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Public Safety Canada has quietly set up a centre for expertise to assist security and intelligence departments in the responsible use of the Security of Canada Information Disclosure Act, known as SCIDA. Yet virtually no one knows about the centre, or what it is doing. This is worrisome.

SCIDA allows for Canadians’ personal information to be shared by security intelligence agencies as part of national security Bill C-59. My interest in the expertise centre came about after I recently received a Public Safety briefing note marked “secret.” It turns out the privacy commissioner, who, under the terms of Bill C-59, is to be consulted by security intelligence agencies and can review SCIDA’s personal-data-sharing processes, has not heard of this centre either, nor has the public, MPs or the news media.

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A Public Safety official confirmed that the centre exists, and noted the concept for it was briefly mentioned in the government’s 2017 national security green paper. The centre has been renamed the Strategic Coordination Centre for Information Sharing and is housed internally under Public Safety’s National Security Policy Directorate.