CSIS foreign powers could help Canada navigate an unreliable U.S.: experts

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The federal government has strongly hinted that Canada’s spy service is getting an expanded mandate alongside billions in new funding.

A foreign intelligence mandate for Canada’s spy service may help the country plot its own course amid an increasingly choppy geopolitical climate and an increasingly unreliable America, national security experts say.

The Liberal government has strongly hinted that the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) will be getting an expanded mission alongside $6 billion in new funding over the next decade, and there is growing speculation among national security experts that role could focus ongathering information from foreign nationals abroad to feed back to Ottawa.

Canada relies heavily on security partners — especially the U.S. — for much of its foreign intelligence needs. CSIS has a limited ability to collect intelligence globally, but that information must be related to threats to Canadian security.

Successive Canadian governments have viewed that situation as good enough, and balked at the suggestion — and cost — of setting up a foreign intelligence service akin to the U.K.’s MI6 or the U.S. CIA.

But with the U.S. becoming a dubious economic and security partner under President Donald Trump’s administration, experts told Global News Canada’s reliance on America for intelligence is a questionable strategy.

“We are pursuing our own sovereign interests in a way that the government has not in the past, where our interests in trade, who we might partner with … we’re pursuing very much our own interests, as opposed to the interests of the United States and we’re tagging along,” said Leah West, a national security law professor at Carleton University.

“So as we’re looking to (invest) and partner with foreign countries on defence, and technology, and critical minerals in a way that we didn’t before, we need to have a good sense of what’s happening on the ground in those countries, with those governments, with those companies. So there is a need for greater foreign intelligence.”

CSIS was created in the 1980s after allegations of serious misconduct were levelled against the…

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