A New National Security Strategy for Canada: A Report by the GSPIA Task ...

welcome everybody uh we will start i'm assuming that some people will still be uh trickling into the zoom uh

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presentation as it goes uh but it is uh 402 so we will start right away thank

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you very much for uh joining

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so welcome everybody my name is thomas juno i'm an associate professor at the graduate school of public and

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international affairs uh it's my pleasure to welcome you here today with uh vincent rigby for the launch of our

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report our task force report on national security the way this will work today vincent and

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i will speak to the report for about 20 minutes i will try to keep it fairly focused it's a long report but we'll

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make sure that we we focus on the essentials so that we have time for a discussion with everybody um at the end

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so uh the the uh what i'll do uh first before we start with the report is just

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explain to you the context of the report briefly um as uh you might have seen in

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the various things that we've done to launch the report since today in in some media coverage in what we've written on

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social media on the sips advertisement what really uh focused us to write this report is the what we think is the

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reality of a deteriorating security environment for uh canada uh there are a

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number of threats that are becoming increasingly not only intense but increasingly diverse

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and uh we wanted to bring this issue up one of our challenges however is that in

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this country there is very little tradition of discussing national security issues it is difficult to get

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traction on these issues the media covers it a bit but especially when there's a time of crisis it is simply

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not a priority for successive governments so we at the graduate school of public and international affairs at the

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university of ottawa decided to create a task force the original idea for the task force on this was from roland paris

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who is my boss who is the director of the graduate school he came up with the idea of connecting

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vincent and myself and vincent and i actually knew each other for 19 years now um vincent was my former boss my

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first boss when i started at national defense in 2003 and we had stayed in touch since vincent retired last year as

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national security and intelligence advisor to the prime minister after a career of

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more than 30 years in the public service so roland who had also known vincent for a while thought that it would be a good

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idea to um to set up this task force so what we did we brought together a group of 11 people

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all of them associated with gispia either as currency fellows or as former

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senior fellows or in rowland's case as a professor so we will not have a powerpoint

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presentation for this event except to uh show the list of of the people who have

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been involved in the um in the preparation of the group of the report so

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project was co-led by vincent and myself the report and i really do want to emphasize this was edited by madeline

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brown who did a tremendous job to make it neither too academic or too bureaucratic in its style madeleine is a

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former correspondent with the economist task force members their bios are

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extensive they are in the report that is online i will not go through them in extensive detail um because we would

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take the full hour for that but just emphasize these are all retired in some

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cases very recently retired senior officials with the canadian government former directors of csis

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like dick fadden and ward alcock former deputy ministers of foreign affairs like danielle zhang of defense again like

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ward alcock and dick fadden former ambassadors to the un like john mcnee and to a

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nato like kerry buck um i should have mentioned morris rosenberg was also a former deputy minister of foreign

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affairs former officials in other parts of the national security community like nada seman who headed fin track the

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financial intelligence units other former diplomats like masoor hussein ambassador to the uae uh margaret

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bloodworth also a former national security adviser deputy minister of defense and and numerous other senior

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positions uh margaret mckee johnston very diverse career in agriculture in

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finance in in other parts of the government so the the point in saying this is that

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uh the the uh one of our objectives is that the the collective uh wisdom the collective

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experience of this group of advisors we hope will uh lend a bit of credibility

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to the message that we are trying to uh share which is uh that canada has a

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neglected national security issues for long uh to some extent we had good

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reasons to do that we lived in a very sheltered environment in north america protected by oceans protected by the us

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but that the situation is changing and and uh for a variety of reasons that we will discuss today so in that sense we

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hope that the the the credibility of this group of advisors will lend greater uh weight uh to our uh report so on that

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i will pass it on to vincent who will speak to the first half of the report on our assessment of the threat and then

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start with the recommendations and then i will pick it up at that point just to briefly introduce vincent and as i

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mentioned it vincent is recently retired he is now a senior fellow with the norman paterson school of international

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affairs down the canal at carleton university we're very happy to have this crosstown university cooperation like

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this since his retirement vincent has also been a non-resident fellow with the american csis the center for strategic

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and international studies before that during his career before being national security and intelligence advisor

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numerous positions at the associate assistant deputy minister level at defence at the privy council office at

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global affairs and at public safety and before that in the policy group at national defense which is where he

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initially was my boss so on this vincent i will pass it on to you

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great thank you very much thomas greatly appreciate can you hear me okay we can but we seem to have lost the

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image of you okay there you go you're back there you go

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so the first thing i should say is that i am speaking to you from chelsea quebec and i have no power and no wi-fi like

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i'm sure a lot of the rest of you are in that position as as as well so i'm doing this

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off my cell phone which is the point i'm trying to make and um a call just came in so that's why my picture disappeared

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so i will handle this as best i can i've done it a couple of times before i'm a bit of a luddite but uh hopefully

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i won't be cut off or cut myself off in the next in the next hour um it's a real pleasure um to be here

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today virtually and to have a chance to to speak to you about about the report i just

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want to say my own word of thanks to ottawa you and to what i call the members of the

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advisory board but but the task force um this was really an amazing joint effort

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really a team effort and uh to roll in paris as i think

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thomas mentioned he really was the inspiration he approached thomas and i and pitch this idea of

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maybe doing a report on on national security soon after my retirement i thought it was a it was a great idea we

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do go back quite a ways thomas had mentioned he and i go back 18 years i think role and i go back about 35 years

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i was actually teaching the system at university of toronto i love to mention that and get him uh

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get him worked up that i was once his boss sort of in an academic sense but uh

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it was it was great to come together with roland into thomas and just to the members of the task force um an

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unbelievable amount of expertise and experience came together and i think that um

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the that that experience and that expertise i think lends a gravitas to this report that we hope is going to resonate with

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government and with with canadians and i think one of the most enjoyable parts of the process and the

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project was actually sitting down i think on four separate occasions thomas if i'm not mistaken uh with the members

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of the task force and talking these issues through and me for me was great because virtually every single one of

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these people was my boss at one at one time so it was great reconnecting with some of them but just the brain power

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and people who kept in touch with the issues um it was it was just a fantastic experience and i think that their

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expertise really shines through in the report and then finally as as tom has said uh madeline was was fantastic we

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use the term editor uh quite quite loosely on the cover of the document i think if

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the document is to be praised for its clarity or if it's pro style or anything like that the the credit should go to madeline she was she was fantastic

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so in terms of the report itself i mean let me just first mention that just before i retired as national security

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intelligence advisor to the prime minister last year um i did a i did a speech

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to cg uh so this would have been around uh early june of 2021

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and um i was about three or four weeks away from retirement so i decided to to lean forward a little bit as we'd

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like to see in the bureaucracy and and i i really um stated fairly bluntly that

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we're in a new world order um and we were facing a security environment that was that was

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quite quite serious and quite dangerous and quite unpredictable and at the same time i made a pitch

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that uh we needed to step up our game collectively um as a country and as a government to take on these these

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national security threats and as a as a public servant people will know you've always got to be careful how

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far how far you you lean forward in a in a public context um

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and i was particularly worried when i saw a couple of the headlines not long after the speech and one in the hill

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times a particular nsi says government should pick up its game on national security so i figured if i wasn't retiring at the end of june i probably

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would have been fired um but i i look back on that on that speech that i that

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i made then and from a purely personal perspective um just a you know talking about

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my sort of objectives with with getting involved in this report i see this as sort of part two to that to that speech

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in terms of um talking about the threat before and talking about some ideas but in a very broad way but now putting some

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meat on the bones some of those ideas and making some very concrete recommendations and i'm really pleased to have this opportunity to make some

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concrete recommendations to government and to canadians at large in terms of how we how we do with this new this new

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world i think that the report itself has two basic messages and so the first message

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is that it is a dark and gloomy world out there minister anand the defense

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minister said just last week or a couple of weeks ago that it was a dark world i would say it's a very dark world and i

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think um the the task force that was one thing that we all all

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agreed on that it it was a a very very gloomy international security

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environment at this uh at this point in time um thomas and i have done a number of of

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interviews media interviews over the last few days and and question that we've we've had repeatedly well what's the number one threat that's out there

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and and my answer to that is that there's not one single threat there's not this is the most serious threat it's china

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assertiveness or it's it's russian disinformation or it's pandemics or anything like that for me the message is that you have a

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series of threats a series of trends that come together almost in an integrated way to provide us with a

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threat environment that is quite um quite dangerous and quite quite alarming

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and again we don't want to be over alarmist and we don't want to suggest that armageddon is around the corner but

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it is a world where i think canadians have to face up to the reality that it's uh it's it's changed a great deal since

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the end of the cold since the end of the cold war so all of the the trends that are out there that i think were

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well aware of from the resurgence of great power rivalry between china and the united states russia and

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the united states manifesting itself right now in the unprovoked attack of russia

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against ukraine and then in canada seeing some of the offshoot of of um

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this this revamped rivalry in terms of hostile activities of state estate actors

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foreign interference and and espionage and disinformation and cyber attacks and

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so on and then linked to that is is i think an increased ideological competition globally

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um and we see this democracy on the retreat as we say in the report and autocracy uh potentially on the

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ascendants and a lot of noise our arms control regimes are a little

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shaky these days and this i think is a is is alarming given some of the rhetoric that's come from mr putin over

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the last little while with respect to the possible use of nuclear chemical weapons we've got lots of stuff

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happening at home in terms of ideological ideologically sorry motivated violent extremism

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we've seen um some elements of that in the convoys recently recently this year the freedom convoy in the

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blockades and couts and uh in windsor and then of course religiously motivated violent extremism isis

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and al-qaeda um their capabilities have been significantly degraded over the last number of years but they still

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retain the intent the desire to strike right without a doubt at the west so there they're there

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as well we have burgeoning technology rapidly changing technology which is serving as an enabler for a lot of these threats

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whether it's cyber attacks or disinformation or the development of sophisticated weaponry like hypersonic

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missiles and then you throw in pandemics and you throw on climate change that that's quite a witch's brew and so

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that's my answer to so what's the biggest threat it's all of these threats combined really have um fundamentally changed the

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world that we that we live in and you know all kinds of different phrases have been used i've said on numerous

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occasions that you know president biden a few days after he sworn as president talked about how this was an inflection point i mean i think it truly is we we

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are in a a new world it was interesting that um just before i retired uh a very

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well-known historian and international commentator came to speak to a bunch of deputy ministers

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about the state of the world from this this person's perspective and what was interesting is that this

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individual said that this period right now um was reminiscent of the days the

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years before the first world war and that you look at some of these trends that i've just mentioned great

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para rivalry technology coming out of the end of the industrial revolution even ideological issues with respect to

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the rise of communism and and what have you um nationalism in the balkans and populism almost in some respects and

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this individual said that um a lot of those same trends are evident and in this person's mind

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that uh there was probably a greater threat of a major war right now than there had been probably since the end of

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the second world war and that really opened up my eyes and i thought about it somewhat before them but to hear this

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person who if i if i told you the person's name go holy cow yes i know who that is it really it really grabbed me i

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think it's i think it's a nice little anecdote to tell because that that's certainly the way i think thomas and i and the rest of the task group feel that

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this is a very very dangerous world out there i would say one more thing about the threat environment i only raise it

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because there have been a couple of news stories this morning which i don't think we're entirely balanced or or fair at least in their

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headlines this this notion it was in a cbc article in particular with a headline that uh we're going to have to

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revamp our strategy with the united states because they they were they were worth threat to our to our democracy and

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the report if you haven't had a chance to take a look at it this does not say that the threat um from the u.s is a

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potential threat and it's in the form of continued democratic backsliding that could could possibly down the road lead

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to political violence and that if that were the case

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and u.s continued down that road post 2024 president trump coming back or someone like president trump this is something

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that canada would have to watch very very closely because it could be a threat to us in terms of violent

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extremism and the links between extremists and the two countries and all kinds of other things um so i just

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wanted to clarify that in case somebody read that headline oh boy that's pretty pretty interesting that you're basically

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saying the canada u.s security relationship is in jeopardy we do not say that happy to answer any questions on that

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so that the second um key message is is really what thomas has already said so i won't go and do a lot

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more deal details about it before we touch on the recommendations and that's given this this world that we live in

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given this threat environment we need to we need to step up our game and and so we we use words like complacency and a

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feeling i think that all the task force members agreed on that over the years going back a long way canada has been

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somewhat complacent about it's it's national security uh waits till the last minute to respond to events lets them

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play out retreats under the united states umbrella often and that we can't we can't do that any

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in any longer and that in fact um now is the time to to to to act

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that um you know canada's always been there when the chips are down

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there's no doubt about that and there's a you know a trained historian i often look back on the 20th century and all the wars that canada was engaged in the

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21st century afghanistan the response after 9 11. um we we respond but we often do it again

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last minute ad hoc piecemeal and with no sort of whole canada

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strategic look to it and so i we we argue that it's time to do that and we see our allies especially in the five

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eyes to a certain extent uh the g7 doing this i think especially in the five eyes the the us and and the

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uk and australia are are doing a lot in the national security side and we need to we need to step up on a whole canada

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sense so um what do we suggest should be done um we we basket the recommendations into

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uh four four groups um so there's what i call uh a strategy

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basket of recommendations then tools that we would need to carry out the strategy and then governance

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and then transparency so very quickly on the strategic and tools baskets on on

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the strategy i think one of the key recommendations of of the report is that we do need

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a national security policy coming out of a coming out of a public review and this has been bandied about for for a while

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now other reports have suggested this it's not a new idea but the fact of the matter is we've not had a national

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security policy since 2004 um so if you if you do the math

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math sorry i i think that uh they're in a in a world of about uh 18 years if i'm

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if i'm not mistaken and uh we've not had a foreign policy statement a formal foreign policy statement since 2005 we've had a defense

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policy review and now we're in the midst of an update and we've had a development review but they they were not

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um nestled within uh broader national security or foreign policy so we're we're calling for a comprehensive review

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and we'd like this review to take place because a sense that we can't be piecemeal

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anymore we can't be constantly responsive we need forward vision um and direction uh provided to

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officials to carry out a strategy um i think we need to articulate the threat and again uh the

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response to canadians because i think one of the problems for canadians is that they don't understand the threat because it's not spoken enough about and

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then i think we need to tell our allies what we're doing because again a lot of our allies have done these kinds of reviews and um they i think um

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are ahead of us not in that way in terms of articulating uh the world that we live in and how we how we want to

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respond to it this is always a controversial topic um there's a spectrum of views

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on on reviews and i'd say that that spectrum was probably even reflected in the discussions in the task force i mean

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you have at one end of the spectrum um reviews every three four years like

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clockwork full up public consultations bells and whistles etc then at the other end

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god no uh they're they're too difficult they have a shelf life of six months they're overtaken by events within

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you know four months and uh that uh there's really

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too much blood sweat and tears and anguish etc and they're not worth it in the end i i think that for my own

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personal from my own personal perspective i'm i'm in the middle and i don't think we need reviews every every

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couple of years but i would argue that um that after as many years as we've gone

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without a national security review or a fond pulse review it's it's time and i've said publicly if you do these

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reviews right and you do them quickly and they can be done quickly um they can be

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extremely extremely helpful and if the world changes if uh russia invades ukraine and it's no

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longer an exclusive focus on china then you can do an update and you can do those reasonably quickly so uh but we we

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feel it's important to tend to go a review um the next basket just has to do with with

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tools and and so again in a perfect world this would be part of a national security

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uh review but uh even without such a review i think we we do need to take a a long

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hard look at specific tools starting probably with legislation i think everybody's on the bandwagon these days

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about the thesis act which has been around for almost 40 years but never had

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an exhaustive review it's been tinkered with but um it's not kept based with technological change in particular but

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other other areas of of society have changed dramatically so the thesis act i

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think we've already having a good look at the emergencies act right now the legislation surrounding fintrac the

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investment canada act so looking at those legislators pieces of legislation and the authorities that come out of

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them i think would be would be very critical we spent a lot of time in the tool section talking about information

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sharing how we do intelligence and i think the number one message there without going into every single recommendation because there's quite a

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few is that we we not only don't always share information within government as

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well as as we could and stove pipes and you know the inner core of the national security community versus the outer core

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we talking to each other etc but outside of government we need to do a much better job if you look at the

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kinds of things that are happening including the events earlier this year with the convoy et cetera we should be sharing in

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our view more information and where possible intelligence to other levels of government provinces

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territories cities um with municipalities with the private sector with universities to to respond

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to a lot of the threats that that are out there and again these national security threats are affecting individual canadians and lower

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levels of government like never before they're not just aimed exclusively at the federal government so i think this is this is important

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um and then finally i just think we need to to to fine-tune the various

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instrument tools needed to to respond to two elements i think uh hasa the hostile

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activities of state actors um espionage foreign interference

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um cyber attacks et cetera you know we're in good shape in some areas and i think on the cyber piece in particular we've

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made unbelievable progress and csc and the cyber center are you know best best in class but in other

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areas i think we need to do a little bit of catching up and we have to we have to do a little bit more work in terms of

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um responding to these events or these these threats and then uh finally on

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ideologically motivated violent extremism i mean this is a real concern a real concern and you've seen the director of ceases talk about it

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um quite a bit publicly and so how do how do we counter that what are the kinds of things that we

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need to do in terms of responding to to these ideologically

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motivated violent extremists through um open source intelligence for instance

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through the scraping of social media do we need a strategy we don't we don't recommend a strategy to respond to

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domestic violent extremism but they have one the united states and they produced one very very quickly not not long after biden came to power so it's something

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for us to to think about so i'll i'll stop there i'm sorry i talked a little bit along i'll pass it back to thomas

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and i'm really looking forward to the ensuing discussion uh thank you uh vincent on the issue of

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the ensuing discussion that uh vincent just mentioned you have at the bottom of your screen a q a box uh or icon uh you

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can type in uh questions there a few of you have already done it uh once we're done we'll just go through at least

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those questions that we have time to go through until five o'clock and uh happily uh discuss some of these issues

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so vincent mentioned the first two buckets of recommendations in our report bucket one was the need for a national security

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strategy review bucket two was tools uh to address some of the threats that he

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mentioned in the first part bucket three is governance i.e how do we actually set

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up the national security community to deal with the threats that uh vincent vincent talked about

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when talking about governance of national security in canada the first point to make is that the situation has

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changed a lot in the last five years or 10 years a lot of these changes have been

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positive in particular we can mention the established establishment of review and oversight bodies especially the national

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security and intelligence review agency and sierra and the national security and intelligence committee of

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parliamentarians nsi crop for all their growing pains these two bodies have been

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in our view very positive um the committee structures in the public service to support uh the government at

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the deputy minister at the assistant deputy minister level have changed a lot in recent years that is also generally

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positive but overall it remains far from optimal so we make a number of

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recommendations at that level one of the key ones is the creation of a

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cabinet level body chaired by the prime minister dedicated to national security issues this is a recommendation that a

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number of people have made over the years um that has not been systematically

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implemented sometimes a bit but never in a sustained way right now national security issues in cabinet are generally

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addressed in an ad hoc reactive manner largely to respond to the crisis of the day um of course you need that we need

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crisis management bodies to be flexible to be able to react quickly when something happens the problem is that

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the focus has been way too much on that a national security committee of cabinet

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chaired by the prime minister with relevant ministers foreign affairs defense public safety others on an as

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necessary basis would allow on a regular basis to have strategic discussions on long-term

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issues of of national security once this happens you would need the

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bureaucracy under that deputy minister committees assistant deputy minister committees to adjust to this new

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structure we're not going to get into the alphabet soup of committees created at the deputy and assistant deputy minister level but

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there is an argument to be made that the current structure is a bit too heavy a bit too rigid and that there would be a

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need to better streamline it another recommendation that we make is for the uh policy capacity in the

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department of public safety public safety canada to be strengthened um in a world where threats are diversifying

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threats are intensifying and in particular where as vincent said there's a need for the federal government to work much more closely with

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non-traditional partners not only inside ottawa but also outside ottawa with provinces with municipalities with the

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private sector with universities with civil society with allies um

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that calls for coordinating bodies it calls for better information sharing bodies better outreach better engagement

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and there is in that sense a need for public safety to strengthen its policy capacity it's there

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but it is generally well known in ottawa that there is a serious need to strengthen it

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and we make a number of recommendations at that level another recommendation that we make is to strengthen the

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intelligence analysis capacity at the center of the government right now the intelligence analysis community in in

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canada is fairly siloed it's fairly scattered uh there are some good reasons for that but we do think that it would

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be useful to strengthen it at the center with an all-source fusion intelligence

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unit that would be able to better support ideally a new cabinet level uh body and one way to to do that would be

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to merge two existing entities that exist out there the intelligence assessment secretary at in the privy

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council office and the integrated terrorism assessment center itac which is housed in csis right now by putting

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these two together that would provide a stronger central body we make a number of recommendations at

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the level of human resources and we absolutely understand and this is one topic that always is very important to

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me that as soon as you start talking about human resources i start rolling i start rolling in the media definitely

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in academia but also in the public service but that's kind of the point that because

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human resources issues have been neglected because they are sleep inducing for a lot of people and that's

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created problems that fester in the community today so we make a number of recommendations with the bottom line being we need to take a number of

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critical human resources issues much more seriously in the community in terms of recruitment in terms of retention

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there are significant staffing issues throughout the community that can only be addressed by not by

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quick fixes but by deeper uh deeper solutions one of them is the security

30:17

clearance process which is widely known in ottawa it is not a secret at all that the process is dysfunctional it takes

30:24

forever to get clearances which is not just annoying it creates staffing backlogs vacancies and and so on and it

30:31

also damages morale in the community when people are told you know you have to wait for a year or you can't transfer

30:36

to a new job because it's going to take a year to transfer the clearance and so on that's the third bucket of

30:41

recommendations the fourth bucket and last and i will stop after this is transparency and engagement

30:48

this is an issue that is very important to me in particular i've worked over the last three years as the non-government

30:55

co-chair of a body called the national security transparency advisory group which is an external independent

31:00

advisory body that advises the deputy minister of public safety on issues of transparency so we've worked a lot on

31:06

these issues quick plug we have a report coming out in about 10 days on relations between the national security community

31:12

and racialized communities in canada so to some extent what i'll be saying in the next three minutes and what's in the

31:18

report in this fourth section does touch on some of the issues that we at the transparency advisory group have

31:25

raised over the years and the key point here the underlying point is

31:30

traditionally the national security community in canada has not been transparent things have improved quite a

31:36

bit in the last 5 or 10 years that has to be said it has to be recognized but it is far from enough and and one

31:42

way of seeing this is that traditionally there's been this perception in the national security community that there's

31:48

a trade-off between transparency and national security that transparency may be good for some ethical or democratic

31:54

reasons but more transparency has to come at the expense of less national security or vice versa and that

31:59

therefore it's an issue of striking a balance and fundamentally that is a wrong way of seeing it the lack of

32:06

transparency in canada and other western democracies for that matter this is not a problem that is specific to canada at

32:12

all is a national security issue and that more transparency is ultimately

32:17

good for national security we absolutely recognize that transparency is hard it

32:22

takes time it takes energy it takes political will and in many cases to be realist

32:28

transparency uh comes with a bit of a short-term cost um but that in the long term it comes with greater longer-term

32:35

benefits so we make a number of recommendations at the level of transparency generally speaking there's a need to

32:41

better institutionalize transparency measures there's a bit of a tendency to put transparency as a parallel slightly

32:48

marginal aspect of what the community does it needs to be routinized it needs to be mainstreamed

32:54

uh we give examples of how to do that publishing for example an annual threat assessment uh to inform canadians to

33:02

contribute to the debate to show what are the priorities of the government publish our list of intelligence

33:07

priorities which is something that a lot of our allies do um increasing the public presence not only

33:13

of leaders of the community speeches and social media but also at the political level ministers uh the prime minister

33:19

there's been a lot more of that in recent years but that's good but there's scope to do it even more

33:25

more engagement with parliament transparency is about communicating with canadians in a proactive manner but it's

33:31

also about communicating and engaging with elected officials this is something that again

33:36

traditionally has not been done very well um briefings uh to parliamentarians

33:42

mps senators obviously leaders of the opposition there's been more of that in recent years but again there is scope to

33:49

do it a lot more and briefings not only on the threat but also on advice on how

33:54

to deal with those threats mps and senators are very often the targets of foreign interference cyber attacks and

34:00

so on so we need to to to better equip them finally the last point that i'll make

34:06

and after that we will move to the q a is the issue of diversity and of engagement of the national

34:11

security community with minority communities in general again there's been a bit of a tendency in a lot of

34:17

circles to view this as as as a good thing but in in somewhat of an abstract sense um but as uh our work in the

34:25

transparency advisory group has clearly shown vincent and i had a number of interviews with senior members of the

34:32

intelligence community in preparation for this report the issue of diversity has been heavily

34:37

politicized in terms of its public debates on it and and to some extent that's obscured the actual reasons why

34:43

we want diversity where it's become a bit of a left versus right debate but in practice in the real world diversity in

34:50

the community is mission critical diversity in terms of gender in terms of ethnic origins in terms of professional

34:56

backgrounds for that matter right we should define diversity in a very broad way it is essential for the community to

35:02

best do its job in terms of cultural understanding in terms of linguistic skills in terms of diversity to avoid

35:09

groupthink et cetera et cetera a lack of diversity in that sense is a national

35:14

security problem and that's why more diversity is as something that is not only good in itself which absolutely

35:22

does matter for ethical reasons for moral reasons but also for uh pragmatic

35:28

reasons so that's the bulk of the report uh we have just summarized a 40 page 15 000

35:34

word paper in about 30 minutes there's a lot that we didn't say the report is online you can

35:40

access it by just googling university of ottawa graduate school of public and international affairs on the cover page

35:46

you'll see of the the the website of the school you'll see a link to the report we've tweeted it out also

35:53

during the day um and on that basis happy to start uh asking

35:59

some questions for the questions i'll select them uh read them and then uh ask vincent to reply

36:06

i have a lot of questions vincent so we should try to keep our answers fairly short so that we can touch on as many

36:11

questions as possible and then if there's anything to add i will jump in first question from uh jim cox which uh

36:19

is who is a former uh colleague uh and former official in the in the

36:24

community uh congratulations on the report so thank you for the nice words but then very good question such a broad

36:29

policy can only come to life when implemented by a grant strategy and subordinate functional strategies does

36:36

government have the necessary stable policy grant strategy strategy taxonomy

36:41

to enable real effective action and basically not just a piece of paper with

36:47

a grand strategy can we actually do it in practice vincent

36:54

um that's a fantastic question that's a great great way to start off off the discussion um i agree and it's funny we had this

37:02

conversation with with someone in the bureaucracy earlier today about the need for a comprehensive overarching strategy

37:09

that covers national security foreign policy etc and there's always this debate um

37:16

and i've been hearing anecdotally that in the case of the united kingdom and their integrated review they're now kind

37:21

of questioning whether they should have done such a comprehensive strategy given that the world has kind of

37:28

changed overnight one could argue i would say that we've been seeing these changes for a while but you know the focus on asia pacific is suddenly oh boy

37:35

we've got russia and ukraine how are we going to manage this so questioning whether we should do

37:41

an overarching strategy but just to on the foreign policy side at least regional strategies and so there's been talk for quite a while that indo-pacific

37:47

strategy um other countries have strategies for the americas for africa etc i mean i i

37:53

personally think you need both um you know regional strategies are great especially from a foreign policy

38:00

perspective um but they're not necessarily gonna tackle all of the the overarching

38:05

priorities of government um the tools that the government is going to require

38:11

to protect their national security to conduct their foreign policy to conduct their defense policy etc you need that

38:17

that opening piece and then there can be those those sub pieces without it without a doubt

38:22

do we have the policy capacity either just a an overarching

38:28

comprehensive strategy or or or both with sub strategies do we have the policy capacity do we have the

38:34

wherewithal to do it uh yeah i think i think we do um i think we're out of practice

38:40

we're very out of practice and i think that for for some both at the political and the bureaucratic level there's been a little

38:47

bit of fear that it's been so long since we've done one of these um in a major way the defense policy was a

38:53

huge undertaking the international assistance policy review which i was engaged in was a huge undertaking but a big big piece

38:59

it would be it would be tough to do but um i think it's a little bit like riding a bike it's going to come back to you and you can do it fast and you can do it

39:05

you can do it effectively and i think one of the ways to to do these strategies is to

39:12

um i think this is one of the lessons learned from the integrated review in the uk strong central direction that's

39:18

always controversial not everybody likes that when there's too strong direction from the center but i i know in the case

39:25

of the uk review um the the the bureaucratic center

39:30

um council and the prime minister's office were were linked at the hip and of course you've got to be careful about

39:36

that in terms of providing advice to to the government but in order to get things done and get it done quickly that

39:42

uh that is that is necessary um i think in terms of of implementing

39:48

it i mean that that's the key the grandest strategy in the world is useless unless you can implement it so one of the things that we say in the

39:53

report is resource the strategy and i can give you a long list of

40:00

reviews over the years strategies white papers whatever you want to call them that were not resourced not only were

40:05

they not resourced but they weren't costed and so it has to be thoroughly costed and resourced from from the outset and i

40:11

think to a certain extent uh we saw this a little bit with with the defense review although there could

40:16

be some arguments about about that but um i think that's that's a a very important piece to do and i think in

40:22

terms of the implementation this again i i would borrow a little bit from the integrated review um you need

40:29

a specific series of of benchmarks in terms of what you're going to do but then you need

40:35

almost a performance measurement framework after the fact to to tick off what you've done and to

40:40

make sure that you do what you say you're going to do because this is another um bad habit of government or bad habit of

40:47

white papers and great strategies that you know this is the cynical response they're just a piece of paper nothing

40:52

ever gets done with them you have to make a commitment to follow up and you almost need an implementation team

40:58

um that you know checks in every six months to cabinet and says so this is what we've

41:04

done in terms of implementation xyz you know we're 75 on this or 50 on that or

41:10

whatever the case may be we've got you know the color coded almost scheme so um this is what i mean by effective

41:18

strategies they they they can't just be paper and ink they do have to have

41:24

implementation strategies they have to be fully resourced and how they're done is is critical because without a doubt

41:29

if you don't do the property they can take years uh endless public consultations and then

41:34

and then they're not worth the paper that they're written at the end of the day so so jim i don't know if that answers your question completely but

41:41

those are some of my thoughts uh thanks i i won't add anything to that

41:46

since it covers a lot except to really emphasize the issue of political will uh you know whether the bureaucracy has the

41:52

capacity to develop and then implement i think the answer is yes does it have the optimal capacity no and we do make some

41:58

recommendations to try to build up that capacity but the starting point and one that has to underlie all of that is

42:04

political will which so far has not has not been there another question uh

42:10

to to to raise is the issue of the arctic um on on on risks and and uh

42:17

russia and china and the arctic and here i'll let vincent speak to the arctic since i think he knows that issue far

42:22

better than i do but i just want to emphasize one aspect one of the the key themes that we make

42:27

in the report is that when you look at the spectrum of threats that faces canada today it's very diverse it's very

42:34

diffuse um there's not one threat we couldn't even identify a number one threat and put all

42:41

the other ones behind and one of their characteristics is that for a lot of these threats it is not

42:46

only the federal government that is the target the targets are other levels of government it's civil society it's the

42:53

private sector it's universities it's individual canadians if you think about threats such as economic espionage for

42:59

example a lot of it targets the private sector what that means and this is one of the

43:04

key points we want to emphasize is that we need to really improve our capability

43:10

and our ability at the institutional level but also at the cultural level inside the bureaucracy to work with

43:15

non-traditional partners whether it's other levels of government the private sector universities and civil society

43:22

for example which is not something that the national security community does especially well it's improving but there's still a lot of scope for

43:28

improvement the link to the question on the arctic is is very important

43:33

because the the threats to the arctic in canada are not threats that need to be countered

43:40

solely by the military for example there are threats that need to be countered uh

43:46

yes by the traditional security actors the military and the rcmp for example but also at a very much uh in terms of

43:53

involvement involving the social and economic tools of the government not only at the federal level but also at

43:58

the territorial level and in some cases at the municipal level which again comes back to the issue that i was mentioning

44:03

of the need to improve our capability to share information uh among a diverse

44:08

range of actors who do not have uh the habit of uh working together so i think before going into the

44:15

specifics of of the risks and the arctic that maybe vincent can develop a bit more on that overall point i think is

44:22

essential to think about the arctic thanks very much thomas i agree with everything that you have to say the

44:28

arctic is a perfect example of the interconnectedness of these threats that we're talking about so

44:33

i mean it's it's it's climate change um with respect to exploitation of

44:39

resources greater shipping that sort of thing it's also the threats and the concerns in in the

44:45

region are a reflection of research and great power rivalry uh what russia is doing what china is looking to do

44:51

potentially in the arctic so this is that uh with the threats there's there's almost

44:56

a connective tissue between so many of them and that's why we find that they're that they're that they're so that they're so dangerous

45:02

um and again you know defining national security and it's in its in its broadest sense um

45:08

it's it's not just as thomas said a traditional as you want to call it that

45:13

russian military threat in the arctic i don't think we're going to see you the soviet hordes coming with the polar

45:20

ice cap any any anytime soon but there's so much going on in terms of um

45:26

competition for for resources um environmental protection

45:31

these are all potentially national security issues at the at the end of the day when they start to affect our economic well-being our social

45:37

well-being how our indigenous population is treated in the arctic so these these are all part of part of the puzzle

45:43

um but but no there there's there's a definitely i think especially in the wake of the russian invasion of ukraine

45:50

this has kind of put an exclamation mark on great power activity in the in the arctic and so i think more than even before and god knows we

45:57

were paying a lot of attention to it before we now look at what the next russian moves may be maybe in the region

46:03

and what uh what this may what this may mean so again thomas is right i think

46:08

the the arctic is not purely um a a this it can't it can't be

46:15

exclusively a military solution because it's not necessarily primarily a military problem in the sense of you

46:20

know ground forces or something like that you you need um presence you need economic

46:26

infrastructure you need social programs so much has to be done i think uh in in the

46:33

north and it has to be again hold of government all of canada we've seen some some steps in this direction in the last

46:38

number of years but in my view we've talked a very very good game in the arctic for a very long time but we've not actually you know walked walked the

46:45

talk at the end of the day and so um now is the time to to step it up and i think given what's happened in ukraine

46:52

that's uh that's a perfect opportunity to to take a good long hard look at what we can do having said what i just said

46:58

about the military is not necessarily front and center on this issue all the time it does have an important role to

47:03

play and so um very encouraged to see some of the statements that have come out over the

47:08

last year with respect to canada u.s commitment to norad modernization and

47:15

some some good language in the budget and hopefully something's going to be done on that i i

47:21

do think we need to move on that i think it's extremely extremely important that uh a we don't want to test u.s

47:28

patients but the threat is the trend and the russian threat is expanding and we need to we need to step up and then just

47:34

some of the stuff that we've had um in the hopper for so so long whether whether it's nano civic and the fueling

47:41

um refueling station or the arctic offshore patrol ships that that are well behind schedule this touches on the

47:47

issue of defense procurement that's probably a topic for another day but uh we need to get going on the stuff we we

47:54

we really do i'll stop there uh thank you so i'll skip a few questions and we still have some but

48:00

please don't hesitate to submit more there's a student a question from trey who is a student in carleton so i didn't

48:05

want to i didn't want to make sure that we had a question uh from um a student i'm assuming then i do

48:11

recognize names of some of my students uh former students in the in the list of attendees um but i did want to make sure

48:17

that that we we would give you a question so um as a student coming into this field

48:23

at carlpin how can the youth or younger generations drive these changes forward within the public service is it a matter

48:29

of understanding and carrying some of these values forward in our careers or is this a moot point without direction

48:36

changes from the direction or changes from the top and said you want to take a first crack

48:41

and i'll i'll build on it he's here these are great questions and that's that's

48:46

that's one that i that i love actually i i think um as we said at the beginning one of the

48:53

problems at canada is that we don't have a very robust national security dialogue and we haven't for for decades i would i

49:00

would suggest it ebbs and flows depending on the threat and debating on what's happening in the world at a given point in time and so we need

49:07

to articulate um the threat we need to talk about the threat we need to talk about what we

49:13

need to do to respond to that threat with canadians uh within government with our allies

49:19

and i i think that for for young people coming into the public service or coming into the armed forces or going into

49:26

universities or going into think tanks or whatever they want to do with private sector um it's talking about it and and you

49:33

know the great the great issues of the day um i i see climate change for example where you see

49:39

the power of youth you see young people speaking so passionately about climate change as the

49:46

existential threat to humanity um i'm not sure in that saying that canada's national security is

49:53

necessarily equivalent to to global climate change but i do think it's

49:58

pretty darn important and on some level it would be nice to see that that that same passion or or a degree of that

50:05

passion devoted to national security and i think for the young people uh coming up into the workforce uh i mean these

50:13

these could be existential threats at the end of the day if we if we don't take care of our national security if we if we don't if we don't address some of

50:19

these issues um you know we we will be in trouble and again we

50:26

didn't want to talk about the coming armageddon or anything like that or suggest that it was around the corner but issues of national security you know

50:32

go go right up to um look at the threats that putin's been making recently as i said earlier in

50:38

nuclear war and some and so on these these are existential in many in many ways and so for younger people to step up who

50:46

who get that who understand it who come into the public service and other other walks of life and and are

50:53

passionate about it and push it up the chain yes we need the direction from above with without a doubt but uh you

50:59

need it from from below as well and i i know public servants over the last 30 years of my career have been been providing the best possible advice

51:07

um to the to the government and some of that advice has been taken on board some of it hasn't that's the nature of parliamentary democracy but i always

51:14

found some of the best ideas and some of the new ways of thinking and the innovative thinking came from younger people

51:19

um and i remember some ministers coming into portfolios going um you know i want

51:24

i i don't want the old farts like rigby briefing me bring me in some younger people i want to have a conversation

51:30

about about you know truly truly innovative ideas i thought it was great and i'd be the one to go out and help

51:36

find those that that younger cohort to come in and talk about some of these issues so

51:41

um so that that's that's uh i'll stop there times um i'll i'd add two points to that to

51:47

that very good question uh focused on issues of transparency and diversity first of all on the issue of diversity

51:54

uh the national security community is is really not as diverse as it should be

52:00

that being said if you look at the numbers today and the numbers 10 or 20 years ago it is increasingly diverse why

52:06

because newer cohorts younger people to answer your question who are being hired are far more diverse uh in every way

52:15

than they were 10 or 20 years ago where they were far less diverse and if you go even more

52:20

back in time basically not diverse which was not acceptable as a as a as a situation

52:26

so when you look at the diversity in the national security community it is a much more diverse at the lower levels of the

52:33

hierarchy which is normal because that's the younger people and the higher up you go the less diverse it is which is

52:40

not good which is a problem but it's kind of inevitable because it reflects the hiring of 10 20 and 25 years ago so

52:47

in terms of of the youth coming in i think that um there's this element of diversity that

52:53

that comes into the community that is essential and in that sense i am you know cautiously optimistic that that

53:00

that will improve things over over time in direct parallel to that is the issue of transparency um one thing that i

53:07

found in in my work on the research side but also to some extent in in the work in the transparency advisory group is

53:14

that uh who is in favor and who is not in favor of more transparency in the national

53:19

security community and here i'm going to massively simplify right i'm going to really a simplification that is not

53:26

always true what i found is that there is a lot of people at the most senior levels of the national security

53:32

community who do want more transparency because they get it that in the longer term it is good for the community at the

53:38

lower levels among the youth this is where your question comes in people who've been in the government say for

53:43

less than five years there's also a lot of support for transparency because it reflects a the fact that they haven't

53:49

been uh you know [Music] assimilated into a culture that is not

53:54

uh traditionally very transparent but also you know they come from the social media generation etc etc so at the

54:01

younger level at the lower levels you also have that support for transparency often the resistance to more transparency comes from the middle level

54:08

because they are the ones who are less young but they're also the ones who pragmatically would have to deal with

54:14

those transparency initiatives on a day-to-day basis and as i said as much as i would support that the reality is

54:19

that it is it is work um so i think my my bottom line in

54:25

answering your question is that as we see younger generations come in more diverse more in favor of transparency as

54:31

vincent said with more fresh new ideas that's good and what we need to make

54:36

sure is that these trends continue because with time uh you know younger generations will go

54:43

up the hierarchy and hopefully uh not see their uh these these new trends

54:49

diluted too much so we are getting close to the top of the hour uh there are still a lot of

54:55

questions i would like to take one question from rachel um hi rachel uh

55:00

nice to have you here and ask a question very good question on the issue of economic security which vincent and i uh

55:07

touched on uh briefly in in some of our our points but basically rachel's question and i think this is a broad

55:14

question but extremely important how are you or how far are you incorporating economic security factors in your

55:20

definition of national security um i think that's the last question we'll take because it is four minutes away

55:25

from uh five but if vincent you want to say uh just a few words uh on on that

55:30

issue of economic security well absolutely it's another good question but it's at the heart i think

55:36

of any definition of national security national security is about the security of people the security of

55:42

institutions it's about protecting our democratic values it's protecting our social cohesion it's also about

55:48

enhancing our prosperity and um making sure that our economy

55:54

um is not is not threatened and undermined so um if you get a chance to read the board or

56:02

haven't had a chance to look at detail yet i think you'll see economic security as a theme that runs through throughout

56:07

the report and especially um in the wake of of the pandemic and some of the

56:13

activity we saw during the pandemic with respect to um attempts by hostile state and non-state actors as

56:19

well to undermine our economic security uh whether through cyber attacks

56:26

ransomware espionage theft of intellectual property

56:31

um certain nefarious potentially nefarious

56:36

investments by by foreign state actors under the investment in canada act um we

56:41

need to type the screws we really do need to tighten the screws to make to make sure that we're we're on top of this issue but it's uh it's it's central

56:48

to i think to any definition of national security yeah i think that's that's that's a

56:53

great point uh two two quick things to to finish off on that one uh again it

56:58

reflects the point that that we made in answering the question on the arctic points that we made uh before the issue

57:04

of economic espionage other threats to economic security call for the national security community the traditional

57:09

actors thesis csc rcmp fintrac uh in in some cases to

57:15

work with non-traditional partners in ottawa in terms of dealing with foreign investment for example but also the

57:21

private sector one thing we saw during the pandemic was a serious rise in

57:27

threats of intellectual property theft in the biopharmaceutical and medical research sectors

57:33

vaccine research in particular that called on css and csc in particular to reach out to the private sector to the

57:39

research sector pharma pharmaceutical sector universities and help them equip themselves against that threat that's

57:46

great i think that's a positive trend but there needs to be more transparency in that engagement there needs to be

57:51

more sustainability in that engagement because even as the pandemic subsides it's not going to stop think about

57:57

climate change for example as climate change becomes increasingly intense one of the most critical sectors of economic

58:03

activity in canada will be the development of technologies to adapt ourselves to climate change and which

58:10

will inevitably increasingly be a target of uh espionage by hostile and sometimes

58:15

not so hostile actors so that again shows you this this importance of developing these

58:21

mechanisms to work as part not just of the whole of government but a whole of society a whole of canada approach to

58:28

deal with these issues it goes for economic espionage but it goes for other sectors too very specifically and i'll

58:34

finish on this on the issue of the investment canada act one point that we do include in the in the reports uh the

58:40

investment canada act uh you know determines the process to review uh

58:46

foreign investments by uh hostile uh foreign hostile actors state actors you

58:51

know in practice not only but largely china um one recommendation that we make

58:57

is to tighten the criteria for what counts as a a valid or not valid what

59:02

you know what are the indicators of the criteria that are uh used or measured in national security reviews under the

59:08

investment canada act because as of right now these criteria are somewhat vague which gives the government a lot of

59:14

discretion but causes a fair bit of frustration on the private sector side so we do suggest that these uh criteria

59:21

be clarified so that it's it's a more transparent but uh smoother process in

59:26

that sense um there are uh some other questions but

59:31

it is five o'clock and we did say that it would be a one hour event uh so i would like to uh uh apologize to those

59:39

uh who have questions at whom we did not answer we're sorry about that some of them i could see them are very good questions but uh we we do have to stop i

59:47

do want to thank uh anna and andrew from sips for their help in uh at the

59:52

logistical level and technological level uh to make this uh possible as ever we would not be able to do it without your

59:59

support so thank you very much again vincent and i would like to thank the members of the task force some of

1:00:05

whom were in in attendance today um for their tremendous assistance and guidance

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and advice in in drafting uh this report and of course uh including roland whose

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uh idea this was so uh vincent do you want to close off with finishing words

1:00:21

no i think i would just echo what you said that uh thank you to everybody who's participated in the report and

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we truly hope that this adds to the debate on national security in canada

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makes a difference um i think we have modest expectations just to be listened to to promote a debate

1:00:40

and if some of those recommendations are carried through at the end of the day that that would be great it would be would be wonderful to see but again

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maybe a final clarion call to all of you who are in on this discussion today um get engaged

1:00:52

uh speak up if you have strong views about this and you agree with some of the recommendations in the report and you have a platform to support the

1:00:59

report and some of those recommendations speak up that would be i think really really helpful thanks so much everybody

1:01:04

thanks thomas yes on that uh thank you very much obviously to you too vincent and on that

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have a good evening everybody thank you very much for being with us and if you have questions or comments obviously

1:01:15

don't hesitate to send me a message directly happy to continue

1:01:20

the conversation so on that merci beaucoup