Annual Report 1995-1996 - An Operational Audit of CSIS Activities

8. Inside CSIS

(a) Recruitment

There were two Intelligence Officer (IO) Entry Training Classes held during the 1995-96 fiscal year, with a total of 32 participants. Four of the trainees were conversions from other positions within the Service.

The female to male recruitment ratio was 10 females to 22 males, down from last year's ratio of 13 females to 11 males.

All students met the bilingualism criteria by acquiring level BBB in reading, writing, and oral conversation, and all successfully completed the Entry Training Course.

In the IO category, the percentage of female employees dropped slightly from the previous year: from 24.5 percent to 23.7 percent.

In the senior management level, the percentage of men increased slightly from 87.3 to 90.5 percent; women represented 9.5 percent of Senior Management, down from 12.7 percent last year. The Committee hopes that the decrease in female representation is not indicative of a trend.

The representation of visible minorities within Senior Management remains at 1.3 percent. A satisfactory explanation has not been given as to why there has been no progress in this area for so long. We will continue to press for better balanced representation in every area of the Service's operations.

(b) Finances

Each year, we receive a summary of CSIS expenditures, which includes a breakdown of spending by Standard Object (standard government accounting categories) and a separate breakdown for covert expenditures, covering such items as source expenditures. We examine these against historical data, and question the Director on any significant variations.

Table 3 shows expenditures for the last six years.

"Other Expenditures" includes some expenses under "Construction and Acquisition of Land, Buildings and Works" and "Machinery and Equipment", but does not include expenditures for the new CSIS Headquarters building which are included under "Capital".

CSIS expenditures have decreased because of the completion of the new Headquarters Building and staff cutbacks. In 1995-96, CSIS received $2 million in supplementary funding for the Early Departure Incentive Program. The Service's spending on computers and software remains strong, but funding for one significant engineering and development area is being reduced.

This year, we received information on covert expenditures in a different format than in prior years, in part due to the reclassification of some items. We will evaluate whether additional information is needed for future financial reviews.