CSIS info-sharing with RCMP in extremist probe ‘very limited,’ security watchdog says

OTTAWA -- Long-standing, systemic problems hampered co-operation between Canada’s spy service and national police force on the investigation of an extremist threat, a new security watchdog report says. In its findings, the National Security and Intelligence Review Agency points to chronic informationsharing challenges for the Canadian Security Intelligence Service and the RCMP.

The review agency looked at how CSIS and the Mounties worked together on investigating extremists based in Canada, though details of the specific threat were stripped from a public version of the report. A key sticking point is the perennial concern that use of CSIS information in a criminal prosecution could endanger the spy service’s secret sources and methods.The heavily censored version of the agency’s February 2021 review says CSIS’s formal disclosures of information to the RCMP on the extremist case were “very limited and not always useful.”

“CSIS intelligence has not been shared or used in a way that has significantly advanced the

RCMP’s investigations. ”The need to shield spy sources and methods complicates, and can even jeopardize, potential prosecutions, the report says.Known as the “intelligence-toevidence” problem, this shared understanding guides the actions of both CSIS and the RCMP, the review agency notes. “Indeed, NSIRA observed a general reluctance on the part of both agencies to connect CSIS information to an RCMP investigation,” the agency’s report says.“An ordinary Canadian could be forgiven for wondering at a system in which one government agency in Ottawa has amassed a large collection of intelligence on a threat, ....