Chair and members of the committee, thank you for this opportunity to appear before your committee in its study of the assessment of Canada's security posture in relation to Russia.
To begin, I'll make two main points.
The first is that planning for security requires us to take a long view. The threats that Canada faces include, but range well beyond, those posed currently by Russia. The answers of how Canada should meet those threats cannot be found in a siloed study of Russian danger alone.
The Centre for International Governance Innovation has undertaken an ambitious and unprecedented project to address these security challenges. We call this “reimagining a Canadian national security strategy”. We embarked on this project well before the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Its genesis rested in a belief that Canada needed to seriously rethink its approach to national security and in recognition of the stunning fact that Canada currently possesses no comprehensive national security strategy. The last and only one was produced in 2004, which was 18 years ago. We identified in our reporting a range of persistent and new threats that include global geopolitical disruption, current and future pandemic and health security threats, climate change security impacts, technological change and economic insecurity.
The second point I wish to make in direct response to your study is that Canada's national security and intelligence agencies, not the military, represent the country's first line of defence. This is especially true with regard to Russia when it comes to identifying threats, protecting critical infrastructure, dealing with state-sponsored disinformation and conducting counter-intelligence.
I want to read to you an opening statement from the chapter devoted to intelligence in that 2004 national security policy. It states:
Intelligence is the foundation of our ability to take effective measures to provide for the security of Canada and Canadians.
The policy went on to state:
Intelligence is important not only for Canada’s security but also for sound international, military and economic policy.
Given the importance of our national security and intelligence system in facing the Russian threat, what do we then need to be concerned about in terms of our security posture? I will list three top-tier issues and prioritize them.
The first is our ability to collect, assess and produce impactful reports on the capabilities and intentions of threat actors such as Russia. In particular, we need to be able to look to the future of Russia's war in Ukraine and plan accordingly.
Second is our efforts at countering foreign espionage targeting both the public and private sectors.
Third, as a top-tier threat, is our capacity to defend against cyber-attacks or probes threatening critical infrastructure. The CSE and its Five Eyes counterparts have issued repeated warnings about the threat of Russian cyber-attacks on critical infrastructure, and we now have a database of evidence about such Russian threats and capabilities, including the examples of the NotPetya worm in 2017 and the SolarWinds software supply chain hack in 2020.
I would also note that Canada has yet to take any action, in contrast to its NATO and EU partners, to expel Russian intelligence officers of its three services from this country. Canada needs to take forceful action to impede Russian espionage and interference operations. I note that the latest count is that over 500 Russian officials have been expelled from western capitals since the beginning of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Canada has expelled none.
The Russian invasion of Ukraine has presented us with an opportunity to rethink our approach to national security. We have to abandon old habits of national security navel-gazing, as I call it, by recognizing that we live in a borderless world of threats. We must develop a sovereign capacity to understand their global points of origin and impact, hence the need for an enhanced global intelligence collection and assessment capacity.
We also have to be prepared to wield an offensive response capacity, including the use of intelligence and cyber-enabled tools. The Ukraine war, I think, has brought this starkly into focus, and Canada has responded in part by providing monies to Ukraine for the purchase of satellite imagery and allowing MDA to share its RADARSAT analysis.
I think we could be doing more to support Ukraine with intelligence, cyber-tools and operations, and through greater assistance in war crimes investigations. We have advanced arguments and our CIGI—Centre for International Governance Innovation—special report that we produced in the fall of 2021 for a thorough ongoing review of Canadian national security capabilities to meet a new threat environment. The last such review, I would tell members of this committee, was conducted by an external examiner in 1970.
We also need—