The Canadian intelligence community will have to contend with the growing influence of anti-democratic forces in the United States – including the threat from conservative media such as Fox News – a new report from a working group of intelligence experts said.
“The United States is and will remain our closest ally, but it can also become a source of threat and instability,” said a recent report written by a working group of former national security advisers and former Canadian directors. Security Service (CSIS). , former deputy ministers, former ambassadors and academics.
Now is the time for the federal government to rethink the way it approaches national security, the report concludes.
The authors – some of whom had access to Canada’s most valuable secrets and briefed the cabinet on emerging threats – say Canada has become complacent in its national security strategies and unprepared to deal with threats such as Russian and Chinese espionage. democratic retreat “in the United States, increasing cyber attacks and climate change.
“We believe the threats are quite serious at the moment, affecting Canada,” said co-author Vincent Rigby, who until a few months ago was Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s national security adviser.
“We do not want this to lead to a crisis [the] the Government of Canada to wake up. “
The report he helped write says that one area that needs political support is Canada’s relations with the United States.
Fox News controversial expert Tucker Carlson has taken advantage of the convoy’s protests to accuse Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of declaring a “dictatorship.” (Screenshot / FoxNews.com)
Thomas Juneau, co-director of the working group and an associate professor at the School of Public and International Affairs at the University of Ottawa, said that while right-wing extremism in Canada is domestic, cross-border links between extremist groups are worrying.
“There are growing transnational connections between right-wing extremists here and in the United States, the movement of funds, the movement of people, the movement of ideas, promotion, support from media such as Fox News and other conservative media,” he said.
Convoy was a “wake-up call,” the councilor said
He pointed to Senator Doug Mastriano’s recent victory in the Republican primary for governor of Pennsylvania. Mastriano is a well-known supporter of the lie that election fraud caused the loss of former President Donald Trump in 2020.
“There are serious risks of a democratic retreat in the United States, and this is not a theoretical risk at the moment,” Juno said.
“So all of this 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 cites protests by a convoy occupying downtown Ottawa in February and related blockades in a handful of border towns earlier this winter. What began as a broad protest against the restrictions on COVID-19 turned into an even wider rally against the government itself, with some protesters calling for the overthrow of the elected government.
The RCMP said that at the protest site near Coutts, Alta., They seized a cache of weapons; four people are now facing conspiracy to commit murder.
“It must be a wake-up call,” Rigby said.
“We potentially escaped a bullet there. We really did. And we hope that the government and … other levels of government have learned their lessons.”
Alberta’s RCMP has sent this photo of what they say is a cache of firearms and ammunition found in three trailers near a protest blockade of the Canadian-US border in Coates, Alta. (RCMP)
The Canadian protests have garnered support from US politicians and conservative media, including Fox News, the report said.
“This may not be foreign interference in the conventional sense, as it is not the result of foreign government action. But it can pose a greater threat to Canadian democracy than the actions of any country 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, as it comes from the same country that is our largest source of intelligence.
During the convoy protest, Fox presenter Tucker Carlson, whose show attracts millions of viewers every night, called Trudeau a “Stalinist dictator” on the air and accused him of “interrupting democracy and declaring Canada a dictatorship.”
Carlson himself has recently been attacked for promoting the concept of substitution theory, a racist concept that claims that white Americans have been deliberately replaced by immigration.
The theory was cited in a manifesto by an 18-year-old man accused of mass shootings in a predominantly black neighborhood in Buffalo, New York earlier this month.
Conspiracy theory is also linked to previous mass shootings, including the 2019 mosque shooting in Christchurch, New Zealand.
Calls for a new national security strategy
“When we think of threats to Canada, we think of the Soviet military threat, we think of al Qaeda, we think of the rise of China, we think of the war in Ukraine. All this is true. But so is the growing threat to Canada that the United States poses, “Juneau said.
“This is completely new. It requires a new way of thinking and a new way of managing our relationship with the United States.”
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin. The report says increasingly aggressive Russia is just one of a series of threats to Canada’s national security. (Adrian Wyld / Canadian Press)
Talking to the United States is not awkward, but it must happen, Rigby said.
“It will certainly not be said, ‘You are the source of our problems.’ This will not be the conversation. The conversation will be, “How can we help each other?” He said.
“We had these talks during President Trump’s term and business continues. Does it get a little more challenging when you have a president like Mr. Trump? Absolutely, no doubt. But we are still close, close allies.”
That’s why both Rigby and Juno hope the report will encourage the government to launch a new review of the national security strategy – something that hasn’t happened since 2004.
“I know there is a certain cynicism about creating these strategies … another voluminous report that will end up on the shelf and gather dust,” Rigby said.
“But if they are done right, they are done quickly and they are done efficiently and effectively – and our allies have done them – they can work and they are important.
The report makes a number of recommendations. He wants a review of CSIS authorization legislation, more use of open source intelligence and efforts to strengthen cybersecurity. He also called for top-secret intelligence agencies to be more open to the public by revealing more intelligence and publishing annual threat assessments.
“There is a new expanded definition of national security. This is not the national security of your grandparents,” Rigby said.
“It’s time to step out of the shadows and face and face these challenges.”
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