A Canadian Foreign Human Intelligence Service: Time to Revisit the Debate
A follow-up to our op-ed in the Globe and Mail...
Yesterday, my university of Ottawa colleague and frequent co-author, Thomas Juneau, the former National Security and Intelligence Advisor Vincent Rigby, and I had an editorial in the Globe and Mail explaining why Canada should establish a foreign human intelligence service.
TLDR of the article is this:
Canada has hesitated in creating a foreign human intelligence service for many reasons, but the fact that we could rest secure in our intelligence sharing relationships, and the costs associated with establishing such an agency are the prevailing reasons for having not done so.
Changes in the geopolitical order, and the risks posed by Trump administration (which I have outlined here) require us to revisit the debate.
Canada should create a small foreign human intelligence service that can collect information on its national interests to better understand the intentions and capabilities of a growing number of adversaries and take more effective action in response.
This will need to be done with care as it could drain existing resources and take 5-10 years to establish. It should also be done transparently and grounded legally.
In the meantime, the Carney government should enhance Canada’s collection of foreign intelligence that is done by CSIS (presently within Canada), CSE, Global Affairs Canada (diplomatic reporting) and the Canadian Armed Forces. It should enhance open-source capabilities and its partnerships.
As we outline (briefly) in the piece, (and you can read more about here) creating such an agency is not a matter of snapping Prime Minister Carney’s fingers. At a closed event I attended at last week some former officials raised concerns that such an endeavour may take away from the government’s focus on fixing the Canadian Armed Forces, for example.
At the same time, I do not believe that creating a small, limited, and focused foreign human intelligence agency is as hard as, say, fixing Canada’s housing crisis or defence procurement. Indeed, one of the biggest obstacles will be bureaucratic battles over where to put such an agency, and the push back (possibly from within the national security and intelligence community itself) against establishing one at all.
Others wish to see CSIS do the work of collecting foreign intelligence abroad under a revised mandate. Section 16 of its Act allows the Service to collect foreign intelligence within Canada. Some have called for removing the “within” – meaning it could go abroad to collect information required by the Minister of Foreign Affairs and the Minister of Defence.
However, I have concerns about such an enterprise being developed within CSIS. The Service just saw its mandate expand under Bill C-70 and it was given no resources to do so. It is also facing several challenges, including a funding shortfall and problems with retention and recruitment (compounded by security clearance process plagued by systemwide delays). I am not certain this is a good start for an even larger to-do list.
Equally important, the legal framework for a security intelligence service (which is primarily domestic) is different from the legal framework required to collect foreign human intelligence abroad – which, let’s face it, can involve breaking the law in other countries due to various methods of information gathering. Think of, for example, setting up fake companies in order to attract - hypothetically - transnational criminal elements of a gang involved in smuggling technology on behalf of a foreign state. But the potential complexities here underscore why setting out the parameters around which such an agency can operate in statute, as well as reaffirming Canada’s human rights obligations, is – I believe – important for transparency. As such, I think it is best to keep the two agencies separate.
There are also those who question whether Canada actually needs more intelligence. Already policymakers struggle to keep up with the information they need to read to do their jobs. Are they really looking for more?
I think the main counter to this argument is not that policymakers need more information - but Canadian officials can no longer depend on the quality of intelligence from the United States given the actions of Trump officials. I’ve discussed this already, but given the Trump administration’s determination to force ideological conformity over all aspects of the US government, its likely impact on intelligence priorities, collection and analysis, its conspiracy-inspired leadership, and the faint but present concern that they could cut Canada off from intelligence sharing as a kind of punishment or retaliation, means that the old assumptions about dependable streams of intelligence seem far more shaky than they used to. Canada can never replace what the US provides when it comes to the flow of intelligence, but it can safeguard a range of its own priorities.
Finally, I note that if Canada is looking to expand its intelligence partnerships outside of the Five Eyes as a means of diversifying its access to information, it will not be able to do so with only good wishes and gestures of friendship. Nor will it be able to do so with only high-level strategic analytical products. Instead, Canada will need to provide more granular and tactical information as a means of influencing and informing our partners and sustaining its new or enhanced relationships. Or, to be slightly more direct, we will need to give more in order to get more. Having access to more foreign intelligence will likely help us achieve that goal.
Given the new government’s long list of priorities, it remains to be seen if his government will establish a foreign human intelligence service. As someone who based his campaign on the idea of building strategic autonomy in the wake of a changing relationship with the United States, it would certainly complement his ambitions. That said, I expect this is just the very beginning of the conversation around this issue and I hope to have more to say in the coming weeks/months ahead.