The Liberal government has signalled billions in new funding for the Canadian Security Intelligence Service alongside a likely expansion of its mission. National security experts say a new mandate to gather foreign intelligence could help Canada pursue its own interests as the reliability of the United States as a partner wanes. Canada currently relies heavily on allies, particularly the U.S., for most of its foreign intelligence. CSIS can only collect limited information abroad if it relates to threats to Canadian security, a situation past governments have accepted to avoid the cost of a dedicated foreign service.
Experts argue this reliance is now a questionable strategy given the U.S. political climate under President Donald Trump. "We are pursuing our own sovereign interests in a way that the government has not in the past," said Leah West, a national security law professor at Carleton University. She said Canada is now investing and partnering with other countries on defence, technology and critical minerals independently. "So there is a need for greater foreign intelligence," West said, to understand what is happening with foreign governments and companies.
Speculation points to a new CSIS role focused on gathering information from foreign nationals overseas to inform Ottawa. The government has hinted at providing the service with $6 billion in new funding over the next decade. Wesley Wark, a senior fellow at the Centre for International Governance Innovation, said human intelligence remains vital despite modern surveillance. "You can't take a spy satellite image of what a foreign leader is thinking about (an issue)," Wark said, noting such intelligence taps into human knowledge about adversary plans.
Wark added that a foreign intelligence capability could guide other forms of collection, like helping the Communications Security Establishment target electronic surveillance. He suggested the government's primary interest may be in trade intelligence. "One of the clear indications we have from the prime minister on his outlook on the world is that ... Mark Carney is very interested in economic intelligence," Wark said.
CSIS was established in the 1980s following a commission that investigated misconduct within the RCMP's intelligence branch. That inquiry, led by the McDonald Commission, recommended separating law enforcement from intelligence gathering. However, it warned against giving the new CSIS a foreign intelligence mandate, citing concerns that such agencies often break other countries' laws. The commission feared this "contagion" could affect domestic security operations and create an overly powerful intelligence monolith in a democracy. West noted those warnings came from a different era with far less oversight. "Those criticisms arise from a very different era, when there wasn't a lot of legal constraint and required reporting and transparency built into the mandates of our spy services," she said. Today, she argued, political oversight and public scrutiny of intelligence activities are significantly stronger than they were forty years ago.
