Canada’s Strategic Interests
By Mark Southern, Royal Military College
Environmental degradation, ongoing pandemics, internal race-relations — these topics have been concerned as ongoing issues, yet have evolved into lasting conversation pieces. As a result, they should and do concern us as Canadians, and must constantly have a place in our minds where we can all strive to contribute with positivity.
In the midst of current all-to-real social concerns, Ottawa must decide how to deal with these issues conclusively. Some equally real security ones, like cracks in a dam, are becoming progressively urgent and must be controlled before they become nothing more than regular play on the twenty-four hour news cycle.
Cyber Security
The deployment of ransomware is rapidly becoming a global issue. Ransomware and other cyberattacks are becoming more frequent, targeting critical infrastructure and sensitive government departments. In the U.S. these departments include health, energy and transport, as well as financial and oil sectors. No recent commentary concerning international security holds more true that President Biden’s April 2021 statement that the next bullet fired under conditions of war will stem from a cyber attack.
Almost every country has sustained a ransomware attack in the last year, forcing governments to rethink their critical infrastructure safety protocols. Canada ranks sixth in countries hit by cyber attacks, with 63,000 in 2020. Given the modern, highly computerized state of the world, no issue should be taken with more gravity by Ottawa than this.
The majority of cyber attacks are sourced from Russia and China. The already tenuous relationship between Beijing and Ottawa over the detention of Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou and the recent imprisonment of Michael Spavor for espionage charges, is now at greater risk given recent Chinese alignment with Russia regarding the NATO/Ukraine issue. This alignment will do little to prevent further attacks, and the risks of such attacks against security and defence, nuclear, medical, and financial critical infrastructures will be greatly increased. The government must view these as calculated attempts at undermining state safety.
China
The Russians notwithstanding, China’s expansionism in the resource-rich South China Sea, along with massive financial investments in Asia and Africa is a serious concern to Canada and the world. The Chief of Defence Staff Lt. Gen. Wayne Eyre’s statement in April of this year, in which he expressed serious concern that “China is making massive investments into its military capabilities, including new technologies such as hypersonics…artificial intelligence (and) quantum computing” seems far more ominous.
According to CSIS director David Vigneault, China “represents a significant danger to Canada’s prosperity and sovereignty” due to hostile attempts to steal business secrets and other sensitive data. This is greatly exacerbated by ongoing attempts at undermining our democratic process by threatening and intimidating politicians in Canada.
Why such activity is not a regular part of the twenty-hour news cycle already, speaks to the media’s pervasive leftist mentality and unwillingness to actually report what matters.
Foreign Intelligence Service
Many of the difficulties surrounding these issues might be assuaged if information of any value was being received. Without a foreign intelligence service, Canada is over-relying on assistance from the Five Eyes, and Trudeau’s lack of effort is being noticed. Britain may have cultivated some sources prior to China re-taking Hong Kong in 1999, but any water-well of value has surely since dried up. Similarly, the American intelligence network in China was shattered over a decade ago in 2010 when the Chinese government killed and/or imprisoned eighteen to twenty sources over a two year period. Couple that with the above-noted public official intimidation campaign, it becomes clearer that the Foreign Affairs, Defense, and Public Safety ministers holding office in the near future, must be prepared to become a hardliner to deal with such aggressive anti-democratic behaviour.
Given the current deterioration of international relationships and the heightened state of the global security environment, valuable intelligence from trained professionals concerning Chinese military, political and economic intentions will assist with Canadian policy decisions. Walking blindly through such an environment is naïve, and our international partners will undoubtedly begin to see such inaction as either a severe unwillingness to carry our share of the load, or an equally severe a sign of strategic weakness.
There are trained intelligence professionals who can undertake such a function. The DND and RCMP possess a wealth of such expertise. Members drawn from these organizations, as well as CSIS, would not require much further training in the cultivation and handling of intelligence assets. Once trained, they could easily be deployed at any embassy, and working in conjunction with Five Eyes and other NATO allies, the benefits would quickly be realized. The longer the federal government waits to create such an organization, the worse we will be viewed by our allies, and the goodwill our military and country as a whole has earned since WWII, will soon be eroded.
Mark Southern is an RCMP officer with close to 20 years of experience investigating international drug trafficking, money laundering, and cybercrime offences. He is currently a graduate student in the War Studies program at the Royal Military College.
