No Canadian CIA.
Mark Carney’s new National Security Strategy calls for increased intelligence capacities. Too many public resources are already devoted to secretive, US-aligned, elements of Canada’s government.
Released on Thursday, the National Security Strategy pledges to “Modernise Canada’s intelligence capabilities to anticipate and counter emerging threats: Our ability to collect, analyse, and leverage intelligence, together with our partners, ensures we are prepared to tackle emerging threats. Canada will strengthen our sovereign intelligence capabilities, deepen and diversify our intelligence partnerships, and modernise Canada’s intelligence enterprise by updating authorities to reflect evolving threats and technologies while safeguarding Canadians’ rights.”
There’s some suggestion that they might set up a Canadian version of the (foreign focused) US CIA or British MI6. A senior federal official told CBC, “I don’t think we’re on the verge of announcing a separate agency that would be akin to the CIA or MI6. But at the same time we’re looking at the capabilities that our intelligence agencies have and making sure that they are fit for purpose and for the challenges that we face today.”
Unlike CIA or MI6, the Canadian Security Intelligence Service is focused domestically. With an announced budget of a billion dollars year, CSIS is Canada’s best-known agency. Its close collaborator, the Communication Security Establishment (CSE), is largely foreign-focused. Canada’s NSA has 3,800 employees and an annual budget over $1 billion. It was recently reported that Ottawa plans to spend $1.85 billion to construct a new CSE data centre in Ottawa.
The capacities of CSE and CSIS put Canada among the best equipped intelligence operators in the world. According to different assessments, Canada’s intelligence apparatus is often listed around the tenth most sophisticated after the US, Israel, UK, Russia, China, India, Pakistan, Germany and France.
Besides CSIS and CSE, Canada’s military has vast intelligence gathering capacities. Thousands work in intelligence and cyber warfare, but little is known about their operations since there is no external oversight. The Canadian Forces Intelligence Command (CFINTCOM) carries out a wide range of intelligence activities. According to the government’s 2017 Defence Policy review, “CFINTCOM is the only entity within the Government of Canada that employs the full spectrum of intelligence collection capabilities while providing multi-source analysis.” Comprised of five units, CFINTCOM includes the Canadian Forces Joint Imagery Centre (providing imagery intelligence), Joint Meteorological Centre (providing weather related information to support CF operations), Mapping and Charting Establishment (providing geospatial information and geomatics), Canadian Forces National Counter-Intelligence Unit (which identifies and investigates threats by foreign intelligence services) and Joint Task Force X (human intelligence).
Global Affairs also has its own intelligence operations. In a highly revealing comment in an article focused on Canada spying in Cuba, former assistant director of operations at CSIS, Andy Ellis, recently told the Globe and Mail that officials at Global Affairs Canada’s elite Global Security Reporting Program “would take risks that nobody else would do. They would do whatever the CIA asked them to do. [The CIA] absolutely owned them.”
Some of the discussion of the National Security Strategy has focused on the need to spend more on intelligence to counter Donald Trump’s belligerence. In “Ottawa urged to boost sovereign intelligence assessments to reduce reliance on U.S.” the Globe and Mail quoted Vincent Rigby, a national security adviser to former prime minister Justin Trudeau, arguing this position. But Rigby is also quoted by the Globe saying, “should Canada’s relationship with the U.S. ‘ever return to some semblance of normalcy’ its increased assessment capacity would be valued by members of the Five Eyes,” which is the massive US/UK/Canada/Australia/New Zealand intelligence sharing arrangement.
Is there any evidence that CSE, CSIS and others have reduced the flow of intel to the US-dominated Five Eyes? Is Rigby calling to pause Canadian participation in the Five Eyes until Trump is gone?
Even if that took place, CSE has extensive direct ties to the NSA and Canada would still be part of NORAD and NATO with the US. Additionally, the Canadian forces have various agreements with the US military on information sharing.
It’s more fundamental than just their intelligence agencies close ties to their US counterparts. Even if Canada’s intelligence apparatus were to become independent of the US, it’s still part of an imperialistic state apparatus. Economic espionage is a significant component of CSE’s focus with the CCPA Monitor labelling it the “espionage arm of corporate Canada”.
As part of NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden’s 2013 revelations the UK Guardian reported: “[CSE] has participated in secret meetings in Ottawa where Canadian security agencies briefed energy corporations. Claims of spying on the [Brazilian mining and energy] ministry by CSEC come amid the Canadian government’s increasingly aggressive promotion of resource corporations at home and abroad, including unprecedented surveillance and intelligence sharing with companies. According to freedom of information documents obtained by the Guardian, the meetings — conducted twice a year since 2005 — involved federal ministries, spy and police agencies, and representatives from scores of companies who obtained high-level security clearance.”
Carney’s push to boost the intelligence apparatus should be opposed. We don’t need or want a Canadian CIA.
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