Why is Canada so vulnerable to foreign meddling?

2024/01/30 Leave a comment

Good BBC article, citing good analysts and experienced government officials:

“Generally speaking, we have been neglecting national security, intelligence, law enforcement, defence, and so on,” Thomas Juneau, a political analyst and professor at the University of Ottawa, told the BBC.

While it is tough to determine whether Canada is uniquely vulnerable compared to its allies, Mr Juneau argued that other countries have done a far better job in addressing the issue.

An outdated system that is slow to adapt

One glaring problem, Mr Juneau said, is the out-of-date act governing the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (csis). It is almost 40 years old, designed with the Cold War in mind, “when the fax machine was the new thing”, he said. 

Because of this, he said, the nation’s primary intelligence agency has been limited in its operations, focused on sharing information solely with the federal government.

This means possible targets are often left in the dark. 

That was spotlighted by Mr Chong’s story. He only discovered that he had been an alleged target of Beijing through the media, despite csis having monitored threats against him for at least two years.

Canada has since launched public consultations into how the law governing csis can be amended to better inform and protect individuals who could be a target.

The source of Canada’s security complacency, argued Richard Fadden, a former csis director and national security advisor to two prime ministers, is that Canada has lived in relative safety, largely protected from foreign threats by its geography: the US to the south, and surrounded by three oceans.

“I mean, nobody is going to invade Canada,” he said. 

Canada’s allies – like the US and Australia – have been quicker to adopt certain tools to help catch bad actors, such as establishing a registry of foreign agents and criminalising acts that can be classified as interference.

In December, Australia convicted a Vietnamese refugee who was found to be working for the Chinese Communist Party, thanks to a law it passed in 2018 that made industrial espionage for a foreign power a crime.

Such laws are not only important for charging and convicting culprits, but can also help educate the public and deter other nations from interfering, said Wesley Wark, a leading Canadian historian with expertise in national security.

Diaspora groups are especially vulnerable

Mr Wark said the country’s diverse population has also made it a convenient target for foreign states.

“We are a multicultural society and we have gone to great lengths over decades to preserve and protect that,” he said.

But diaspora groups, especially those vocally opposed to the government of their country of origin, have naturally become a target.

British Columbia lawyer Ram Joubin has had a first-hand look at the threats facing dissidents in Canada, particularly those from Iran. 

While investigating people with ties to the Iranian regime who call Canada home, Mr Joubin said he has heard from Iranian-Canadians who say they have been followed and harassed by regime agents in their own communities.

“We’ve had death threats, knock-on-the-door type of death threats,” he said. “And then we have a lot of people with their families in Iran being threatened because they engaged in some sort of activism.”

Csis has previously said it is aware of alleged intimidation attempts. The Iranian government has not commented publicly on these allegations. 

In Mr Joubin’s experience, reporting these incidents to officials like the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) has been a challenge, especially when additional work is needed to establish a credible criminal or civil case.

Both the RCMP and csis were criticised after the murder of Hardeep Singh Nijjar, a Sikh separatist that was killed in June in British Columbia, which Canada has alleged was done with the involvement of Indian government agents – something India denies. 

Prior to his death, Mr Nijjar had said that police were aware he was a target of an assassination plot. 

Questions were raised about whether something could have been done to stop his killing after the FBI said it was able to foil a similar assassination plot in November against another Sikh separatist leader in New York City. 

Mr Fadden said the events of 2023 represented a seismic shift in Canada’s psyche, forcing the country to finally confront the issue of foreign interference.

“Despite a deep reluctance on the part of the government to hold a foreign inquiry, they were compelled to do it,” Mr Fadden said. “I think if there hadn’t been that shift, we wouldn’t have an inquiry.”

The inquiry, led by Quebec appellate judge Marie-Josée Hogue, will be conducted in two phases, ending with a final report in December that will include recommendations on what Canada can do to deter future interference.

Some have expressed concern about the inquiry’s short mandate, and whether its recommendations will be wide-ranging enough and implemented as Canada inches closer to an election year that could see a change in government.

But in the meantime, Mr Fadden and others said they believe urgent action is needed.

“There are two big issues: there’s interference in our elections,” Mr Fadden said. “But there’s also interfering and scaring members of the diaspora in this country, which is a very serious matter.”

“We have a responsibility to protect people who are in Canada, and I don’t think we’re doing as good of a job on this as we could be.”

Source: Why is Canada so vulnerable to foreign meddling?

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Cohen: American Jews are loudly protesting Israel’s anti-judiciary law. In Canada — not so much, Juneau: Canada must rethink its friendship with Israel

2023/07/29 Leave a comment

Significant contrast:

On the day Israel’s Knesset passed the Reasonableness Standard Law — a frontal assault on the independence of its judiciary — something strange and wondrous happened among America’s fractious Jews: they agreed, broadly speaking, that the law is a mistake and said so.

The chorus of disapproval came not just from progressive Jews but organizations representing mainstream Jews, and some conservative ones, too. The American Jewish Committee issued a statement expressing “profound disappointment” and lamenting that the new law was “pushed through unilaterally by the governing coalition,” causing “discord” in Israel and “straining the vital relationship” with the diaspora.

The committee argued that “dramatic changes” to the judicial system should come from “a deliberative and inclusive process” respecting checks and balances, minority rights and judicial independence. Other mainstream U.S. organizations echoed the criticism. The Anti–Defamation League said the law “could weaken Israeli democracy and harm Israel’s founding principles.” The Jewish Federations of North America was “extremely disappointed” the law had been passed “without a process of consensus,” despite “serious disagreement across Israeli society” amid strenuous efforts to forge “a compromise.”

Pointedly, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, among the most stalwart pro-Israeli organizations, did not comment. But Democratic Majority for Israel, a pro-Israel committee within the Democratic Party, said it was “a serious mistake” for Israel to ignore the protests of “the majority of its citizens …”

This displeasure of the Jewish establishment, though not as strong as in other quarters, shows an evolution among American Jews. Criticizing Israel was once heretical among these groups. No longer.

None of these organizations is as angry as many among this country’s 5.8 million Jews, who are increasingly skeptical of Israel. A growing number think it’s time that President Joe Biden lean heavily on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, his old, unreconstructed adversary. “Bibi” has fallen in with the hard right on judicial reform, from settlers who want to annex the West Bank to orthodox Jews who want to enshrine exemption from military service.

Biden has issued appeals but no threats. He never raises, for example, the $3.8 billion U.S. in assistance Israel receives annually from the United States. Interestingly, Israel, a wealthy country more secure than ever, no longer needs the money. Still, it is seen as untouchable.

While Jews in Britain, Australia and other countries have joined those here in opposition, it’s entirely different in Canada, an unserious country, where only progressives see the danger.

“This is a dark day,” declared Joe Roberts, chair of JSpaceCanada. “I cannot begin to explain how gutted I am.” He and others worry about an emasculated court that can no longer protect the rights of Palestinians, migrant workers, women and the LGBTQ+ community in Israel against an oppressive government.

The New Israel Fund of Canada has issued an urgent appeal. “Today we need you more than ever,” said executive director Ben Murane. “We will never back down.”

Astoundingly, though, from the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs (CIJA), the “advocacy agent” that “represents the diverse perspectives and concerns of more than 150,000 Jewish Canadians,” there was not a peep of protest. Maybe it missed the news.

Then again, the director of CIJA’s office in Jerusalem is David Weinberg, who supported the judicial reforms in a published commentary. These are his personal views, CIJA insists. But it’s likely they are equally those of CIJA’s unelected and unaccountable executive, especially CEO Shimon Fogel. He knows that these are not those of Canadian Jews but hasn’t the courage to say so.

It raises the question: Why doesn’t CIJA stop hiding and come out and support the reforms? At least that would be honourable. For its part, the UJA Federation of Greater Toronto issued yet another purée of platitudes. It is concerned that Israelis are divided and hopes for “compromise.” What we need is more dialogue, it urges, finding solace in earnestness and ambiguity.

Oh. Lord. As Israel’s Supreme Court prepares to hear petitions on the new law — which may well spark an unprecedented constitutional crisis there this autumn — behold, once again, the sad silence of Canada’s Jewish establishment.

Source: Cohen: American Jews are loudly protesting Israel’s anti-judiciary law. In Canada — not so much

Thomas Juneau asking a needed question:

This week, the Israeli parliament approved a controversial law that constrains the Supreme Court’s ability to provide judicial oversight of government actions. According to many critics, this is only the first step in a plan by the coalition government led by Prime MinisterBenjamin Netanyahu to concentrate power in the executive branch. The Netanyahu government, which includes Jewish supremacists and is the most extreme in the country’s history, has also taken steps, and will likely take additional ones, toward Israel’s further annexation of the West Bank.

This raises difficult questions for Canada: should we stand by as the assault on democratic norms and Palestinian rights continues? The easy answer would be to muddle along, perhaps offering timid condemnation. The status quo, however, is increasingly unsustainable.

Like its allies, Canada’s position is to support the two-state solution, according to which Israel and an eventual Palestinian state would co-exist. Yet it is now difficult to see how this outcome can be achieved. On the Israeli side, intransigent governments have expanded settlements in the West Bank, largely closing the door on a viable Palestinian state. The road has been further blocked by the fragmentation of the Palestinian leadership, with the incompetent Palestinian Authority barely governing in the West Bank and the extremist Hamas ruling the Gaza Strip with an iron fist. In the meantime, the status quo is deeply unfair to Palestinians and destabilizing for the region.

The case can certainly be made that maintaining the fiction of the two-state solution is the least bad approach given the absence of viable alternatives. It is one thing to recognize that the two-state solution is dead; it is another to come up with a better, realistic alternative. Moreover, proponents of the status quo argue that Israel is and should remain a close friend. This is partly valid: There is no serious proposal to jettison the partnership, which indeed is beneficial for Canada. To their discredit, some supporters of the status quo far too easily launch accusations of antisemitism in response to criticism of Israeli policies. This is dishonest and stifles constructive and necessary debate. The question here is not to reject Israel’s right to exist, but to criticize some of its policies and ask whether Canada’s current approach is optimal.

The broader objectives of Canada’s foreign policy matter. It is inevitable that Canada’s focus on the Middle East will diminish. Ottawa simply has other priorities: The most important one, and one which could come under severe strain in the near future, remains the management of its relations with the United States. In addition, Canada needs to boost its presence in Asia, while the war in Ukraine shows the necessity of continuing its contributions to transatlantic security. The remaining bandwidth, for the Middle East and other areas, will shrink.

In this context, Canada should publicly state that it refuses to deal with the more extremist ministers in the Netanyahu government. It should vocally express its opposition to the proposed reforms and freeze or reduce co-operation with Israel on some issues. Ottawa should also boost its support for Palestinian civil society and increase pressure on the Palestinian Authority to reform itself and organize fresh elections. More concretely, Canada should evaluate whether its longstanding mission to train Palestinian security forces should continue since doing so entrenches the status quo by allowing Israel to delegate to the Palestinian Authority the day-to-day administration of the occupation in the West Bank. Ottawa should also suspend its policy of almost systematically voting with Israel at the United Nations General Assembly on resolutions dealing with the conflict.

Given its marginal influence when it acts alone, Canada should also engage in serious conversations with like-minded allies and partners, including through the Group of Seven, about options to change the status quo in relations with Israel and the Palestinians. Canada’s partnership with Israel has been premised on shared values, and with Israel’s government now dominated by extremist elements who are undermining the two-state solution, we can’t keep acting like it’s business as usual.

Source: Canada must rethink its friendship with Israel

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Canada should rethink relationship with U.S. as democratic ‘backsliding’ worsens: security experts

2022/05/25 Leave a comment

Not my area of expertise but significant and needed. Hopefully, government and opposition will listen:

Canada’s intelligence community will have to grapple with the growing influence of anti-democratic forces in the United States — including the threat posed by conservative media outlets like Fox News — says a new report from a task force of intelligence experts.

“The United States is and will remain our closest ally, but it could also become a source of threat and instability,” says a newly published report written by a task force of former national security advisers, former Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) directors, ex-deputy ministers, former ambassadors and academics.

Now is the time for the federal government to rethink how it approaches national security, the report concludes.

The authors — some of whom had access to Canada’s most prized secrets and briefed cabinet on emerging threats — say Canada has become complacent in its national security strategies and is not prepared to tackle threats like Russian and Chinese espionage, the “democratic backsliding” in the United States, a rise in cyberattacks and climate change.

Thomas Juneau, co-director of the task force and associate professor at the School of Public and International Affairs at the University of Ottawa, said that while Canada’s right-wing extremism is homegrown, cross-border connections between extremist groups are alarming.

“There are growing transnational ties between right-wing extremists here and in the U.S., the movement of funds, the movement of people, the movement of ideas, the encouragement, the support by media, such as Fox News and other conservative media,” he said.

Convoy was a ‘wakeup call,’ says adviser

“We believe that the threats are quite serious at the moment, that they do impact Canada,” said report co-author Vincent Rigby, who until a few months ago served as the national security adviser to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

“We don’t want it to take a crisis for [the] government of Canada to wake up.”

The report he helped write says that one area in need of a policy pivot is Canada’s relationship with the United States.

He pointed to state Sen. Doug Mastriano’s recent win in the Republican primary for governor of Pennsylvania. Mastriano is a well-known proponent of the lie that election fraud caused former president Donald Trump’s loss in 2020.

“There are serious risks of democratic backsliding in the U.S. and at this point, that is not a theoretical risk,” Juneau said.

“So all of that is a serious threat to our sovereignty, to our security, and in some cases, to our democratic institutions … We need to rethink our relationship with the United States.”

The report points to the convoy protest that occupied downtown Ottawa in February and associated blockades in a handful of border towns earlier this winter. What started as a broad protest against COVID-19 restrictions morphed into a even broader rally against government authority itself, with some protesters calling for the overthrow of the elected government.

RCMP said that at the protest site near Coutts, Alta., they seized a cache of weapons; four people now face a charge of conspiracy to murder.

It “should be a wakeup call,” said Rigby.

“We potentially dodged a bullet there. We really did. And we’re hoping that the government and … other levels of government have learned lessons.”

The Canadian protests drew support from politicians in the U.S. and from conservative media outlets, including Fox News, says the report.

“This may not have represented foreign interference in the conventional sense, since it was not the result of actions of a foreign government. But it did represent, arguably, a greater threat to Canadian democracy than the actions of any state other than the United States,” the report says.

“It will be a significant challenge for our national security and intelligence agencies to monitor this threat, since it emanates from the same country that is by far our greatest source of intelligence.”

During the convoy protest, Fox host Tucker Carlson — whose show draws in millions of viewers every night — called Trudeau a “Stalinist dictator” on air and accused him of having “suspended democracy and declared Canada a dictatorship.”

Carlson himself has been under attack recently for pushing the concept of replacement theory — a racist concept that claims white Americans are being deliberately replaced through immigration.

The theory was cited in the manifesto of the 18-year-old man accused in the mass shooting in a predominately Black neighbourhood in Buffalo, N.Y. earlier this month.

The conspiracy theory also has been linked to previous mass shootings, including the 2019 mosque shootings in Christchurch, New Zealand.

Calls for new national security strategy

“When we think about threats to Canada, we think about the Soviet military threat, we think about al-Qaeda, we think about the rise of China, we think about the war in Ukraine. All of these are true. But so is the rising threat to Canada that the U.S. poses,” said Juneau.

“That’s completely new. That calls for a new way of thinking and new way of managing our relationship with the U.S.”

The conversation with the U.S. doesn’t have be uncomfortable but it does need to happen, said Rigby.

“It certainly would not be couched in a way of, ‘You’re the source of our problems.’ That would not be the conversation. The conversation would be, ‘How can we help each other?'” he said.

“We had those conversations during President Trump’s tenure and business continues. Does it become a little bit more challenging when you have a president like Mr. Trump? Absolutely, without a doubt. But we are still close, close allies.”

It’s why both Rigby and Juneau are hoping the report will spur the government to launch a new national security strategy review — something that hasn’t happened since 2004.

“I know there’s a certain cynicism around producing these strategies … another bulky report that’s going to end up on a shelf and gather dust,” said Rigby.

“But if they’re done properly, they’re done fast and they’re done efficiently and effectively — and our allies have done them — they can work and they’re important.”

The report makes a number of recommendations. It wants a review of CSIS’s enabling legislation, more use of open-source intelligence and efforts to strengthen cyber security. It also urges normally secretive intelligence agencies to be more open with the public by disclosing more intelligence and publishing annual threat assessments.

“There’s a new expanded definition of national security. It’s not your grandparents’ national security,” said Rigby.

“It’s time to step out of the shadows and step up and confront these challenges.”

Source: Canada should rethink relationship with U.S. as democratic ‘backsliding’ worsens: security experts

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Exploring ways to bridge the gap between professors and the public service

2020/12/11 Leave a comment

Great fan of exchanges in both directions:

Over the coming months, Canadians will watch as several thousand positions in the upper echelons of the American executive branch are filled by presidential appointees. This is a complex and time-consuming process, with nominees having to be confirmed by the United States Senate. These appointments, moreover, may take even more time than usual because if the Republicans retain control of the Senate after the Georgia runoffs Jan. 5, they may choose to obstruct the transition of the newly elected Democratic president in light of President Donald Trump’s refusal to concede.

Canadians can be forgiven for thinking that this is an odd way to run a government. After all, aside from cabinet ministers and their political staff, virtually every public service position in Canada is held by non-partisan career bureaucrats. Although prime ministers do occasionally bring in outsiders to serve as deputy ministers, the vast majority of these positions are held by public servants who come up through the ranks. Similarly, while there are a large number of governor-in-council appointments to boards, tribunals and other executive bodies made at the discretion of the government, these are filled as vacancies arise rather than all being replaced with each new elected government. Compared to the United States, the upper echelons of the Canadian bureaucracy are characterized by continuity.

Despite the advantages associated with this stability and the benefits of a largely non-partisan public service, the strengths of the American approach should be recognized. Senior American officials do not spend entire careers in government. They can move from the private and non-profit sector to the public sector. This ensures that different experiences and perspectives are brought into government. What the American government lacks in continuity, it makes up in dynamism, and a broader and deeper pool of skills and experiences. American universities and think tanks, for their part, employ scholars and researchers who have experience in the senior levels of government, enhancing their credibility and impact within the policy community.

Most interestingly from our perspective, though, is the American practice of having academics serve in government for a part of their career. We are two university professors who have worked in the federal government, both in the area of national defence. This experience has given us insight into the realities of policy-making and how government operates, which enriches our research and teaching. Indeed, because we both teach in policy schools in the national capital, this mix of academic and government experience is one we share with several of our colleagues, and one our students expect from their professors. Yet the opportunity we have had to work in both government and academia is far from being as common as one might hope. A sizable gap exists between the policy and scholarly worlds in Canada, and while a few of us jump between the two sides, much more could be done to bridge the divide.

Academics, for instance, can challenge established positions and policies that those in government cannot. They can also bring the latest theoretical perspectives to bear on policy questions.

 

In a recent article published in Canadian Public Administration, we considered the benefits of encouraging closer contact and cross-pollination between policy-makers and academics in the field of national defence. Drawing on our own experiences working in both worlds, combined with a series of interviews with defence practitioners and scholars, we observed that both government and academia stand to gain by bridging the gap that exists between them. Academics, for instance, can challenge established positions and policies that those in government cannot. They can also bring the latest theoretical perspectives to bear on policy questions. Scholars, in turn, gain valuable lessons about the operations of government and how to make their research and teaching more policy-relevant if they have the opportunity to work in the public sector. Senior decision-makers who work alongside academics, furthermore, can get a better understanding of how scholars interpret, as well as critique policies and government action. Hence, although it is vital to keep the worlds of government and academia distinct and independent to ensure the autonomy of university research and scholarship, both stand to gain when there is more ease of travel between them.

We have examined the failures and success of the academic outreach programs that the Department of National Defence has maintained over the decades. The most recent of these, Mobilizing Insights in Defence and Security (MINDS), funds collaborative research networks and provides targeted engagement grants for research into specific topics. It also runs expert briefing series and “rapid response mechanisms” to bring policy-relevant research to decision-makers in a timely fashion. These are all laudable initiatives and have proven their worth. But there is one effort that merits further attention: additional secondments for academics inside government (and for public servants in academia). While interchange programs exist within the government of Canada, including them within targeted programs such as MINDS could draw a greater number of candidates from specific policy-focused fields.

Funding a greater number of secondments would not necessarily provide Canadian academics with a degree of government experience that matches that of their American counterparts who are appointed to the upper echelons of the executive branch, but it would increase the opportunities available to scholars who want to gain policy experience. The federal government, in turn, could better leverage different perspectives and ideas offered by those from outside the professional public service. Though this would be nothing like the turnover that we are about to see in the United States, it would bring a degree of novelty to Canada’s much-cherished system of public service continuity.

Source: Exploring ways to bridge the gap between professors and the public service

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