Friction among regional spies, shadowy CSIS HQ unit a challenge for new intelligence boss

Whoever takes over the top job at CSIS this fall will face deep fissures inside Canada’s intelligence agency that are hampering efforts to probe and disrupt Chinese foreign interference.

Little-noticed items in two recent reports by federal national security oversight agencies pointed to the overriding problem and challenge:  intelligence officers in a regional office are bickering with other CSIS staffers at Ottawa headquarters who are also tasked with investigating meddling by the People’s Republic of China (PRC).

The “disconnect” between headquarters and an unspecified regional office has been brewing since 2019, according to reports by the National Security and Intelligence Review Agency (NSIRA) and National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians (NSICOP).

David Vigneault’s unexpected retirement as CSIS director after seven years came just weeks after these tensions were laid bare in the reports.

These tensions, however, were overshadowed by another part of the NSICOP report.

NSICOP caused a storm after its members reported seeing “troubling intelligence” that some Parliamentarians were “semi-witting or witting” participantsin foreign states’ efforts to interfere in Canadian politics.

Yet the two reports also examined how CSIS more broadly manages foreign political interference investigations and how its findings flow to top government decision-makers – or don’t.

It was in this context that frictions between regional intelligence officers and CSIS headquarters staff, and between CSIS and the prime minister’s own national security advisers, were revealed.

The reports found officers inside one CSIS regional office would investigate and collect information about alleged PRC interference and share it with a