Scott Jones to be next CSE Chief

Scott Jones has been appointed Chief of the Communications Security Establishment, effective 22 October 2026.

Jones, who was the President of Shared Services Canada, will replace current chief Caroline Xavier, who is retiring from the public service. In the meantime, he has been appointed a “Senior Advisor” at CSE, effective 9 September, presumably to help him get him ready to take over the agency. 

Coming up to speed shouldn’t be too difficult for Jones, as he spent the first 22 years of his public service career at CSE, including three years as the first head of the Canadian Centre for Cyber Security. And of course he will have continued to have a lot of contact with the cybersecurity side of the agency during his time at Shared Services. You can find a brief official bio for Jones here and a somewhat more informative one at his LinkedIn page.
 
When CSE was looking for a new Chief back in 2018, I suggested that Jones was well qualified for the job but that it was more likely he would be appointed to run the new Cyber Centre, which turned out to be correct. Eight years and two chiefs later, his time in the big chair has come.

CSE’s first four chiefs were all drawn from within the very insular SIGINT world, serving their entire careers within the agency. The next four had no prior experience within CSE, although some of them did have earlier connections to the wider Canadian intelligence community.

The hiring of Shelly Bruce in 2018 gave the job back to a SIGINT lifer, but she had also spent a couple of years seconded to the Security and Intelligence Secretariat at the Privy Council Office from 2007 to 2009, so she had at least some experience of working in the central agencies as well as at CSE.

Her successor Caroline Xavier had a wide-ranging public service career prior to her appointment as Chief, including three years as Assistant Secretary to the Cabinet for Security and Intelligence and, earlier in her career, a couple of years as Director of IM/IT Infrastructure and Operational Services at CSE itself. So, she came to the job familiar not only with the agency and the wider intelligence community, but also with the PCO and the broader public service.

Jones’ record, although weighted more heavily towards CSE, also contains a mix of agency experience and familiarity with central agencies and the wider public service. This seems to me like a good mixture to have. Chiefs who have never had much contact with CSE have an awful lot to learn when they take up the job, and it’s bound to reduce their effectiveness for the first few months (or even years). But it’s also good for a Chief to know how Ottawa works outside CSE.

Jones should be able to hit the ground running when he occupies the office in October.
 
Jones will be the 12th Chief in CSE's 80-year history. The previous chiefs were:

    • Edward M. Drake (1946 – 1971)
    • N. Kevin O'Neill (1971 – 1980)
    • Peter R. Hunt (1980 – 1989)
    • A. Stewart Woolner (1989 – 1999)
    • D. Ian Glen (1999 – 2001)
    • Keith Coulter (2001 – 2005)
    • John L. Adams (2005 – 2012)
    • John Forster (2012 – 2015)
    • Greta Bossenmaier (2015 – 2018)
    • Shelly Bruce (2018 – 2022)
    • Caroline Xavier (2022 – 2026)

Photo credit: Justin Tang/Canadian Press