The GSRP Map: Secret no more
What does it tell us?
Thanks to recent reporting by the Fife/Chase team at the Globe and Mail we now have, for the first time in its two-decade history, a public map of the deployment of Global Security Reporting Program (GSRP) officers. These diplomats would all be declared to their host governments, so the map will not come as a surprise to them, just to Canadians.
What does the map tell us? Well, first, that the GSRP is truly global.
The map indicates that there are 5 GSRP officers posted in Central and South America; 8 in Africa; 9 in Europe and the Middle East; and 9 in Asia. Some expansion was planned in the summer of 2023 (an additional 6 posts around the world). Given the current budget cutting round, which has hit GAC hard, that expansion may have been put on hold.
The map also indicates that some countries of interest are reported on from their periphery—that is from other countries in the region where GSRP officers are posted. Peripheral coverage includes Cuba, Venezuela, Iran, Afghanistan, North Korea (DPRK) and, importantly, Russia. Presumably peripheral coverage is dictated by the challenges and dangers of having GSRP officers function within the countries on this list, owing to their authoritarian governments, domestic surveillance practices, and antagonism to the West.
While Russia is covered from the “periphery” (presumably including from GSRP diplomats posted to Riga, Latvia, and Kyiv), it is noteworthy that Canada still posts a GSRP diplomat to Beijing. That seems curious to me, not least in the light of China’s exercise of hostage diplomacy and its apparatus of surveillance repression. Perhaps it is just a legacy mission that needs reconsideration?
Among the planned expansion posts detailed in the GSRP are ones for Sao Paulo, Brazil; Warsaw, Poland; Belgrade, Serbia; Yerevan, Armenia; and Doha, Qatar. It is easy to see the case that could be made for representation in all these capitals, some driven by the need for expanded “peripheral” coverage of Russia (Warsaw, Belgrade, and Yerevan), quite apart from their own hot-spot political dynamics. Doha registers especially in the context of the current war between Israel and Hamas, and Qatar’s role as host to many senior Hamas officials.
There is also a planned expansion to Hanoi, Vietnam, which could provide one source of peripheral coverage in future on China.
Beyond the GSRP postings map, the Globe and Mail also obtained (how and from what kind of source it did not say) an org chart for the GSRP program, indicating it reports to a Director-level official in what is now designated as the Intelligence Bureau at GAC. The Director in turn is responsible to the Director-General appointed to head the Intelligence Bureau’s activities as a whole, which include national security policy advice, intelligence assessments, threats assessments regarding mission security, engagement with review bodies and (though it is not stated in the Globe report), liaison with counterpart agencies in the Five Eyes.
Does the fact that the GSRP is managed from the Intelligence Bureau make it an intelligence-collection program? That might be an understandable surmise, but the reality is that placing GSRP in the Intelligence Bureau allows, as a practical matter, for its stream of diplomatic reporting to be combined with other sources of information available to GAC to produce what is known as “all-source intelligence assessments.” The Intelligence Bureau also possesses the capacity to be able to transmit GSRP reports to Five Eyes partners, which it would do through secure channels.
There has been much speculation in media commentary that GSRP officers have occasionally exceeded their mandate. No evidence or specificity has been provided about any of this. Is it possible? —of course. GSRP officers have guidance in the form of a duties manual prepared for them in 2012. There is internal accountability through a chain of command, as well as an accountability function performed by heads of mission when they are briefed by GSRP officers (but it is important to note that GSRP officers aren’t required to report through heads of mission). There is an inter-departmental coordination committee of long-standing. Is all of this a guarantee that GSRP officers don’t sometimes stray across a grey zone dividing diplomatic reporting from intelligence collection? Of course not. Does that mean the GSRP is an intelligence collection program under another name—again, of course not.
We will have to await the release of the National Security and Intelligence Review Agency Study of the GSRP to see what it reveals (and how much is redacted) and well as to understand its recommendations. Unfortunately, as I wrote previously, release of the NSRIA report is now hung up in an ATIP request, and that is never a fast-moving process…
https://wesleywark.substack.com/p/the-globe-and-its-leakers
In the meantime, what we do know about Global Affairs, from a separate report prepared by the National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians, is that its overall intelligence program remains isolated within the department and subject to too little accountability at the senior most levels. You can find the NSICIOP report here:
https://www.nsicop-cpsnr.ca/reports/rp-2022-11-04/special-report-global-affairs.pdf
The NSICOP report made clear that Ministerial engagement and accountability for the Department’s intelligence work remains missing in action. That might be something worth fixing. Internal accountability is the foundation for external review.
GSRP - The totally ‘non intelligence’ intelligence program that sends officers to collect information that can’t be found in open source,
is shared with the five eyes, and reports to a head of intelligence assessments. How could a foreign government possibly misunderstand?
As usual, Prof. Wark provides insight gleaned from his decades of research into Canada’s intelligence - and perhaps in this case “non- intelligence” community. The eventual - possible- release of the report will be interesting indeed.