Man bites dog, dog bites man
The Government objects to comments at POEC Policy roundtable
The government can be very sensitive to criticism, sometimes absurdly so. This does not help the process of reform and change.
A small instance of this emerged in the closing submissions presented to the Public Order Emergency Commission recently, and now posted on the Commission website.
https://publicorderemergencycommission.ca/documents/closing-submissions/
Some of the closing submissions—essentially final, wrap-up arguments—are very long. The one submitted by the Government of Canada (GOC) is 154 pages. But it is extremely valuable, and I plan to write something about its contents in a later newsletter.
The GOC also went to the trouble of submitting a separate response to the policy roundtables that were held during the week of November 28, including the policy roundtable on “National Security and Public Order Emergencies” held on November 30 in the morning in which I participated.
https://publicorderemergencycommission.ca/files/documents/Closing-Submissions/Government-of-Canada-Policy-Submission.pdf
In case you have not guessed, I am the dog in this story. I am glad, truly, that the Government paid attention to the policy roundtables. But as the only comments from the Government on the national security round-table were directed at me, I felt I should respond. (Its not really a rabid thing).
The Government, in one of two comments, suggested that it was right for the RCMP Commissioner not to brief the National Security Intelligence Adviser to the Prime Minister about the presence of an armed group at the Coutts, Alberta border blockade, because “the investigations and eventual arrests were criminal investigations undertaken using law enforcement intelligence and authorities, which are not shared with the NSIA.” Actually, the investigations were undertaken by an RCMP-led INSET (Integrated National Security Enforcement team) based out of Calgary, which includes members from CSIS and CBSA. The GOC statement overlooks the fact that the RCMP Commissioner felt able to share this very same information with the Minister of Public Safety on February 13. Just not with the intelligence adviser to the Prime Minister. Ms. Thomas had to learn about the arrests via media reporting. Go figure.
Comment number two suggested that I misstated the evidence of the National Security Intelligence Adviser regarding ITAC (Integrated Terrorism Assessment Centre) reporting and its utility. Here is the exchange in question:
“Dr. Wark also claimed the NSIA testified that the Integrated Terrorism Assessment Centre’s (ITAC) assessments of the Convoy threat picture were ‘insufficient’ and that there were deficiencies in ITAC’s reporting. This misstates the NSIA’s evidence, which highlighted the unique and narrow mandates of each member of the national security community, including ITAC. She did not provide any commentary on ITAC’s reporting or the execution of its functions with respect to the Convoy.”
Yes, ITAC has a very narrow mandate and that is part of the problem. I commented on this prior to the hearings in my research paper for the Commission.
What became clear in the NSIA’s testimony and in the records released from the Cabinet Incident Response Group is that the NSIA believed Cabinet should have a holistic threat assessment on the Freedom Convoy, and that ITAC reporting was not sufficient for that purpose. This led the NSIA to turn to a strategic intelligence assessment unit at PCO (Privy Council Office) which reports to her, called the Intelligence Assessment Secretariat (IAS). The IAS focuses on strategic global threats. Ms. Thomas hoped that IAS could produce the missing threat assessment on the Freedom Convoy, but it was unable to do so during the short time-frame of crisis decision-making during the February 12-13 weekend, prior to the decision to invoke the Emergencies Act (EA) on February 14. No such threat assessment was ever made available to Cabinet as part of the decision-making around the EA. That is not how crisis decision-making should operate.
I hope the dog won this fight. I hope the man is OK.