Government Operations committee  Mr. Chair, if I may speak, I recently wrote one of those letters to PSPC and we strongly justified in the case of infrastructure why the national security exception was so important, and we were heavily challenged. I would say the robust function that Ms. Campbell speaks about is

Government Operations committee  In the CSIS case, we invoke NSE on every transaction, so there's no discretion applied.

Government Operations committee  The CSIS information isn't available anywhere online, because we don't publicly share any information about our business. However, that information is very much maintained internally and is available to many oversight bodies. That could be the Treasury Board Secretariat, the Secu

Government Operations committee  Actually, we invoke the national security exception for 100% of our procurement and for very good reasons. We're very concerned about the security of Canadians, which includes our employees working domestically across the country and in many of your ridings, but also those who ar

Government Operations committee  It's not very small. It's still over $100 million, but it's a very small amount of the government's total procurement budget, yes. I acknowledge that, but we take it very seriously and my procurement officers realize they are spending taxpayers' money, so we compete everything to

Government Operations committee  Absolutely. I think the national security exception is vital in protecting CSIS infrastructure, as well as its employees, its vendors, and everyone in the supply chain, but I can't sit here today and assure you that there has never been a compromise. I am not aware of a compromis

Government Operations committee  Thank you. Good morning, Mr. Chair and members of the committee. My name is Karen Robertson and I am the assistant director of finance and administration at the Canadian Security Intelligence Service. I am responsible for managing CSIS' financial functions as well as administra