���߲ݴ�ý

I called my former colleague from Toronto Region, Cemal, a practising Muslim man of Turkish descent. We spoke for hours. I learned that he’d desperately tried to advance his own career, to no avail, for more than 23 years. He told me that he’d excelled at a technical exam required for a promotional opportunity but that his candidacy was rejected following a subjective interview process. When he filed a grievance, his manager told him to “go complain to Allah.” Cemal also felt that he was unfairly targeted by Internal Security. Investigators in that branch asked how often he prayed and where and what his personal views on Islam were. It must have trickled up to executive managers because they refer to him as “Muslim brotherhood” during Friday drinking parties at the office. 

I called my old colleague Alex. We hadn’t spoken since 2010, when I left Toronto. Back then, he was one of the shining stars, part of the regional director general’s inner circle and not one to miss the three o’clock Friday office drinking party. The gatherings, where racialized service employees like Cemal and I were not invited, were “the single most important factor in getting ahead at the Service.”

Though Alex was a few classes after me, he had already been promoted to supervisor and had been running a unit in Toronto for seven years. After seeking to become chief of a division, the promotion was derailed. At a private work party, Simon, the region’s second-in-command executive manager, verbally attacked Alex’s Muslim partner by shouting “All Muslims are terrorists.” The following day, after searching Alex’s Facebook page for Muslim friends, Simon “berate(d) Alex for having a (Facebook) relationship with a terrorist.” After the incident, Alex lost access to operational information, received poor evaluation results, and was excluded by his colleagues, similar to the campaign against me in 2005. Alex was warned by colleagues that there would be no turning back if he filed an official complaint. He filed anyway.

“But Huda, even though the third-party investigation found harassment, they gave me a letter stating there was no harassment finding. Once I got a lawyer, at cost, who demanded the investigation’s findings, CSIS revealed a harassment finding had been made. I had to go outside the service to get CSIS to do the right thing,” he said. This was unsurprising yet earth shattering. I judged that this was also why my own official complaints had been dismissed.

Alex kindly provided his lawyer’s number. I stopped going to work. I didn’t like not going. I’d had a job ever since high school. I felt ashamed. I told the kids to not tell anyone that I was home. 

I called Emran, one of my Muslim colleagues in Toronto, after learning he’d had a falling out with Toronto Region management. He was also on leave. Six years earlier, when Emran was training at headquarters, he’d pulled me aside to seek my advice on a conflict he was having with an intelligence officer in his class. He was a communication analyst and they had ganged up on him and insulted his partner. An officer, favoured by powerful managers, said things like “Muslims and armed weapons are a bad mix,” “Please, don’t shoot me,” and “Let’s go before the Muslims get us” to get under Emran’s skin. He felt belittled, humiliated, and uncomfortable bringing his concerns to his trainers.

Emran’s member of Parliament advised him that it took at least five similar instances of harassment and discrimination to prove systemic harassment. We had Alex, Cemal, Emran, and me. We needed a fifth. Dina, the service’s first African Canadian woman, instantly came to mind. Following her promotion to supervisor, she’d often complained of discrimination. She committed to our cause and we decided that we’d all sign up with Alex’s law firm. 

My difficulty sleeping worsened. I had vivid dreams about my past that forced me to finally face my feelings about what had transpired. I stopped wanting to leave my house, I didn’t want to visit my parents, and I didn’t enjoy spending time with Ali or the kids. I just wanted to be alone all the time. 

Our lawyer wrote CSIS a letter informing them that we would be acting as a group, we were preparing to go public with our complaints with the Canadian Human Rights Commission, and we would be calling immediately, through media channels, for an independent public inquiry. 

Days after our letter was sent, the Quebec mosque attack was carried out. Alexandre Bissonnette entered the Islamic Cultural Centre mosque and shot worshippers, killing six and injuring many. I’d recently walked to the entrance of the Al Rahma mosque near my house and found glass on the ground. The door had been broken in a hate attack. 

I spent the next weeks wondering whether CSIS’s Montreal and Quebec branches were conducting interviews and community outreach with as many people as possible to understand how Bissonnette had been radicalized. I was certain Quebecers wouldn’t have to declare their stances on hate the way Muslims had to after 9/11. 

CSIS responded to my group via letter, forwarded by Department of Justice lawyers: “We will engage the services of a third party to conduct an investigation into the specific allegations raised in the letter. We will also not insist on the usual policy requiring complaints filed within one year of an alleged harassment complaint.” The service also hired a third party to perform a climate assessment of the Toronto Region.

The service’s investigations were meant to discourage us from moving forward with a civil claim and to buy time for CSIS lawyers to strategize. Our lawyer also gave us the cold shoulder. We decided to hire a different lawyer who’d fight for underdogs and go public with our case. 

John Kingman Phillips’ snow-white beard and charming warm smile put me at ease, and his record on holding powerful entities accountable was impressive, having represented Indian residential school survivors and Omar Khadr. John had a board laid out with our legal options: a third-party investigation, the Canadian Human Rights Commission, and a civil lawsuit. We decided to move full speed ahead with all three.

Before John could draft the civil claim, though, the service — citing its own earlier internal Toronto Region workplace climate assessment — refused the Canadian Human Rights Commission’s mediation offer to meet with us away from public scrutiny. This move surprised all of us. Why would CSIS refuse an opportunity to solve our dispute privately and to thereby avoid headlines about racism, Islamophobia, and xenophobia in the service? CSIS’s work relied on public trust. I then learned from Labour Relations that CSIS wouldn’t be providing us with the results or reports from either the workplace climate assessment or the investigation into our allegations. We’d be mere “witnesses” in our complaints.

The results of my ATIP request were mailed to my home address containing only unclassified documents. When I finally calmed my nerves enough to open the package, I started reading: “We neither confirm nor deny that the records you requested exist. We are however advising you, as required by paragraph 10 (1) (b) of the Act that such records, if they existed, could reasonably be expected to be exempted under one or more of section 15 (1) (as it relates to the efforts of Canada toward detecting, preventing, or suppressing subversive or hostile activities), (16) (1) (a) or (c) of the Act.” My heart sank. Subversive? Really? How rich! I sat down and wondered how I would ever prove my case against the service without access to my personal information. 

Sifting through the document, yet another truth was revealed that would seal any doubt that I should continue to fight for my rights. This one truly crushed me. It was an email exchange from an executive manager to Internal Security. The same man who attempted to pacify me with a promotion before my leave of absence sent an email to Internal Security that read, “Will see if I need to put in place some kind of aftercare for when Huda returns to work.”

The term aftercare in the security and intelligence world means constant surveillance and a reassessment of a person’s reliability and loyalty. Aftercare would include monitoring my work computers and personal mobile, physical surveillance, and other investigative tools the service uses against subjects of investigation. I thought 15 years were long enough to live under constant CSIS surveillance. I wiped my tears and couldn’t wait to pick up my children from school.

Surely at that point they had become accustomed to my sadness, but the moment that I heard “hey, mom,” I felt a relief and love that I hadn’t been able to properly register in months. I will be all right to finally leave CSIS, I reckoned.

Eventually, I did end up receiving some of the unclassified material in a package mailed to my house. I found two letters indicating my grievances for being passed over for promotional opportunities on the grounds that the service overwhelmingly favours white males for foreign service: one letter was upheld and the other was partially upheld. The service felt I had grounds for my complaints but had decided it was preferable to prevent me from advancing my career rather than investigating my complaints further. 

I also read through my Internal Security interview results and found bias all over them. One report said that I read the Quran daily. I was a busy working mom always on the road and making dinner for five — as if I had time! Besides, there’s nothing wrong with reading the Quran every day, and doing so is hardly a national security concern. The report also said that my children attended Saturday Islamic school. I was livid. Why would they find this information noteworthy in a service report? It made me sick to my stomach. I called the Employee Association president. She expressed outrage and sympathy for me. 

She looked me straight in the eyes and said, “Huda, I can see this is very upsetting for you. I’ve spoken to management about the lack of transparency — the reprisals and all. But please don’t be a martyr for everyone. Take care of yourself.” I couldn’t believe my ears. Martyr, the irony of it all.

From “Agent of Change: My Life Fighting Terrorists, Spies, and Institutional Racism” by Huda Mukbil. ©2025. Reproduced with the permission of McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2025.