Prime Minister Paul Martin is expected to announce the appointment of veteran bureaucrat Jim Judd as the new director of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service.

Mr. Judd, 57, who is currently the secretary of Treasury Board, would be taking over as Canada's spymaster within weeks, putting an end to a replacement search that has taken months.

The bureaucracy has been speculating for some time over who would be picked as the new head of the spy agency, and the recent U.S election turned up the pressure to fill the job.

The key issues facing Mr. Judd are strengthening relations with the U.S. and bringing an "integrated approach" to assessing the risks and threats facing Canada. He must also try to better co-ordinate Canada's various intelligence gathering agencies, including CSIS, the Communications Security Establishment, the RCMP, the Defence Department and the Public Safety Department.

The CSIS director is limited to two five year terms and former director Ward Elcock could not be reappointed to the job. Mr. Elcock took over as deputy minister of defence after his CSIS term expired, which was months after Margaret Bloodworth vacated the job to take over as deputy minister of Public Safety and Security. Many speculated the government kept the Defence post vacant until Mr. Elcock could take it.

Treasury Board President Reg Alcock said Mr. Judd is "enormously capable" and he would have preferred to keep him at Treasury Board, but CSIS needed a director who knows and understands the issues, especially with U.S. relations. It's widely argued that the U.S. intelligence community be comfortable with the CSIS chief.

Mr. Judd and Privy Council Clerk Alex Himelfarb were said to have met yesterday to finalize details about the move.

Mr. Judd comes to the job with key experience handling foreign and defence policy. Before heading Treasury Board, Mr. Judd was deputy defence minister.

During his career, Mr. Judd worked at Foreign Affairs, including a posting to Washington, D.C. He was assistant secretary to cabinet on foreign and defence policy at the Privy Council Office at the end of the Mulroney era and in the beginning of the Chretien government.

He then took a special assignment with the deputy minister at Foreign Affairs, later becoming assistant deputy minister of corporate services at the department.

By 1996, Mr. Judd was an assistant deputy minister at the Finance Department with responsibility for international trade and G7 issues.

The bureaucracy has been been braced for weeks for a shuffle of deputy ministers as the government looked for candidates to fill the CSIS post. The government is expected to fill Mr. Judd's position temporarily while it searches for a permanent replacement.

Mr. Judd's departure leaves a gaping hole at Treasury Board which is in the throes of studying and implementing a slew of management reforms to clean up practices and reduce the risks of fiascos such as the sponsorship scandal that's at the centre of a public inquiry. Treasury Board has taken on responsibility for the new beefed-up office of the comptroller-general, the public service's human resources agency and the Canada School of Management.

Filling Mr. Judd's job could set off a chain of moves within the upper ranks of the bureaucracy. Some of the candidates rumoured to be in the running for the Treasury Board job include Morris Rosenberg, deputy justice minister, Sammy Watson, deputy environment minister, and Wayne Wouters, deputy at human resources.

© The Ottawa Citizen 2004