In the 1984 movie The Karate Kid, Mr. Miyagi counsels his protégé Daniel LaRusso with a parable: “Walk right side [of the road], safe. Walk left side, safe. Walk middle, sooner or later, get the squish, just like grape.” Half measures are the road to defeat.
Unfortunately, Canada’s mandarins remain committed to walking in the middle of the road on developing a professional clandestine intelligence capability, even though they keep getting squished. The most recent case is that of the “two Michaels,” in which Canadian Michael Spavor spent nearly three years in a Chinese prison on spying charges after, he has claimed in a recent lawsuit, he “unwittingly” provided intelligence on North Korea to Michael Kovrig, a former Canadian official.
Canada’s inchoate approach to clandestine human intelligence is not fit for purpose and is underdeveloped in comparison to the United States or European powers; a radical reevaluation and reorganization is urgently required. The government in Ottawa, the country’s capital, is too slow in waking up to the threats posed by adversarial powers.
Canada’s signals intelligence agency, the Communications Security Establishment, is an important member of the Five Eyes intelligence alliance. But unlike its allies, Canada does not have a foreign-focused, clandestine human intelligence service—like the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, the U.K. Secret Intelligence Service (SIS, also known as MI6), or the Australian Secret Intelligence Service (ASIS). This leaves Canada with spotty insight, a reactive posture, and an over-dependency on liaison reporting from key partners during diplomatic crises such as the two Michaels and India’s recent targeting of Canada’s Sikh diaspora.
To be sure, Canada does collect intelligence against, and disrupt, overseas threat actors—such as terrorist and proliferation networks—including through human intelligence. The Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) was created in 1984 as a domestic intelligence agency. Careful readers may note the initials CSIS look like they follow the pattern for the British SIS and Australian SIS. However, SIS in the U.K. and Australia stands for secret intelligence service, whereas in Canada (and New Zealand, to round out the Five Eyes) it stands for the security intelligence service. This is more than semantic—the name reflects the limits of the mission.
CSIS is often considered the “Canadian CIA,” but this is a bad comparison because CSIS only undertakes the narrower form of security intelligence—and that’s exactly the problem. CSIS collection of political, economic, and defense-related intelligence—human and technical—has remained domestic in scope. Over time, this has left a void as Canada declines to pursue overseas collection of intelligence that is unrelated to this tighter conception of threats to national security but still required for statecraft in the 21st century.
Ottawa partially filled this foreign collection gap with the Global Security Reporting Program (GSRP), an ersatz human intelligence service of about 30 officials operating around the world created shortly after 9/11. As part of Global Affairs Canada (Canada’s ministry of foreign affairs), the GSRP was tasked to collect “overt security-related information” from primarily “non-traditional contacts” and “collects and disseminates information in support of Canada’s intelligence priorities.” But while this seems much like the mission statement for an intelligence service, the GSRP is staffed and run by diplomats, not intelligence officers.
The GSRP’s shortcomings were laid bare to Canadian officials in December 2020 when Canada’s National Security and Intelligence Review Agency published a withering review (withheld from the public until late 2023).
The review agency accurately viewed the GSRP as occupying a “grey zone” between intelligence and diplomatic reporting. Global Affairs Canada, meanwhile, claimed to view GSRP in the same light as trade, political, or economic reporting from diplomats. This wishful and erroneous characterization of the benign nature of intelligence collection errs because the calibration of human intelligence tradecraft required should be tuned to the perceived sensitivity of the information as appraised by the source instead of the collector. If China or Russia sees the GSRP’s activity as spying, for all practical purposes it is, and the tradecraft must adapt accordingly. That GSRP officers do not pay or task their sources is no shield, and acting like intelligence collection is a benign act is no defense against arrest and imprisonment.
Unbelievably, the review agency documented an instance in which a GSRP officer was given “suspected classified information,” and the report even applauded the officer’s “good judgement” in “appropriately returning it to the contact.” That sort of information could be useful for Canada’s policymakers to navigate a dangerous world, and Ottawa should have a mechanism to securely receive that information and, if it proves authentic and insightful, task the source to obtain more of it while protecting him with clandestine tradecraft. This vignette also reveals that the source of the suspected classified information was confused about what the GSRP officer was seeking in that relationship.
Even Canada’s allies have been confused about GSRP activity, mistaking its officers for representatives of Canadian intelligence. Therefore, it is not hard to imagine how adversaries may feel. If a Chinese or Russian government official were collecting information in Canada that was driven by Russian or Chinese intelligence priorities, surely Canada’s counterintelligence mechanisms would swing into action whatever the conditions.
Finally, the review agency report found that GSRP officers lacked “adequate training regarding their legal obligations.” Program officers expressed concern that their activities were not in accordance with the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations. The review also found “an absence of risk assessments, security protocols, and legal guidance specific to the increased scrutiny that GSRP officers may attract due to the nature of their reporting priorities” and “insufficient deconfliction” between Global Affairs Canada and CSIS, which would be less of an issue if former were not operating in the quasi-clandestine intelligence space.
The GSRP seeks “greater integration of intelligence community standards and best practices into the GSRP, while maintaining its diplomatic ethos,” according to the review agency. This is an oxymoron, and the contradiction of overtly collecting intelligence in hostile countries recalls the misplaced idealism of former U.S. President Woodrow Wilson. This muddled halfway house of trying to play a global diplomatic and norm-shaping role and compete to support Canadian national interests without a robust foreign intelligence capability lays the groundwork for more problems.
Clandestine tradecraft protects the source, the operation, and the officer. However, the review agency found that the GSRP “does not have appropriate safeguards in place regarding the safety of contacts overseas” and, in monumental understatement, “does not appear to appreciate the associated risks of these exchanges.”
To their credit, GSRP officers seemed to understand, at an instinctual level, that their contacts require some measure of protection from scrutiny by the host country’s counterintelligence service. For instance, some GSRP officers used a Faraday bag to keep their mobile devices from transmitting (and therefore being tracked) and set meeting venues with contacts only minutes in advance, making host-nation surveillance more difficult. These instincts are correct, but an overt program such as GSRP will not permit the level of tradecraft required to keep meetings secret and sources secure. Human intelligence can’t afford half-measures.
Other middle-power liberal democracies have faced similar challenges in striking a balance between security intelligence and foreign intelligence to resource their national security and foreign-policy interests. Foreign intelligence enables decision advantage when dealing with other states. Most democracies in Europe, like Canada, principally focus on their security intelligence mission. Some, such as the Netherlands, have nevertheless developed a small, professional foreign human intelligence capability within their security—not diplomatic—apparatus.
Both Canada and the Netherlands are NATO members with close Western intelligence partners and highly respected signals intelligence agencies. Both prioritize working multilaterally and bilaterally abroad. And both have similar national security perceptions, limited foreign-policy ambitions, and more limited resources than their British and American partners. The Netherlands, nevertheless, has charted a different foreign human intelligence path than Canada.
The security service mission and culture dominate the Netherlands’ General Intelligence and Security Service (AIVD), but the service maintains a foreign intelligence role, inherited from the previous Foreign Intelligence Service that operated from 1946 to 1994. The legislation underpinning the AIVD differentiates between overseas defensive security intelligence gathering to counter national security threats (of the kind CSIS engages in) and offensive foreign human intelligence gathering to serve both short- and long-term national security interests (including political and economic ones).
To avoid this mission getting lost in the dominant security service wash, the AIVD initially developed a separate Foreign Intelligence Directorate, including officers trained in overseas agent recruitment and handling. Since 2011, due to a broad interpretation of national security, shared investigatory powers, and increasing synergies across the defensive and offensive missions, the AIVD’s security and foreign intelligence tasks have been merged into a single Directorate of Intelligence, consisting of target-focused investigative teams servicing requests from government.
Just as importantly, the Netherlands has developed a governance and oversight system for building this capability into its strategic national security and foreign-policy postures and managing the inevitable bureaucratic politics of intelligence. This isn’t necessarily a blueprint for Canada—but it indicates that a middle-power liberal democracy can establish a functional, security-oriented human intelligence system.
Our call for action is not the first time that intelligence and security commentators have considered a Canadian clandestine human intelligence agency. But there has been no serious government review of Canada’s intelligence needs and capabilities for 40 years. Canada cannot rely on splendid isolation, a benign post-Cold War international system, or even its close American ally for its security.
What must be done? Ottawa should review the purpose and mandate of the GSRP. Virtually all foreign ministries collect their own diplomatic information, including discretely. But they do not usually operate semi-covertly. This model is insecure from a tradecraft perspective and counterproductive—even dangerous—for Canada’s diplomats.
Canada’s foreign ministry must get out of the intelligence collection business, and Ottawa must develop a professional, clandestine cadre of foreign human intelligence case officers (perhaps within CSIS) with proper training, legal authorities, funding, and democratic oversight consistent with other major players in the international system.
Beyond that, Canada’s entire political class requires a new orientation to the role of intelligence in international affairs. This should include an appreciation for the benefits of robust human intelligence in particular, with an understanding that hacking computers or listening into phone calls does not yield all the intelligence that decision-makers might wish to know. Alongside this increase in awareness of what foreign human intelligence collection can contribute to national security, proponents of clandestine collection will need to convince policymakers that it’s worth the effort, expense, and political underwriting of the risk.
Finally, Canadian politicians and government ministers should publicly link intelligence power to Canada’s global strategic goals to display how more developed intelligence capabilities will enable synergistic effects for Canadian international engagement and advantageous public outcomes.
Ottawa doesn’t necessarily need a new intelligence agency. But it needs to face the global threat picture as it is—and accept that the current system isn’t serving Canada’s interests.