The Sixth Estate

The Globe and Mail released an interesting list on Thursday of the number of Canadian civil servants who have been required to take an oath of lifelong secrecy under the Security of Information Act. The Act was passed after 9/11 and creates a category of bureaucrats who must swear not to release “secure” (i.e. classified) information for the rest of their lives, not just for the duration of their employment and related to the context of information they pick up at work.

As expected, the list leans heavily towards the police (the RCMP), intelligence agencies — the the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) and the Communications Security Establishment (CSE) — and the Department of Foreign Affairs. What’s most interesting, however, is that Canada Post ranks fifth — and fifth by a long shot. There are few logical explanations for this concentration of secret work in the postal service, one of which is that they’re monitoring (some of) the mail:

The original G&M list was arranged alphabetically, but I’ve arranged it by number of oathbound employees to illustrate my point:

5785 – Royal Canadian Mounted Police

3168 – Canadian Security Intelligence Service

2015 – Communications Security Establishment

568 – Foreign Affairs and International Trade

105 – Canada Post Corporation

47 – Justice Canada

39 – Transport Canada

31 – Canadian Corps of Commissionaires

25  – Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada

18 – Department of Public Works and Government Services

14 – Canadian International Trade Tribunal

10 each – Health Canada, Royal Canadian Mint

9 – Department of National Defence

7 – Solicitor General of Canada

5 each – Canadian Space Agency, Department of Finance and Treasury Board Secretariat

4 – Auditor-General’s Office

1 each – Canada Ports Corporation, Canadian Advisory Council on the Status of Women, Library and Archives Canada, Science and Technology Canada, Statistics Canada

Also interesting is that the list includes 16 designated “null” and 254 designated “not identified.” This could be a clerical error, or it could be an indication that there are one or more intelligence units now in existence that the government is not public acknowledging exist. There is precedent for this: the government did not admit the existence of the signals intelligence agency, the CSE (at the time, the CBNRC) until the 1970s.

Document 1. Globe and Mail, “Thousands of Federal Officials Under Lifelong Gag Order, Records Show.” January 19, 2011. 2/1/1.