Public Safety committee  Certainly, and thank you for the question. I want to take the time to apologize on behalf of the director of CSIS, who fell ill. I'm his replacement today. Basically, CSIS, of course, needs to stay modern in terms of its ability to do its work and to respond to its mandate. Wit

Public Safety committee  You will understand that I am not in a position to provide details. However, I can tell you that CSIS is working closely with partners of the Government of Canada to advise the government.

Public Safety committee  Thank you for the question. I would highlight that CSIS is mandated by its authorities as defined in the CSIS Act. The threats that CSIS can investigate are well defined in the act, primarily in terms of foreign-influenced activities and espionage. Foreign-influenced activities

Public Safety committee  Unfortunately, as I'm sure you appreciate, I can't get into any specific operational details. What I will say is that we work very closely with communities in Canada and with our law enforcement partners to investigate any harassment or threats to these communities. It is importa

Public Safety committee  I unfortunately can't get into those operational details in terms of the FBI arrests. Neither can I discuss individual investigations. Talking about any charges would be better responded to by my law enforcement colleague.

Public Safety committee  Thank you for your question. We are concerned that any hostile state could engage in intellectual property theft in Canada. We have pointed out that the threat comes from a number of countries. I can't go into details for all countries, but China is one of them. There are others

Public Safety committee  For some visa categories, we give opinions to our colleagues at the Canada Border Services Agency and Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada on the threat an individual may pose, but the decision is theirs. Our role is to conduct a security assessment of applicants based on

Public Safety committee  We recognize the importance of being able to work in a shared environment, especially in academia. As I said earlier, we work with universities to give them information and advice on how to protect themselves. For us, it's very important that it be a partnership and that they cl

Public Safety committee  Certainly. Thank you for the question. I'm Michelle Tessier, the deputy director of operations for CSIS. Obviously, with a very complex threat environment, the requirements to look at the variety of data that's available and the changing technology, there are a variety of too

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Thank you very much. Madam Chair, members of the committee, good afternoon. As was mentioned, my name is Michelle Tessier, and I am the deputy director of operations for the Canadian Security Intelligence Service. Thank you for the invitation to appear before you today to ta

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Yes, we absolutely do agree with that.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Perhaps, Madam Chair, I can begin, and I'll certainly turn to my colleague, Alia, as well, for any comments she may have. If I address the initial question about the overseas police stations, as I'm sure you can appreciate, I can't go into the operational details of the service

Procedure and House Affairs committee  As I mentioned in my opening comments, we are very concerned about the targeting. We know there is certainly a desire to target elected officials at all levels of government, municipal, provincial and federal. We work to provide defensive briefings, and we certainly encourage ind

Procedure and House Affairs committee  We have highlighted in the past that we feel that the CSIS Act was written at a time, 1984, that has likely not kept up with the modern, complex threat landscape and technological advances, so we are constantly looking at our authorities and at the tools we require. One example

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Certainly. As we've mentioned—and I believe there will be members of the SITE task force appearing later this week—we, as well as other government partners such as CSE, Global Affairs Canada and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, participate in SITE. It is really a combination of