Reflections - A History of SIRC

Looking back

SIRC's early years (1984-1990)

While lawmakers had hoped that the civilianization of Canada's security intelligence service would result in immediate improvements, it took time for both SIRC and CSIS to find their bearings. One problem was that Canada's new intelligence agency was initially staffed mainly with officials who had chosen to move to CSIS from the now-disbanded RCMP Security Service, bringing the old ways of doing business with them. Meanwhile, SIRC was in its infancy. Under the leadership of its first Chair, Ron Atkey, the Committee was only beginning to exert its powers to ensure that CSIS acted legally and appropriately in safeguarding Canada's national security.

Pushing back
Maurice Archdeacon, SIRC's first Executive Director (1985-1999), later recalled that the earliest meetings between CSIS and SIRC were far from cooperative or constructive. "CSIS pushed back constantly against our efforts...and we regularly found ourselves in long waits for responses to our requests. They were perpetuating the culture that the new agency was supposed to bring to a stop." Nevertheless, SIRC prepared its first annual report to Parliament—only months after the Committee had been formed. Members pledged to approach their work "sincerely" and with a "genuine curiosity, sprinkled with a healthy dose of scepticism."

Early challenges
One author who documented the creation of CSIS summarized its early years as follows: "They (former RCMP staff) could catch a pickpocket, terrorize a stool-pigeon...or spot a terrorist with a bomb in an airport, but they couldn't name the various warring Lebanese factions, let alone analyze political thoughts or predict possible future behaviour."¹⁴

SIRC also had to contend with its own challenges. In the debate that culminated with the promulgation of the CSIS Act and the creation of SIRC, some had been quick to dismiss the Committee even before it had begun operations, contending that its mandate was too narrow, and its resources too few. The Committee also recognized it would have to tread a delicate balance between Canadians' need to know and its legal obligation to protect national security and privacy. This would, in turn, influence public confidence in the new review body.

Holding CSIS to account
The Committee proved its mettle by publicly demonstrating that it fully intended to carry out the role that had been prescribed in the CSIS Act. Beginning in 1985, Ottawa media were regularly treated to press conferences by SIRC's first Chair, Ron Atkey (1984-1989). He seized those opportunities to signal to Canadians—and to CSIS—that SIRC was prepared to exercise fully the powers which it had been granted by Parliament.

Maurice Archdeacon recalls that these press conferences helped to signal an important message: "SIRC meant business." That point was stated baldly in SIRC's second annual report, in a subsection called CSIS Attitude to the Review Process: "If CSIS is still uncomfortable with the process of civilianization, it is even more uncomfortable with the process of independent review." The Committee's mandate to examine complaints was one area where SIRC clearly responded to a need for a public redress system. By 1986, it reported that it had received more than 600 complaints—"many more than we had expected."

A shocking discovery
Among SIRC's roles, Section 42 of the CSIS Act stipulates that it is responsible for investigating complaints about the denial of federal security clearances. In carrying out this responsibility, an important revelation was made about security screening at the Department of National Defence (DND). The Committee discovered that up until 1985, DND had been rejecting up to 500 Canadians every year who were applying to join the Canadian armed forces—and in some cases, they were releasing existing members. At issue was the security screening used by the department (which at that time was still conducting its own screening of existing and potential members). Many candidates were being rejected (or ejected) simply on the grounds of their sexual orientation and lifestyle.

In this case, SIRC worked behind the scenes, making representations directly to Canada's Chief of the Defence Staff. Its objections were clearly heeded, as National Defence was commended in the Committee's subsequent annual report: "We are pleased this year to say publicly what we have already said privately—that DND showed some real sensitivity to individual dignity by radically revising its security clearance procedures."

Darkest moments for the Service
At times, SIRC's willingness to pursue difficult or thorny issues has generated profound consequences for the Service. For example, in its 1986–1987 annual report, the Committee devoted an entire chapter to criticizing many practices of CSIS's Counter-Subversion Branch. The Committee stated its concerns plainly: "According to the best information we have been able to obtain, the Counter-Subversion Branch probably has more than 30,000 files on individuals—how many more, no one knows. This is a matter of some concern to us. We don't know and we can't find out without a manual examination of thousands of files...to further place the 30,000 figure in context, CSIS as a whole holds more than 600,000 files on individuals." SIRC concluded that the branch was "intruding on the lives of too many Canadians" while focussing on targets that were of minimal threat to Canada.

Additional momentum for change came via a 1987 ruling by the Federal Court of Appeal, which was reviewing the case of an individual, Harjit Singh Atwal, accused of having been involved in an earlier attack in B.C. on a Punjabi Cabinet Minister. The court ruled that CSIS had made faulty wiretap applications in its investigation of Atwal. This resulted in the immediate resignation of the Service's first Director, Ted Finn. Further, two months later, the Solicitor General of Canada released a report by an advisory team headed by former Privy Council Clerk Gordon Osbaldeston, which resulted in the disbandment of the Service's Counter-Subversion Branch.

SIRC Chair Ron Atkey and Committee members acknowledged this chain of events in their next annual report (1987–1988), commenting that "CSIS (had) faced perhaps its darkest moments" as a result of this matter. Yet it was also a key turning point. Maurice Archdeacon later contended that this event—and the subsequent arrival of Reid Morden as the new Director of CSIS—were "watershed events" that improved the relationship between the Service and SIRC.

Other key events during the first five years included:

• Objections to the use of polygraphs by CSIS—SIRC has repeatedly expressed concerns about the Service's use of polygraphs (lie-detector tests) as a staff-screening tool. The Committee's objections were well supported by clinical research that contended such tools were too unreliable to be of much value. In its 1986–1987 annual report, SIRC said: "CSIS tried to dress its program up in a lab coat by calling it a pilot project, but this is merely a disguise." While CSIS continues to subject prospective new recruits to a polygraph examination, the questions are now focussed exclusively on loyalty issues.
• CSIS and First Nations—In 1989, in response to significant media reporting of alleged CSIS monitoring of First Nations groups across Canada, SIRC undertook a review of what it called "CSIS inquiries into native issues." While the Committee conceded in its report there had been regulatory breaches in how the Service had conducted its inquiries, it also attempted to set the record straight in CSIS's favour. "In fact, the use of the word ‘investigation’ in discussions of this initiative...may be misleading if it hints at anything in the nature of wiretaps or shadowing targets. What CSIS carried out was more like a fact-finding exercise or research program, relying on open sources like newspaper reports and on interviews with knowledgeable people." A second report, prepared subsequent to violent incidents in First Nations communities in 1989–1990, offered similar conclusions.
• Five-year review of the CSIS Act—The CSIS Act received its first report card in 1990–1991 in the form of a five-year review by a special Parliamentary committee, chaired by Member of Parliament, Blaine Thacker. SIRC submitted 31 recommendations that were considered by the Thacker Committee as it prepared its report. While much of SIRC's advice about how the Act could be improved went unheeded, still this period marked the end of an era—capping half a decade of important accomplishments that had helped shape the growth of the new intelligence service.

Turning the corner
SIRC Chair Ron Atkey, near the end of his tenure, signalled optimistically that this was the beginning of a period that historians might some day consider as the point when CSIS "turned the corner" and had truly begun its evolution into the civilian agency that legislators had earlier envisioned. Indeed, by the end of the 1980s, relations between CSIS and SIRC had become much more professional and respectful, similar to the healthy tension that exists between the two organizations today.