Canadian taxpayers fork out well over half a billion dollars every year to fund CSIS, the Canadian Security Intelligence Service.
What do we get for our money? Not enough, apparently. The story is out that the government recently retained London based Control Risk Group to get the real skinny on what threats to Canadian interests might be lurking out there.
Control Risk Group is in the business of advising its clients about what they might be up against when operating in dodgy business climates. They're big in Nigeria and Colombia, advising Big Oil and mining multi-nationals on what the odds are that their senior executives might be kidnapped. When they are, they can also help negotiate the ransom.
One would like to think that for an annual stipend of half a billion CSIS could figure out this stuff in-house. That would seem to be the bare minimum that a sovereign nation should expect from it's intelligence services. Makes you wonder just what they do with their annual budget.
Have meetings.
Strike committees. I hear there's a lot of action at the ad-hoc committee to select new office furniture.
Of course they also have to do their due-diligence on the private contractors who will provide the actual intel. That keeps an entire floor at CSIS HQ just hopping with busy-work.
Word is that the recent closure of the Iranian embassy was the result of some of this private sector intelligence.
Hmm... a private sector consultant with deep ties to Big Oil claims that diplomatic ties with Iran threaten Canadian security?
Seems to me there's way too much potential for multiple conflicts of interest in that scenario.
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