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Laws to Collect, Disclose and Protect Intelligence

Overview

This course will introduce participants to the origins of CSIS and CSE in Canadian law. The focus will be on the role, mandate, authorities, and differences between these two intelligence agencies, particularly with respect to their collection regimes. Furthermore, it will explain the sharing of intelligence among Canadian agencies involved in national security. Finally, participants will learn about the available statutory means of protecting intelligence from disclosure where the information disclosed would be injurious to national security.

Learning Outcomes

• Understand the main legal provisions of the CSIS and CSE Acts with an emphasis on the collection of intelligence.
• Recognize the difference between security intelligence and foreign intelligence.
• Appreciate the provisions of the Security of Canada Information Disclosure Act (SCIDA) and its sharing provisions.
• Understand how agencies can use the section 38 regime of the Canada Evidence Act to protect some of the intelligence from public disclosure.

Audience

• This course is especially useful to federal public servants who are engaged in security and intelligence-related work, or who would like to work in this area. Given that the content touches on very current mediatized issues, it is very useful to anyone interested in national security matters.

Duration

Cost

• $995 (plus tax)

Featured Instructor

Gérard Normand was called to the Barreau du Québec in 1982. His career as counsel at the Department of Justice lasted 28 years, and 25 of those years were in national security law. Original founding counsel of the National Security Group (NSG) in 1993, he spent two years there before moving to the CSIS Legal Services for 7 years in 1995. He came back to NSG in January 2002, after the events of September 11, 2001, where he became the Director and General Counsel of the Group, providing legal advice to the Deputy Minister of Justice on an ongoing basis, as well as to the RCMP officers involved in investigating terrorism offences. In 2006, he spent a year as the Director of Policy and Planning, Security and Intelligence at the Privy Council Office. He then served as the national security advisor of the Assistant Deputy Attorney General responsible for national security at Justice between 2007 and 2010. He finally spent 8 years as General Counsel responsible for the national security section at DND/CF. Since his retirement, he was the special legal advisor to the NSICOP Secretariat and to the Intelligence Commissioner for a few years, only recently putting an end to the latter contract. He is also a professor of national security law at the Faculté de droit civil de l’Université d’Ottawa. He has been directly involved in the drafting of all national security laws in Canada from 1993 to 2017.

Sessions