Annual Report 1998-1999 - An Operational Audit of CSIS Activities

Appendix D: Complaint Case Histories

This section describes complaint cases submitted to the Review Committee during the past year on which decisions have been reached. Not addressed are complaints that were subject to administrative review, were misdirected, were outside the Committee's mandate, or on which decisions have not yet been rendered.

Both cases described below arose from Service activities in support of the Immigration Program and were lodged under section 41 of the CSIS Act.

A Complaint About the Nature of Security Screening Interviews

The complaint raised five issues:

• that the complainant was in receipt of a telephone call from a Service employee not involved with or aware of the fact that the individual was the subject of a security screening review;
• the Service put questions to the complainant that were outside its mandate to provide security screening advice in aid of the immigration program;
• the report written by the CSIS officer demonstrated a lack of respect for the applicant;
• the two interviews conducted by the Service were overly long; and
• that the screening and recommendation process was subject to unwarranted delay.

Overall, the Committee found that the Service acted in a reasonable and prudent fashion in handling the case. The time CSIS took to process the matter was not inappropriate under the particular circumstances involved, though the Committee was not able to address issues of delay in agencies of Government other than CSIS. While the Review Committee believed the "stray" phone call from a Service employee to be unfortunate and inappropriate, we concluded that it was made in error. It is important to note that in this instance the Service forwarded a positive security screening recommendation to Citizenship and Immigration Canada.

A Complaint About the Nature of Information Collected and Transmitted to CIC

The second case was based on the complainant's challenge of the accuracy of the Service's reporting. Our review was made more difficult by the absence of official transcripts of the Service's interview or a signed declaration by the complainant. We determined nevertheless that the CSIS investigators were inadequately prepared for the first security screening interview they conducted with the complainant. They had not reviewed the Personal Information Form (PIF) completed by the individual. In our opinion, this knowledge would have resulted in an interview that was focused and conducted in a more professional manner.

In addition, we took issue with a CSIS report to CIC where the Service stated that the complainant's representative was allowed to attend a security screening interview. We found that the investigators considered that the representative's attitude would not lead to a productive interview, and so the representative was asked to leave.

It is evident to the Committee that CSIS failed to transmit all relevant information to CIC about the complainant. We recommended to the Service that it forward all information necessary for CIC to reach a conclusion about the complainant's application.