Canadian Intelligence Eh
Everywhere you look these days terrorism and violent extremism dominate the headlines. Whether you follow what is happening in Afghanistan or Iraq, or in the West writ large, we are inundated with news of attacks by groups and individuals fighting for a 'cause'.In a world of multiple voices and opinions it can be very hard to know where to turn. One choice is to look to those who actually worked in counterterrorism in the national security world. In these half-hour podcasts 30-year Canadian intelligence veteran Phil Gurski is joined by a fascinating array of individuals with something meaningful to say about these issues as they provide insight into what they mean and what we need to do about them.
Canadian Intelligence Eh
Episode 200 - Why doesn't Canada have a foreign intelligence service?
Canada is an outlier in the '5 Eyes' intelligence club (Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the UK and the US) in that it does not have an independent foreign intelligence (FI) service. There is an FI SIGINT (signals intelligence agency) CSE (Communications Security Establishment) and the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) does have a FI mandate, but a weird one, constrained to collection in Canada (how Canadian, eh?). Do we need one and how would we go about creating one? Borealis speaks with three former CSIS intelligence officers on this issue.