A mostly unnoticed plank in the Conservative party election platform was to “create a Canadian Foreign Intelligence Agency to effectively gather intelligence overseas, independently counter threats before they reach Canada, and increase allied intelligence operations.” The time has come to take the idea seriously.
In this new age of global terrorism, concerns about national security are not going away anytime soon, and for a host of reasons it’s undesirable to put ourselves in a position where we are entirely dependent on intelligence gathered by other countries.
First, there’s the question of national sovereignty. Just as Canada must spend adequately to build up a military of its own, and resist the temptation to delegate defence responsibilities to the U.S., so too should we engage in independent intelligence gathering rather than leaving it to the Americans…
Canada, part of the democratic West, has been named by Osama bin Laden as an enemy country. It’s time we started investing in our own protection… Mr. Wark points out, for example, that although Canada has a long-term commitment in Afghanistan, the Canadian government is “shockingly reliant” on other governments for the intelligence required to operate in that dangerous country.
