The next CSIS boss needs deep experience, and teaching skills: few bureaucrats or MPs understand intelligence, threats or dangers to Canada.

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Not surprisingly, a country’s security service lives in the shadows. By definition, the techniques used to collect intelligence need to remain secret and a lot of information must stay out of the public eye. The downside, of course, is that the average citizen thinks it is all James Bond stuff (it really is not).

And yet, especially over the past few decades, those who lead Canada’s security and intelligence organizations have been in the public spotlight much more than in the past. This is a sea change, in my experience. When I joined the Communications Security Establishment (CSE) in 1983, the agency was not even acknowledged as existing (I was told I would be working for “National Defence,” which made for an interesting first day on the job when I was told what I would really be doing).

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