over time, CSIS's activities have undergone and continue to undergo rapid expansion, while SIRC for many years remained stagnant, which compromised our ability to provide comprehensive coverage of CSIS's activities.
Therefore, in 2015, we were pleased to learn that SIRC had received one year of funding to expand its resources. That funding was extended for a further three years in January 2017. As a result, SIRC has grown over the past year and is currently operating at capacity with a significant complement of employees from other departments. These employees have a wide variety of experience in national security and intelligence. With the increase in staffing, SIRC has taken on a more ambitious research plan. It will be able to provide broader coverage of CSIS’s activities at home and abroad.
This also means, however, that we have outgrown the space we currently occupy within a building that has been decommissioned. New office space has been designated for us and we are working with Government of Canada partners towards readying it for occupation. Our move has been deferred due to unforseen delays, but we are anticipating its completion before the end of this current fiscal year.
SIRC is pleased that this new space will allow us to have an improved security posture, along with enhanced connectivity. These improvements are essential to our operations and efficiency and will contribute to our ability to continue in our mandate.
As a result, SIRC is asking to reprofile the $2 million that had been set aside for the relocation and modernization fund.
Merci beaucoup.