What’s it going to take? Just how badly must our national security be compromised before our political leaders start to take it seriously?
All around the world the tide of war is rising, a global struggle between the democracies and a loose alliance of dictatorships the writer Anne Applebaum has called Autocracy Inc. Russia is bent on conquering Ukraine. Iran is fighting a proxy war with Israel. China is preparing to invade Taiwan. North Korea regularly threatens the South with annihilation. Each increasingly relies on the others for support.
Perhaps citizens of the other democracies imagine the fight can be contained to these theatres. They should discard this illusion. Whether they know it or not, the war is already being taken to them, in stealth or hybrid form: sabotage, intimidation, infiltration and disinformation, all using the West’s signature strength, its openness and freedom, against it.
Russia has been waging an increasingly intense war of sabotage across Europe. Iran has helped to fund the violent anti-Israel street protests that have convulsed much of the West. Chinese hackers are inventing new and more destructive forms of cyber warfare. Trotsky’s aphorism has never seemed more apt: You may not be interested in war, but war is interested in you.
And here in Canada? Each week, it seems, some new scheme to undermine our democracy is brought to light: from Russia’s program of covertly funding online “influencers” willing to spread its propaganda and disinformation; to China’s clandestine attempts to interfere in our politics, smearing and intimidating politicians it does not like, funding or even recruiting politicians it does; to this week’s astonishing allegations of murder and mayhem – against Canadian citizens, on Canadian soil – on the part of agents of the government of India, a supposed democratic ally.
There is no other way to say it: We are under attack, by multiple players on multiple platforms. Worse, they seem to have had help – not just by omission, as in the monumental negligence of the Trudeau government that is currently the subject of the Hogue inquiry on foreign interference, but it seems the willing participation of some members of Parliament.
Ever since last June’s bombshell report of the all-party National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians, alleging that some of the very people who are supposed to safeguard our security – senators and MPs, government and opposition, present and former – had been using their positions to advance the interests of a foreign power, there has been an equally bipartisan effort to see that as little as possible is done about it.
Much energy has been devoted to exonerating those involved from the specific legal charge of treason, as in last week’s testimony before the Hogue inquiry by the Prime Minister’s national security and intelligence adviser. But that is hardly the standard of behaviour we expect of people in public office: that they should avoid committing actual treason. And what they are alleged to have done – selling secrets, influence and even information on their colleagues to China and India in return for money and political muscle – is damning enough.
Yet so far as it is possible to tell, none has faced any consequences. We don’t even know their names. For all the public knows, they may be sitting in Parliament now – and may soon be standing for re-election. Everyone with any sense knows this is an intolerable situation, that it cannot possibly be allowed to continue. And yet continue it does.
If there were any doubt of how serious this is, it was dispelled by Justin Trudeau’s dramatic testimony on Wednesday, in his appearance before the Hogue inquiry.
He had, he said, been briefed on the names of certain Conservative parliamentarians – whether they were senators or MPs was unclear – who had “engaged” in foreign interference, or were at least at risk of doing so. And yet, he complained, he was unable to pass their names along to the leader of the Conservative Party, Pierre Poilievre, to take such action as was required, because the latter had refused to undergo the necessary security clearance to receive such classified information.
This was a remarkable statement, for two reasons. One, it has become a theme at the foreign interference hearings that this Prime Minister, like his officials, is more usually entirely in the dark about important national security matters, having either not been briefed, or not read the relevant memo, or never received it. How often has one senior Liberal or another insisted that they only learned of some shocking event after reading about it in The Globe and Mail?
Certainly that seemed to be the case whenever it was more convenient for them not to know, as for example with regard to a request from intelligence officers to put a senior Liberal power broker suspected of ties to the Chinese government under surveillance. But when the matter is alleged security risks in the Conservative party, suddenly the Prime Minister is supremely well briefed.
And yet, two, Mr. Trudeau conceded, under questioning, that there were also Liberal parliamentarians on the list, and that he knew their names, too. That knowledge did not appear to have spurred him to take any of the sorts of actions he expected of his Conservative counterpart. The value of a security clearance would seem to be the ability to choose which briefings to skip, and which to ignore.
Still, the Prime Minister has a point. It is an outrage that Mr. Poilievre refuses to make himself eligible for confidential briefings. (As a former cabinet minister he would previously have been cleared by security, though that would have no bearing on his current role.) It is understandable that he should not wish to be unduly constrained in what he can say about such matters. But that is more than outweighed in present circumstances, by the obligation to be aware of what members of his caucus might have been up to.
So, in the face of a serious national security crisis – credible allegations that members of Parliament on both sides of the House have been acting, in effect, as agents of a foreign power – we are presented with one leader who knew and did nothing, and another who knew nothing and did less.
And that is far from the only security crisis that now envelopes us. There is the continuing scandal of party nomination and leadership races, and the degree to which these have become the preferred gateways to foreign interference – as in the matter of the Liberal nomination in Don Valley North, and as in the matter of the last two Conservative leadership races, in which both the Chinese and Indian governments are alleged to have played a part.
And far beyond Parliament Hill, there is growing evidence of the havoc foreign interference is wreaking in our society. The tools of disinformation are being used with great efficiency to divide us against ourselves, along two axes: vertically, as in the seeding of conspiracy theories and populist attacks on legitimate authority, expertise and basic facts; and horizontally, between regions (think of the possibilities for mischief in the next Quebec referendum) and diaspora groups.
To defend ourselves from such a comprehensive assault – on our security, our democracy, and our unity – will require a strategy that is no less comprehensive: bipartisan, federal-provincial, whole-of-government. We need to harden our defences, by whatever means are at hand, not only against attacks from without, but against attempts to divide us from within.
That starts with repairing our traditional instruments of defence and security: the Armed Forces, now on the verge of collapse; the security services, understaffed and overstretched; and the RCMP. That’s not only an internal matter: Our NATO partners are simply not prepared to accept Canada’s continued freeloading any longer.
But meeting our NATO commitments will require a much greater commitment of resources, beyond what the federal government can readily supply, given our anemic growth rates. Strengthening our economy, then, should no longer be seen in aspirational terms, as something it would be nice to have, but as an urgent national-security imperative.
So, too, should a national security lens be applied to the divisions that now beset us. How have we allowed such a vast gulf of credibility to open between the leaders and the led, with all of its potential for exploitation by bad actors? Rather than a remote and all-powerful prime minister, at one end, and the voting public at the other, how can we fill in the rungs on the ladder of accountability, to make a more truly representative democracy? What can we do to restore trust in knowledge and expertise – to repair the process by which knowledge is spread through society, such that, whatever our disagreements, we are arguing from the same set of facts?
Last, can we afford the luxury of regional alienation any longer? Do we not need, at last, to look at how our electoral system contributes to it, creating a series of regional power blocs – Conservatives in the West, Liberals in Quebec and Atlantic Canada – in place of truly national parties? Is it not time we saw electoral reform – a system in which every party can win seats in every part of the country, and every party must – as part of a plan to strengthen national unity, and ultimately national security?
Most of all, what we need is leadership. These are serious times – desperately serious. Before long we may see not only Ukraine, but much of Eastern Europe menaced by Russian aggression, with a Chinese assault on Taiwan to follow. Whether we can make any material contribution to the defence of the democracies has never been in more doubt, but meantime it is the home front – the peace and prosperity we have always taken for granted – that is increasingly in danger.
The last thing we need, at such times, is for our leaders to be off playing silly games, pointing fingers, shifting blame, and maintaining strategic ignorance. It is time – it is past time – for little boys to grow up.