Delay in ministerial approval of spy warrant didn’t seem exceptional: former official

By Jim Bronskill, The Canadian Press on October 8, 2024.

Shawn Tupper, Deputy Minister of the Department of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness waits to appear as a witness at the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs (PROC) regarding foreign election interference on Parliament Hill in Ottawa, on Wednesday, March 1, 2023. A federal inquiry into foreign interference is slated to hear today from current and former officials of Public Safety Canada. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Spencer Colby

OTTAWA – A former deputy minister of public safety says nothing struck him as exceptional in 2021 about a weeks-long delay in ministerial approval of a spy service warrant.

Rob Stewart told a public inquiry today that in retrospect, general tracking of Canadian Security Intelligence Service warrant applications could have been better.

But Stewart, who was the department’s deputy minister from late 2019 to October 2022, said things often took time to get done, notably during the disruptive time of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The inquiry has heard that it took as long as 54 days for the CSIS warrant application to be approved by Bill Blair, public safety minister at the time.

The average turnaround time for such applications is four to 10 days.

Blair has said that he signed off on the warrant soon after it was brought to his attention.