Community News

IS TOP SECRET INTELLIGENCE BEING OVERLOOKED?

Perhaps it's the result of watching too many spy thrillers that we imagine a well-honed process of intelligence dissemination within government circles, a covert world that ensures valuable intel is passed quickly from spy masters to political masters.

Turns out that world, at least in Canada, might be more fiction than fact.

David Johnston's report on foreign interference has sparked a furor over the recommendation for public hearings into the growing threat of foreign interference rather than an inquiry as demanded by opposition politicians into how it's all been handled by Justin Trudeau's government.

But that debate shouldn't overshadow his important fact-finding on other fronts, notably his rather alarming assessment of how intelligence is handled and why it needs urgent attention.

Intelligence flows largely from the Canadian Security Intelligence Service and the Communications Security Establishment, the country's primary intelligence agencies. Canada's "Five Eyes" partnership with the U.K., U.S., Australia and New Zealand is also a valued source of intel.

Yet astonishingly, Johnston's report, released last month, reveals that intelligence is passed into government circles with no guarantee any of it gets read.

He describes how staff in the prime minister's office speak of being given a binder of intelligence in a secure room.

They have a short time to review the material, with no context provided, and barred from taking notes.

It's all too haphazard and hazardous. Just ask Conservative Michael Chong, who was never informed that his family targets for Chinese state interference as apparent retribution for his support for Uyghur minority rights.

Security expert Wesley Wark says some history helps understand the problem of today. Up until the end of the Cold War, intelligence was on the "peripheries" of government, he says.

That changed with the 9/11 terror attacks, which put an urgent focus on domestic and foreign terror threats. It meant a huge increase flow in the volume of intelligence. Yet even today, intelligence is not embraced as "a critical part of decision making" within government, Wark told the Star.

"It is clear to me that better systems are essential to process the enormous amount of intelligence produced every day."

It is an eye-opening observation. It speaks to a government that doesn't appear to value intelligence. And it suggests that national security officials need to do a better job in the framing and delivery of that intelligence to make it essential reading.

Canada expends considerable resources to gather intelligence on foreign and domestic threats. Johnston's report makes us wonder how much of that work is discounted or ignored, left sitting unread in a binder.

OPINION EDITORIAL

en-ca

2023-06-08T07:00:00.0000000Z

2023-06-08T07:00:00.0000000Z

https://communitynews.pressreader.com/article/281556590224314

Metroland Media Group Ltd.