The issue of CSIS and oversight is a concern. The push for immediate political oversight is impractical and the present circumstance of only retrospective assessment is inadequate. There is a requirement to reconfigure oversight functionality so that it can be a “real-time” process and absent political influence.
The oversight entity should be composed of past political participants,
past judicial participants and operational personnel. There should be a maximum
two-year term per individual and terms should have alternating termination
years. The size of the entity, beyond
operational personnel, should be five people and three would represent a functional
quorum.
Appointments to the oversight entity should be done through
a joint Commons & Senate committee chaired by the sitting government, with partisanship
participation determined on a prorated basis of the House of Commons sitting configuration.
While one realizes that we must permit personnel to function
as freely as possible under their respective and legislated mandates, given the
nature of the endeavour gray areas are encountered and when they are, civilian
oversight should be activated prior to actions being taken. The oversight function
would be actuated at the request of operations, that is to say, when operations
encounter a situation that pushes up against civil liberty concerns or privacy
concerns, the oversight entity would be activated to extend authority to
proceed or not. This proactive oversight would then be augmented with retrospective
oversight of general operations as well.
The presence of experienced Judiciaries in the mix of the
oversight entity would permit the action to be taken with what would be “in effect”
a court order. This would allow for expeditious execution and a means by which
to “circumvent” the cumbersome aspects of the judicial process. The CISI organization
functions in a space of highly sophisticated antagonists, who know how to
function in a damaging way more or less in plain sight – our legal system is
their shield. When CISI finds themselves in this circumstance we need an entity
that can sanction activities necessary for the preservation of our dominion
over territory and national interests. The “organizational judgment” as to the appropriate
response to a threat, the degree of threat, and the magnitude of threat – would
lie with the oversight entity.
CISI needs to be our protection from ourselves as well as
exterior threat. Given it may find itself investigating members of government
for corruption, there must be a firewall between the organization and the
active political space. The oversight group needs to be small, to facilitate
security and to facilitate an adequate degree of adroitness. A configuration of
the type of entity outlined above would provide both the adroitness required to
react and the comfort that learned patriots are protecting our rights. Addendum:
When designing any government structure, especially a government structure like an intelligence oversight system, one must ensure that a concentration of power is avoided. The prospect of a single entity overseeing all intelligence agencies in Canada is a serious concern. You need to effect a circumstance where one agency is a safeguard against the other. All intelligence agencies require civilian oversight, but separate oversight - RCMP, Military etc require their own. There can be siloed oversight and operational cooperation, the important thing is to maintain operational autonomy.
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