Backgrounder

In 2021, NSIRA began its review of the Communications Security Establishment’s (CSE) use of the polygraph for security screening. This review also explored the Treasury Board Secretariat’s (TBS) role in including the polygraph in the Standard on Security Screening introduced in 2014.

The Government of Canada has used the polygraph as a tool for security screening since the Cold War. When the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) started using the polygraph in 1984, its then-review body, the Security Intelligence Review Committee (SIRC), criticized its use in screening the thousands of Canadians CSIS employs. SIRC specifically questioned the science behind the polygraph as a legitimate, effective, and fair means to judge the loyalty of Canadians, as well as the justification for the general application of what is seen as a highly invasive tool.

In 2019, NSIRA completed a review of CSIS’s Internal Security Branch, which included CSIS’s use of the polygraph for security screening. In that review, NSIRA found several shortcomings with the CSIS program, including:

• Mental health implications and unequal outcomes for subjects undergoing polygraph exams
• Inappropriate influence of the polygraph in security screening decision-making
• Unnecessary collection of medical information
• A lack of any centralized policy rationale from TBS for why Canada should use the tool in the first place

At CSE, NSIRA found many of the same or strikingly similar shortcomings.

NSIRA’s priority in conducting this review was always clear: to evaluate whether the privacy and Charter rights of CSE’s employees and prospective employees were being protected. As this report demonstrates, NSIRA found that in some cases, they were not.

The Government of Canada is responsible for safeguarding its employees, information, and assets. Threats to Canada and Canadians are real. Security screening is the primary way the government determines an individual’s loyalty to Canada before entrusting them with access to sensitive information or facilities required to carry out their duties as public servants.

NSIRA’s review of CSE’s use of the polygraph for security screening is important because it is the first time an independent review body in Canada has assessed such a program with this level of operational detail and scrutiny.

From the outset, NSIRA determined that this review could not be completed without being able to assess the actual conduct of polygraph exams, with appropriate protections in place to protect the anonymity of the individuals submitting to the exam. As demonstrated by this report, access to these recordings was, in fact, fundamental to many of NSIRA’s findings.

This review is also timely as TBS reviews and updates the 2014 Security Screening Standard. The importance of security screening should prompt TBS to undertake a thorough analysis to support which screening tools it promotes and requires while being mindful that security screening does not grant an organization the license to override the fundamental privacy protections granted under Canadian law.

The government now has an opportunity to correct past errors and conduct the fulsome assessment and analysis required to rigorously explore whether using the polygraph for security screening is justified. We trust that the government will consider our findings and recommendations, which may be informative as TBS completes these long-overdue updates.