Canada’s intelligence priorities centre on the pressing issues of climate change and food security alongside violent extremism, Arctic security and espionage, a newly released document shows.
The government said Thursday it was publishing its list of intelligence priorities for the first time in a bid for greater transparency with the public.
The document also attempts to walk Canadians through how the intelligence community works and gathers information, and the processes it goes through to keep the government and the public informed on emerging threats.
“While this work often includes sensitive and classified information, it is critical that we are transparent about how we do this work and why it is necessary, so that Canadians better understand the national security issues that impact them the most,” Public Safety Minister Dominic LeBlanc said in a joint statement with Foreign Affairs Minister Melanie Joly and Defence Minister Bill Blair.
Ottawa has been under pressure to better explain the intelligence community’s priorities and methods after growing revelations about attempts at foreign interference in Canada’s institutions, including its elections.
A public inquiry into the issue of foreign interference resumed Monday after holding a series of public hearings this year. The latest round of hearings are focused on how the country can spot and thwart attempts to undermine democracy.
The new document breaks down Canada’s intelligence priorities into four categories: counter, advance, defend and protect.
Among the priorities are the security of global health, food, water and biodiversity, as well as the issues of climate change and global sustainability.
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The new list also includes foreign interference and malign influence, cyberthreats, infrastructure security, Arctic sovereignty, border integrity and transnational organized crime.
But the document doesn’t say which of those priorities take precedence or explain why climate change should be treated as a national security issue on par with things like foreign interference.
“We don’t have a sense of, what are the priorities of the priorities,” said Stephanie Carvin, an international affairs professor at Carleton University and a former national security analyst.
“You can’t prioritize everything. … We need to differentiate between proper national security issues and issues with national security implications embedded in them.”
The government revises the priorities every two years, based on recommendations from the national security adviser and the intelligence community.
Once the priorities are reviewed and approved by the federal cabinet, key ministers issue directives to federal agencies that produce intelligence.
“We hope that knowledge of these Priorities will support confidence in the work of intelligence organizations and help to enhance dialogues with Canadians,” the document states.
Carvin said the transparency threshold hasn’t been met, however.
“I think the Canadian public could have withstood a more detailed take,” she said, adding she hopes future versions of the document, or further releases, get into those details more.
“In the context of the discussions that we’re having now around foreign interference, something more detailed would have been preferable.”
She added other documents already released by government agencies, including the Canadian Security Intelligence Service and the National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians, provide more detail on how intelligence works than the Thursday release.
The document also mentions the government’s work to align intelligence work with its diversity and inclusion commitments, noting that Indigenous, racialized and marginalized Canadians in particular “may have prior negative experiences with intelligence organizations in Canada or abroad” that have undermined trust and confidence.
The United States has publicized its intelligence community’s broad priorities for years. Although it keeps current versions of its National Intelligence Priorities Framework classified, it has declassified past versions, most recently the one approved in 2021.
During her confirmation Senate hearing in 2021, U.S. Director of National Intelligence Avril D. Haines outlined her priorities as building public and intergovernmental trust in the intelligence community, countering emerging physical and cyber threats, and building international partnerships.
— with files from The Canadian Press
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