"A very short fuse." Decision-making in a crisis

More thoughts on the POEC testimony from the NSIA

In the course of her (too) brief afternoon of testimony before the Public Order Emergency Commission, the National Security and Intelligence Adviser, Jody Thomas, said many interesting things.

(video stream and transcript is here: https://publicorderemergencycommission.ca/public-hearings/day-25-november-17/

Two stand out for me, and they are inter-connected. The actions and thinking described by the NSIA took place on the very eve of the invocation of the Emergencies Act, just hours before the Prime Minister would announce its invocation on February 14. They are a window into crisis decision-making at a pinnacle moment.

One was a comment about an important discussion that took place at the Deputy Ministers’ Operations Committee, or DMOC, which she chairs, on the morning of February 14. The conversation among her fellow deputies, including the director of CSIS, explored the question of how to understand uprisings in democracies, and where lines are crossed between lawful and unlawful protest, and between peaceful and violent protest. As Ms. Thomas related, this was a question “that we needed to spend more time on, but in the height of a crisis you move on to operational things very quickly.”

(testimony transcript, p. 225; the related document is SSM.CAN.0000016, available here: https://publicorderemergencycommission.ca/files/exhibits/SSM.CAN.00000116_REL.0001.pdf?t=1668902480 )

The second involved a request that the NSIA had made for a new threat assessment of the situation regarding the “Freedom Convoy” protests. It occurred the same day—February 14—and again prior to the invocation of the Emergencies Act later that afternoon. The request went out at 11:44 a.m. in an email chain indicating that the NSIA wanted the threat assessment to give to the Clerk of the Privy Council Office, for the Prime Minister. The relevant emails were short and worth quoting in their entirety.

(the document citation is PB.NSC.CAN.00008485, available here: https://publicorderemergencycommission.ca/files/exhibits/PB.NSC.CAN.00008485_REL.0001.pdf?t=1668902005)

The first (recipient list unknown) stated:

“I need an assessment for Janice [Charette, the Clerk] about the threat of these blockades. The characters involved. The weapons. The motivation. Clearly this isn’t just COVID and is a threat to democracy and the rule of law. Could I get an assessment please. David [David Vigneault, CSIS Director] is this you? Its a very short fuse.”

This was then followed up c. 20 minutes later with a further explanation from Thomas:

“This is about a national threat to national interest and institutions. By people who do not care about or understand democracy. Who are preparing to be violent. Who are motivated by anti-government sentiment.”

Clearly, the NSIA knew what she thought the threat assessment needed to address. She just wasn’t sure who could produce it, which in itself is an extraordinary admission.

When asked about these emails by Commission counsel, Shantona Chaudhury, Ms. Thomas explained that this was to be a last formal, integrated document for the Cabinet, after the multiplicity of threat assessments that had been produced by different agencies over the course of the Freedom Convoy protest. The NSIA felt that Cabinet should have such a document before the government proceeded to invoke the Emergencies Act. The threat assessment could then be a central piece of advice to support the Prime Minister’s and Cabinet’s decision-making on the Emergencies Act.

Remarkably, as the NSIA indicated in her testimony, the threat assessment was never produced. When asked why not, Ms. Thomas said:

“I think it fell through the cracks and we were overtaken by events.”

(see testimony transcript pp. 207-210)

Let’s pause here and digest the significance of this. The first thing to underline is that the NSIA was doing her job, trying to ensure that political decision-making was informed by the best available reporting from the intelligence community. That no final threat assessment could be, or was, produced is a further indication of the challenges that the national security system faced in trying to pull together a holistic intelligence picture of the Freedom Convoy. That there was no baseline understanding of what constituted a security threat to democracy compounded the problem. The national security and intelligence system was devilled by reporting gaps, weak integration of multiple streams of threat reporting, and the debilities of its open source intelligence capacity. It lacked clear insights into two key and perennial intelligence questions—the intentions and capabilities of the Freedom Convoy protesters.

How exactly the problems with threat reporting impacted on the Prime Minister and his Cabinet colleagues as they entered a rushed period of decision-making that led to the invocation of the Emergencies Act is something we don’t yet have a gauge on. Hopefully we will learn more during testimony by Ministers the week of November 21.

As we await new revelations, there are multiple possibilities to consider. One is that Ministers had essentially made up their minds that invocation of the Emergencies Act was necessary, especially on reputational and economic security grounds, and didn't need a confirmatory threat assessment. A second is that Ministers had come to feel that threat reporting was not able to answer the questions that preoccupied them, especially the possibility of further, entrenched and escalatory violent protest in a scenario in which an end game was not clear. A third was that Ministers may simply have been unused to basing decision-making on intelligence, a manifestation of what is often referred to as a weak national security culture in Ottawa.

As I said, hopefully we will learn more. But the ‘hopefully’ is tinged with real concern about the crisis decision-making that occurred leading up to the invocation of the Emergencies Act. I don’t like any of the possibilities I have outlined.