Bill C-59, the National Security Act 2017, is now back before the Commons to consider the (relatively minor) amendments proposed by the Senate. Baring a catastrophe, it should make it past this final Commons-Senate ping-pong and become law. “Becoming law” means “coming into force”. There are rules about coming into force, and I review how they apply to C-59 because: it’s complicated.

Lurking in the details of bill C-59 are new features in the law of evidence whose impact is uncertain. In this blog series, Leah West examines the new “class privilege” in the law of evidence created for those entities assisting CSE, and compares it the class privileges existing elsewhere in Canadian law, including under the CSIS Act.

Lurking in the details of bill C-59 are new features in the law of evidence whose impact is uncertain. In this blog series, Leah West examines the new “class privilege” in the law of evidence created for those entities assisting CSE, and compares it the class privileges existing elsewhere in Canadian law, including under the CSIS Act.

Last week Canada added five new groups to Canada’s terrorist entities list, but the big news was that two of these groups were far right terrorist groups. Why is this a big deal? Leah West walks through the implications of terrorist entity listing under Canada’s criminal law.

Friday, the government tabled the CSIS Public Report in the House, on the last day of this Parliament. This is the formerly annual report the Service releases which provides a small window into how they see the threat environment. There is also often a small section on how a particular section of the Service operates – this year there is a very small section on the Intelligence Cycle and the “going dark” problem for example. However, for the purpose of this blog, I’m going to mainly stick to the threat environment discussion.

The repatriation of Canada’s “foreign fighters” (more accurately called extremist or terrorist travelers, since not all engaged in combat) is one of the most contentious issues in Canada in terms of national security, and was once again in the news this past week. This post will outline one reason favouring repatriation: threat management.

In early May, media reports circulated stating that the Sri Lankan terrorist attacks in April 2019 had been “funded by Bitcoin” and that the transaction had been processed through a Canadian company. These reports are highly misleading, so let’s have a look at what actually happened and what it means for the Canadian financial sector and national security writ large.