OTTAWA — A parliamentary committee is examining whether Canada’s capacity to gather intelligence overseas is adequate, as the Carney government prepares its first national security strategy in more than two decades and debate intensifies over whether the country needs a dedicated foreign spy agency.
The National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians, composed of both MPs and senators, launched the review earlier this year, announcing it in a brief June statement. The committee’s secretariat declined to elaborate on the scope, timeframe, or potential findings of the investigation, and also refused to make chair Darren Fisher, a Liberal MP, available for an interview.
What Canada Can — and Cannot — Do
Canada’s current foreign intelligence architecture is divided among several agencies, each with distinct mandates and limitations. The Communications Security Establishment (CSE), the country’s signals and cyberspy agency, collects foreign intelligence through electronic means. Global Affairs Canada contributes diplomatic reporting, while the Canadian Armed Forces gather defence-specific intelligence.
CSIS, the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, occupies a particularly constrained position. While it is permitted to gather intelligence both inside Canada and abroad regarding security threats such as terrorism and espionage, it may only collect foreign intelligence — information about the activities, capabilities, and intentions of foreign states, organizations, and individuals — within Canadian borders, not on foreign soil.
A CSIS memo prepared last year acknowledged the strain this creates. “Canada can only learn and act so much through its current collection and authorities, and has historically relied on allied partnerships for certain foreign intelligence reporting,” the memo stated, warning that demand for such intelligence could grow in an increasingly uncertain geopolitical environment.
A Debate Stretching Back Decades
The question of whether Canada should establish a standalone foreign intelligence service is not new. Various proposals have circulated since the end of the Second World War, with the debate periodically resurfacing without resolution. During the 2006 federal election campaign, Stephen Harper’s Conservatives promised to create such an agency — one that could gather intelligence overseas and independently counter threats before they reached Canada. The agency was never built.
Goran Samuel Pesic, a political strategist and lobbyist who worked on the issue in 2007 as an adviser to then-Public Safety Minister Stockwell Day, says successive governments have shied away from the idea for two main reasons: public servants told them it was unnecessary, and the cost was seen as prohibitive.
Pesic disputes both rationales. “I don’t buy for one single moment that it’s too expensive,” he said in an interview. “Life is expensive. Canadian interests are priceless.” He argues that a foreign intelligence service is a fundamental instrument of sovereignty, adding: “To be an independent country, we must possess the tools of statecraft.”
Cabinet Briefings and a National Security Strategy
Records recently disclosed by Public Safety Canada under the Access to Information Act reveal that cabinet ministers have already been briefed on the possibility of expanding Canada’s foreign intelligence capacity. A recent academic paper examining the decades-long debate over a Canadian foreign spy agency was also included in background materials presented to committee members.
The committee’s review unfolds as the Carney government drafts a national security strategy — the first of its kind in over twenty years — which could clarify the government’s intelligence priorities and whether existing mechanisms are sufficient to meet them. Briefing notes prepared in February for Public Safety Minister Gary Anandasangaree indicated the strategy would centre on building autonomy and resilience, and would, for the first time, formally recognize economic security as a core component of national security. “Prosperity must be built on a secure foundation, and a strong economy increases our ability to act autonomously,” the notes read.
Whether that strategy will ultimately endorse the creation of a new foreign spy agency remains to be seen, but the parliamentary committee’s scrutiny signals that the question is being taken more seriously than it has been in years.
