The Canadian Security Intelligence Service is one of the entities that NSIRA can review.Sean Kilpatrick/The Canadian Press
The federal watchdog responsible for keeping Canada’s spy services in check has grown so aggressive in its tactics that the agency is undermining the scrutiny role it was meant to strengthen, two national-security experts warn.
A study by Carleton University professor Stephanie Carvin and University of Ottawa professor Thomas Juneau, says the National Security and Intelligence Review Agency – established in 2019 to independently review Canada’s intelligence agencies − has adopted what the authors describe as a “lemon-sucker” posture. This is seen as an attitude that presumes the worst of the organizations it reviews and prioritizes conflict over constructive accountability.
The phrase comes from scholarship on oversight and review of intelligence agencies that categorizes different approaches to the problem, including “ostriches, “cheerleaders,” “guardians” and “lemon-suckers.”
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Published this month in the journal Intelligence and National Security, this study of NSIRA draws on 25 interviews conducted in early 2025 with serving and recently retired officials. These ranged from mid-level managers to deputy ministers and agency heads – people who dealt with NSIRA directly, either as reviewers or as subjects of review. These people are not identified.
Interviewees described NSIRA’s approach as “adversarial,” “non-constructive” and “gotcha.” One told the researchers that “the whole NSIRA board is geared to look for the worst.” Another said NSIRA treats every problem it identifies as a maximum-severity finding: “everything NSIRA catches is a 10/10.”
Asked for comment, NSIRA vice-chair Craig Forcese Thursday defended the watchdog’s work. “For the last seven years, NSIRA has served as the eyes and ears of Canadians, ensuring national-security activities are lawful, necessary and respectful of our rights,” he said in a statement.
“It is a mandate of tremendous responsibility, and one that we approach with utmost professionalism.”
He said NSIRA “recognizes and respects the essential role played by Canada’s national-security and intelligence community, and we remain committed to review practices that strengthen accountability by scrutinizing the lawfulness, reasonableness, and necessity of intelligence and security activities.”
Mr. Forcese said NSIRA welcomes feedback as its practices evolve.
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Prof. Carvin and Prof. Juneau are not skeptics of intelligence review and oversight. Both have written in favour of stronger accountability mechanisms and supported the 2019 federal government reforms that created organizations such as NSIRA.
Entities that NSIRA can review include the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, Communications Security Establishment, as well as intelligence and security-related activities at the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and other departments and agencies.
The authors said they believe NSIRA leadership has been guided by its determination to avoid becoming co-opted by the agencies they review. Interviewees on the NSIRA side said they saw CSE’s former review agency, the Office of the Communications Security Establishment Commissioner, as cheerleaders.
The professors’ argument is that NSIRA has overcorrected.
“By taking this approach, NSIRA’s leaders have forcefully steered the agency towards a confrontational posture, which was widely viewed beyond the agency as counterproductive,” they said.
“The breakdown in trust has caused significant friction and ill will, triggered resistance, and drained large amounts of resources for an already overstretched intelligence community,” the authors wrote.
The paper, drawing on interviews, describes an NSIRA review of the Communications Security Establishment’s use of polygraphs that devolved into shouting matches, left CSE employees in tears, and prompted a senior CSE official to write to the Clerk of the Privy Council alleging inappropriate bullying. Many at CSE felt NSIRA’s desire to watch videos of polygraph interviews amounted to a “highly invasive intrusion into an intensely personal process.”
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The privacy concern eventually went before the federal Privacy Commissioner, who ruled “safeguards that had been put in place significantly reduced the risk that subjects could be re-identified” and that the recordings were sufficiently anonymized such that they did not reveal personal information about the polygraph subjects.
Interviewees told Prof. Carvin and Prof. Juneau that the episode left what one called “an ulcer” inside CSE.
In 2022, NSIRA’s chair ordered an end to director-general level meetings that staff were holding with departments and agencies – sessions that interviewees said were constructive and necessary – apparently out of concern that watchdog staff were getting “too friendly” with the bodies they review, the authors said. Officials told the authors that the practical effect was to restrict contact to more infrequent, high-level channels – making routine problem-solving far harder.
The authors said NSIRA has brought benefits. All 25 interviewees agreed that the agency has produced tangible improvements since 2019, pushing departments that had never faced external review − particularly Global Affairs Canada and the Department of National Defence – to build or improve proper internal governance structures, including dedicated secretariats, for the first time.
NSIRA’s reports have also prompted change in Canada’s intelligence community, the authors said. Even agencies that dispute NSIRA’s analysis often act on its recommendations, Prof. Carvin and Juneau noted.
The paper also credits NSIRA with giving momentum to changes already under consideration within agencies or departments. Its reports, the authors noted, have “attracted media attention and stimulated enhanced debate” on intelligence agencies.