Controversies
CSIS has at times come under criticism, such as for its role in the investigation of the 1985 Air India bombing. The Commission of Inquiry into the Investigation of the Bombing of Air India Flight 182, headed by Mr. Justice John Major, is underway. Two Canadian courts have publicly criticized CSIS for destroying wiretap evidence. One court impressed upon the importance of wiretap evidence from CSIS in establishing guilt. The second focused on its exculpatory value.
From 1988 to 1994, CSIS mole Grant Bristow infiltrated the Canadian white-supremacist movement. When the story became public knowledge, the press aired concerns that he had not only been one of the founders of the Heritage Front group, but that he had also channelled CSIS funding to the group.
In 1999, classified documents were stolen from the car of a CSIS employee who was attending a Toronto Maple Leafs hockey game. The Security Intelligence Review Committee reportedly investigated this incident.
On September 18, 2006, the Arar Commission absolved CSIS of any involvement in the extraordinary rendition by the United States of a Canadian citizen, Maher Arar. The Commission found that U.S. authorities sent Arar to Jordan and then Syria (his country of birth) based on incorrect information which had been provided by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) to the U.S. government. Arar was held by the Syrians for one year and was tortured. The sole criticism of CSIS levelled by the Commission was that the agency should do more to critically examine information provided by regimes which practice torture.
On March 31, 2009, CSIS lawyer and advisor Geoffrey O'Brian told the Committee on Public Safety and National Security that CSIS would use information obtained by torture if it could prevent another attack such as 9/11 or the Air India bombing. Testifying before the same committee two days later, Director of CSIS Jim Judd said that O'Brian "may have been confused" and "venturing into a hypothetical", and would send the committee a clarifying letter. Two weeks later, the CSIS announced that Judd would be retiring in June, five months before the end of his five-year term.
CSIS has come under attack on a number of occasions for what is seen by some as very aggressive tactics. A vociferous critic of the Service Lawyer Faisal Kutty writes as follows: "Showing up at homes and workplaces unannounced; speaking with employers; offering money and favors for "information"; intimidating and threatening newcomers; questioning about specific institutions and individuals; inquiring about a person’s religiosity; and discouraging people from engaging lawyers are some of the recurring themes that I have come across from clients. The problem is so severe that the Council on American Islamic Relations (Canada) has distributed almost 30,000 Know Your Rights guides and organized 27 workshops across the country on dealing with the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP)."
Prominent Canadian national security lawyer Barbara Jackman has also been critical categorizing the research by CSIS as "sloppy" and that its officers are "susceptible to tunnel vision."
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