We don't have a policy (on foreign interference)

Please, someone, suggest one

For those of you who missed the Prime Minister’s extraordinary series of announcements about dealing with foreign interference yesterday here is a better (thanks CPAC) link to the speech:

https://www.cpac.ca/episode?id=767307e1-9ab2-4690-85d5-2deb51dffd60

While a heated debate continues on the value of the various measures Trudeau announced yesterday, let’s step back and ask a different question.

The question is: what does this episode tell us about the national security policy capacity of the Canadian government?

The answer: it is fatally weak.

The Prime Minister spent some time in his press conference yesterday arguing that when his government came to power they inherited no tools to deal with foreign interference. Taking heed of the revelations of Russian interference in the 2016 Presidential election they proceeded to take a number of steps: they created a mechanism to allow for election interference intelligence to be coordinated and for a panel of senior public servants to issue warnings during an election if the intelligence pointed to serious interference; they strengthened election laws; they created new and independent review bodies to monitor the work of the security and intelligence system. The PM also reminded viewers of how his government had stood strong to denounce hostage diplomacy and secure the release of the ‘two Michaels’ from Chinese imprisonment.

To defend a record is a government leader’s right and duty. That part of the speech was delivered with strength and passion.

What came next was the problem. As I recounted in a previous column we got a series of announcements (special rapporteur, two reviews, hurry up on a foreign agents registry, counter interference coordinator at Public Safety, Ministerial study of gaps in legislation and responses). The key stories are the special rapporteur and the two reviews, all of which will likely trip over each other.

The merits of each measure can be weighed. But the picture as a whole tells us one important thing. It is that the government has run out of ideas on national security policy-making in response to a particular threat, hardly a new one—foreign interference.

It has run out of ideas for two reasons. One is that it fears the political costs and media beatings that it has taken during the CSIS leaks and simply wants to pass the buck to others—starting with an “eminent person” and two very capable review bodies. On the review bodies, the Prime Minister cruelly urged them to get cracking as a matter of urgency and then, with the back of his hand, suggested that whatever findings and recommendations they came up with would not be “enough” to satisfy Canadians (read the Globe and Mail and opposition parties).

Haven’t we just been talking about the ways in which the government has become too reliant on out-sourcing policy work to firms such as McKinsey? This is policy out-sourcing taken to extremes.

A second problem is not just that the Government wants to pass responsibility for coming up with an enhanced policy on foreign interference to others, but that it lacks the capacity itself to develop strategic policy on national security. There is no Canadian national security strategy. Let me repeat that—there is no Canadian national security strategy. The last one was published in 2004 (remember Paul Martin’s brief period as PM?). The problems this policy gap created were noted by the National Security and Intelligence Adviser, Jody Thomas, in her testimony before the Rouleau Commission last Fall. Justice Rouleau didn't take the point, or perhaps even understand it. The existing policy machinery at PCO, which reports to the National Security and Intelligence Adviser, is not sufficiently resourced and has too many operational, day-to-day responsibilities, to take on strategic policy making. The same is true at Public Safety. The best that can be managed is a host of atomized strategic statements on a range of issues, the most recent being a critical minerals strategy and an Indo-Pacific strategy. A Defence review update is proving very slow to appear, as is a cyber security strategy. In any case, there is no foreign interference strategy, past, present, or future on the books.

Strategic national security policy matters. It is a way to set a roadmap for government, and organize its work and resources, to inform Canadians about threats and responses, and to broadcast to allies and adversaries alike the nature of a Canadian outlook. But strategies cannot be piecemeal. They need integration. One overarching national security strategy has to be in place to make sense of all the downstream work.

But you can’t make strategy in crisis mode, even if you have the will and capacity. The government finds itself (yet again—think Freedom Convoy) in the midst of a national security crisis (this one generated by the media, of all things, and by a hungry political opposition in a minority government setting). It is also a government that has lost its grip on national security policy. This is more, and more worrying, than the age-old political tactic of buying time.

See Campbell Clark’s take on the stall:

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/politics/article-a-scrambling-trudeaus-half-turn-on-interference/

What the Prime Minister’s speech was really all about:

A desperate attempt to buy ideas.