Oversight powers

Give Parliament the power to scrutinize spy agencies: Editorial

Just how many Canadians had their personal information handed over to the Americans and other allies when Ottawa’s electronic spies dropped the ball a few years ago and unlawfully passed along metadata to foreign security services without scrubbing it first? Was it hundreds, thousands, millions?

Jean-Pierre Plouffe, the commissioner-watchdog for the Communications Security Establishment, can’t say. Because he doesn’t know. “It’s impossible to know the exact figure,” he told the Senate’s national security committee a few days ago. We can only wonder.

How long did the CSE security breach go on before it was noticed? Was it a year? Two? More? Again, Plouffe is in the dark. CSE “didn’t know for how long the problem existed,” he told the committee.