Canada must take seriously the cross-border influence of the growing anti-democratic forces in the United States
That stark warning is issued in a newly published report produced by a task force of former national security advisers, former Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) directors, ex-deputy ministers, former ambassadors and academics. Members of the group have advised both Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and former prime minister Stephen Harper.
The report concludes that the time is now for the federal government to rethink how it approaches national security and its relationship with the United States.
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. That’s completely new. That calls for a new way of thinking and new way of managing our relationship with the U.S.
Thomas Juneau, co-director of the task force and associate professor at the School of Public and International Affairs at the University of Ottawa.
The authors — some of whom had access to Canada’s top national security information and have briefed government cabinets 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, a rise in cyberattacks, climate change and the “democratic backsliding” in the United States.
Vincent Rigby, National Security and Intelligence Advisor to Canadian PM Trudeau until late 2021, has joined the top-shelf group of national security experts to warn not just Trudeau but is warning all of Canada; and the focus is the U.S.
After noting that numerous countries that were democracies just a decade or two ago have today become authoritarian autocracies, the report prepared for both the Canadian public and national security and police officials across the country adds:
“For Canada, such developments are especially concerning because they are occurring not only in states such as Hungary, Turkey, Poland, and Brazil, but also in the United States.”
