More than three years after Parliament was legally required to begin testing whether Canada’s revamped national-security system was working as intended, the review has still not happened, Global News reports, even as the intelligence agencies and watchdogs covered by that review are confronting disputes over how the system operates.
The Liberal government’s Bill C-59 received Royal Assent on June 21, 2019, after remaking large parts of Canada’s security framework. Among other changes, the National Security Act 2017 created the National Security and Intelligence Review Agency, established the Intelligence Commissioner framework, enacted a standalone Communications Security Establishment Act, and amended the Canadian Security Intelligence Service Act.
But the legislation also included its own accountability mechanism. Section 168 of the Act says a comprehensive review of the law’s provisions and operation “must be undertaken” during its fourth year. The review was specifically required to examine how the changes affected CSIS, the RCMP, and the Communications Security Establishment, including information sharing and their interactions with NSIRA, the Intelligence Commissioner, and the National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians.
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That statutory window expired in June 2023 without the review being launched.
The issue was still unresolved more than two years later. Documents obtained by Global News show that NSIRA’s chair raised the missed deadline during a November 2025 meeting with Public Safety Minister Gary Anandasangaree.
Anandasangaree’s office told Global that responsibility for beginning parliamentary reviews rests with Parliament, saying their timing is “ultimately determined through parliamentary processes.” Jean-Yves Duclos, the Liberal chair of the House public safety committee that could conduct the review, did not respond to Global’s request for comment.
Bill C-59 does not explicitly order the public safety minister to initiate the process but a parliamentary committee designated or established for that purpose to undertake it. But Parliament has still failed to carry out the statutory requirement while the Liberals have remained the governing party throughout the period.
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The missed deadline now overlaps with questions the review was expressly designed to examine.
According to Global, a December 2025 briefing note prepared for Privy Council Clerk Michael Sabia warned of a growing number of disagreements between NSIRA and the security and intelligence community, including disputes that had reached or could reach the courts. The same briefing material anticipated an eventual parliamentary review of the Bill C-59 framework,
CSIS itself has argued that its governing authorities are struggling to keep pace with current threats. In its 2025 public report, released in May, the agency said changes to its legislation have been “outstripped by the speed of evolving national security threats,” while also stressing that independent review remains critical to public trust.
That oversight workload is substantial. CSIS reported 30 national-security reviews involving NSIRA and NSICOP in 2025, with 22 still ongoing, while the agency received 71 requests for information and briefings from review bodies.
Parliament was supposed to examine how those institutions function together before reaching this point.
Section 168 requires the eventual committee to report its findings and recommended changes within one year of beginning its review, unless Parliament grants additional time. The provision, however, specifies no sanction for allowing the initial review window itself to pass.
Three years after that window closed, Parliament has yet to start the process.
