An active overseas Canadian Security Intelligence Service operation that was abruptly stopped at the direction of an adviser to the prime minister put agents in danger, a federal watchdog says.
The information was disclosed in a report from the National Security and Intelligence Review Agency (NSIRA) released publicly on May 29.
NSIRA conducted a review of an undisclosed CSIS operation following a referral by then-Public Safety Minister Marco Mendicino in late 2022, who sought to know whether certain policies allowed him to fulfil his responsibilities of overseeing CSIS.
The heavily redacted 43-page report from NSIRA discusses an operation by CSIS in 2022 that involved domestic and foreign partners. It says that Mendicino and his department had been informed about the operation just over two weeks prior to its start, and neither had raised objections.
The redacted report says that “Government and political-level stakeholders” later met to discuss the operation with the ensuing debate resulting in CSIS having to “halt mid-operation [redacted] activities in [redacted].”
“This decision needlessly placed [redacted] officers in danger, and raises serious concerns regarding CSIS' accountability mechanisms,” the document said.
Through reviewing documents and conducting interviews, NSIRA said the “direction” to halt the operation resulted from “political-level discussions” and “first came from the National Security and Intelligence Advisor to the Prime Minister (NSIA) to the Director of CSIS.”
Jody Thomas was in the NSIA role in 2022, while David Vigneault was CSIS director. The NSIA does not have the authority to stop an operation, and NSIRA found that neither Vigneault nor Mendicino, who do have such authority, had requested a halt.
The Epoch Times reached out to Thomas for comment, but did not hear back before publication time.
Thomas told The Globe and Mail that she didn’t stop the operation and that NSIRA didn’t consult her in the review. She also said she had been asking questions about the operation on behalf of other departments.
“The operation had some questions asked about it that were from other levels of government, more senior levels of government, and I was the conduit of that information as opposed to me personally stopping the operation,” she said.
Thomas added that those questions should have been asked before the operation took place and wouldn’t have been necessary if CSIS had briefed Mendicino better.
“I ensured the questions got answered and then the operation proceeded and concluded,” she said.
The NSIRA report said senior CSIS officials had such difficulty in pausing the operation that “management and control of the operation appeared to cease functioning properly.” At one point, Vigneault sent out an email to senior officials in intelligence and security portfolios saying, “Time is quickly running out and the situation is getting much more tense on the ground. We need a decision tomorrow.”
Along with there being no record of a written decision calling for the operation to be halted, nor was there a record of the decision to resume it, NSIRA says. The report gave a recommendation that if the CSIS director or delegates do not make the decision, it must then be made by the public safety minister.
In one part of the report, the CSIS team say they felt they were in an “untenable situation.” While further details are redacted, the report claims that a situation evolved where CSIS officers conducting the operation feared a situation could arise where there would be “grave diplomatic harm” to Canada, and that there could be “legal and other accountability issues” for CSIS, its officers, and the Canadian government.
The report also laid some blame on Public Safety Canada and CSIS for failing to provide “timely and accurate information” to Mendicino about the operation. It said Public Safety remains “dependent on CSIS” to identify and receive information, which inhibits its ability to give independent advice to the minister.
The report recommends that when a decision affecting an active CSIS operation is not made by its director or delegates, it should come as a direction from the public safety minister, and should be accompanied by a written record.
The report also recommends that public safety and CSIS develop a more “robust consultation mechanism for reputational risks assessment” for CSIS activities.
Thomas, who was Trudeau’s national security advisor from 2022 to 2024, was also involved in other national security controversies related to the distribution to decision-makers of sensitive intelligence assessments on Chinese interference in Canada’s democracy.
Two key documents never made it to senior decision-makers, in one case because Thomas said it was not her responsibility to approve an intelligence assessment from the Privy Council Office, and in another because she requested that a CSIS assessment be unpublished, modified, and sent to a different distribution list.
Thomas testified at the Foreign Interference Commission in Oct. 2024 that moving these documents along was not her responsibility.
