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“Although our organization prefers to stay low-key, chances are, we’ve met.”

So begins a CSIS recruitment video produced in 2012, highlighting (and glamorizing) the job of a security screening officer, tasked with preventing dangerous persons from entering the country.

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Set to a soundtrack reminiscent of a James Bond film, Patrick, a real life CSIS agent, says a screening officer “must have excellent research skills, and the ability to comprehend and manage a variety of top secret databases.”

But what exactly does security screening entail, when it comes to the less glamorous job of bringing in 25,000 refugees from the Middle East in the next six weeks?

It’s a question that has become all the more relevant in the wake of the Paris attacks, and the revelation that one of the assailants acting for Daesh (ISIL) may have posed as a Syrian refugee to enter France.

Public Security Minister Ralph Goodale has said the screening process is not 100 per cent foolproof. No process is. But it is rigorous.