The Canadian intelligence system today stands at a crossroads. Its birth stems from the experience of World War Two and a consequential, post-war debate over Canadian intelligence requirements. Over the course of the following seventy years, Canadian intelligence has evolved with two main missions in mind: domestic security; and membership in an intelligence partnership now known as the “Five Eyes,” linking Canada with the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand.
For much of the Cold War the domestic security mission focused on counter-intelligence: efforts to thwart Soviet, Warsaw Pact, Chinese and Cuban spying in Canada. Canada was tutored early in that endeavour by British intelligence. It was always a battle of unequals, as adversarial embassies and consulates were stuffed with spies posing as diplomats. But with the end of the Cold War, the domestic security mission swung, at first slowly, and then, after 9/11 dramatically, to a counter-terrorism mission. The objectives were to thwart violent extremist activities within Canada and to ensure there was no spill-over across the Canada-US border. This required close cooperation with US domestic security agencies, especially the FBI.
Canada’s membership in a tight-knit intelligence club was central to the construction of its intelligence system after 1945. The signing of a signals intelligence sharing agreement with the United States in 1949 (CANUSA), with the agreement of the UK, was a major expansion in the direction of what would become the Five Eyes, with the addition of Australia and New Zealand in the early 1950s. Canada would go on to develop a signals intelligence capacity with an Arctic-focussed mission, build a small, open-source intelligence agency, and begin to produce strategic threat assessments, initially with a focus on the Soviet threat to North America, all with an eye to making a contribution to the intelligence partnership such that it would secure Canada’s place. Canadian intelligence capabilities were always far smaller than either the United States or the UK, and often did not reach those of Australia.
The cross-roads that Canadian intelligence now faces are a product of fundamental disruptions to its twin founding missions. On the domestic security front, the threat of violent extremism remains, but concerns over cyber espionage impacting on Canada’s economic security and on its critical infrastructure now are of greater moment. At the same time, tensions with the United States over its economic policies and their impact on the closely intertwined Canadian economy, and threats of US annexationist efforts have made security cooperation with the United States more challenging.
Canada’s long-nurtured membership in the Five Eyes now also faces challenges and future uncertainty because of the policies of the Trump administration. While the Five Eyes partnership remains unique and is unlikely to implode, concerns about intelligence sharing and the politicisation of US intelligence have eroded trust and forced Canadian officials to confront the degree of dependency involved in our membership in the Five Eyes and the overwhelming reliance Canada has on the US intelligence community to help it fill out a global picture of threats.
The cross-roads moment that Canadian intelligence now faces involves two imperatives. One is the effort to shift resources from a primarily domestic security mission to a more global intelligence capacity. This will require new foreign intelligence capabilities beyond our long-established signals intelligence function. The other is the need to expand and diversify our intelligence partnerships to reduce our singular reliance on the Five Eyes and on the US intelligence community, in particular. On both of these fronts, the objective is to achieve more sovereign capacity and autonomy for Canadian intelligence in what the Canadian Prime Minister recently dubbed, the “age of disorder.”
As the Canadian intelligence system reorients itself to new geopolitical and geo-economic realities the expectation is that Canada will increasingly look north, to the security of the Arctic, and will look for new and expanded intelligence relationships with the Nordics in particular. Canadian intelligence will be twinned with new defence capabilities in the Arctic and a reassertion of our NATO role as a Northern flank state.
Wesley Wark
Dr., Senior Fellow
Centre for International Governance Innovation
Canada
Fellow
Balsillie School of International Affairs
Canada
wwark@cigionline.org
