Agency disputes a risk, report warns

Canada’s security oversight body flagged significant disagreements’ among groups

- STEPHANIE LEVITZ

Former Supreme Court justice Marie Deschamps is leading the National Security and Intelligence Review Agency, an independent organization tasked with keeping tabs on Canada’s intelligence agencies and their activities.

OTTAWA Disputes within government over how to handle information on foreign interference risk undermining a commitment to taking the issue seriously, warns the latest assessment of how well Canada is tackling the growing problem of foreign-state meddling in elections.

Canada’s security oversight agency flagged “significant disagreements” between and within intelligence agencies, including between the prime minister’s national security adviser and top analysts, inconsistent sharing of intelligence information and “unacceptable” blind spots in tracking that information, among other problems in its probe of the flow of information on foreign interference in the 2019 and 2021 elections that was published on Tuesday.

The findings from the National Security and Intelligence Review Agency (NSIRA) place more pressure on the Liberal government, but also on organizations like the Canadian Security Intelligence Service and others, to revamp their approach to foreign interference in short order in order to be taken seriously by Canadians and to protect democracy as a whole.