The Hill Times
National security and intelligence experts warn that suggested reductions to the Privy Council Office’s intelligence assessment capabilities as part of the government's spending review would be a risky and 'counterintuitive' decision that would only further weaken Canada’s strategic awareness.
“We undervalue intelligence in this country,” former Canadian Security Intelligence Service director Ward Elcock told The Hill Times, adding that Canada’s political culture towards intelligence gathering is a far more pressing concern than potential duplication. As part of the Liberals’ efforts to streamline operations and government spending, the 2025 budget details how the Privy Council Office will meet the expected 15 per cent in savings over the next three years—namely $14.9-million in 2026-27, $19.9-million in 2027-28, and $29.8-million in 2028-29, and each fiscal year ongoing. The budget says that PCO will “recalibrate to programming that is no longer a priority or has objectives that overlap and could be better delivered by other departments,” including the Clean Growth Office and PCO programming for Public Lands and Housing. It will also “modernize” its operations and the administration of governor-in-council appointees, and improve its processes to support cabinet committees as well as consolidate internal services. However, it also suggests that PCO will revisit programs “where functions may be overlapping and duplicative with what is delivered by other organizations,” including “working with security partners to rationalize resources dedicated to analyzing intelligence information.” Former CSIS director Ward Elcock says Canadian politicians have historically undervalued the benefit of good intelligence. The Hill Times photograph by Andrew Meade Elcock told The Hill Times that the proposed cuts indicate that the undervaluing of intelligence in Canadian politics may not have improved much from the tenure of former prime minister Justin Trudeau. “Historically, most Canadian politicians are far more domestically focused, and the message with Trudeau was clear that his government wasn’t particularly interested in national security,” Elcock said, adding that while Prime Minister Mark Carney seems more engaged, it only makes the suggestion more curious. “Carney is an intelligent, globally minded person, and probably more interested in intelligence briefings than his predecessor was, but without a strong national security culture, there’s always the temptation to undervalue the analytical side of intelligence,” Elcock said. “But if you don’t understand the threats or even the global context, you won’t invest in the analysis that tells you what’s coming.” Former CSIS analyst Stephanie Carvin shares that concern, warning that the government’s effort to eliminate duplication risks undermining the country’s limited analytical capacity rather than improving it. Former CSIS analyst Stephanie Carvin says that the IAS provides more nimble and relevant briefings to the prime minister and cabinet than its CSIS counterparts. Handout photograph Carvin explained that while the CSIS Act binds its analysts to issues of espionage, foreign interference, and terrorism, the PCO's Intelligence Assessment Secretariat can take a broader view—looking at economic problems, climate change, artificial intelligence, and other non-traditional threats—and report directly to cabinet or the prime minister with the flexibility to respond to the pressing issues the government is facing on any given day. While both the IAS and CSIS would have an analyst focused on China, for example, viewing that as simply a duplication or redundancy would only reduce the government’s ability to get timely, nuanced briefings, Carvin said. “The other advantage is that the IAS is a central agency,” Carvin explained. “They're in the heart of government, and they tend to be a little better connected.” While Carvin said that the broader intelligence community has been spared the same level of reductions—faced with only finding two per cent in savings alongside the Communications Security Establishment and the RCMP—the collective impression she took from the budget was a 'doubling down on a suboptimal system.” “The system is doing its best, and it has great people in it, but we need more than doubling down on the architecture we already have,” Carvin said. “Hiring more people isn’t the same as improving effectiveness.' Martin Green, an assistant secretary to the cabinet for security and intelligence from 2015 to 2024, said the suggestion of reducing PCO’s intelligence analysis capabilities is “counterintuitive.” Martin Green, a former assistant secretary to cabinet for security and intelligence, says better co-ordination between the PCO and intelligence agencies is more valuable than the optics of spending cuts. Handout photograph “Given today's world and all the challenges we're facing—particularly on the national security front—it strikes me as counterintuitive that the Privy Council Office would not want a very robust intelligence analyst section,” explained Green, now a senior adviser on national security at Global Public Affairs, and a senior fellow at the Macdonald-Laurier Institute. Green also noted that other Five Eyes countries have well-resourced equivalents in the United Kingdom’s Joint Intelligence Committee, Australia’s Office of National Intelligence, New Zealand’s National Assessment Bureau, and the United States' presidential daily briefs. “Those all have sometimes legislated, but direct, lines of reporting to their prime ministers and cabinet,” Green said. “Canada shouldn’t shrink from that standard.” Additionally, Green said the IAS has co-ordinated Five Eyes intelligence assessments, and has played an essential role in helping Canada show it was pulling its weight in that relationship. Green explained that the IAS gathers and packages “an unbelievable amount of covert information” from CSIS, CSE, Global Affairs Canada, the Integrated Threat Assessment Centre, and the Canadian Forces Intelligence Command. He added that while there may be some overlap between the PCO’s analysts and the intelligence community, in many cases, that is necessary to provide “timely, relevant, policy-neutral” advice to the prime minister and cabinet. “A lot of times, those are very inconvenient truths, and there's always an uneasy marriage between the intelligence community and the political community,” Green said. “In a perfect world, it should actually inform the strategic decision-making; it's not the be all, end all, but it's a really, really important input. So, its independence is extraordinarily important.” Furthermore, Green said he isn’t sure how much overlap between the IAS and other Canadian intelligence services still exists given that it had already been “thinned” by the creation of the National Security Council Secretariat and its appropriation of resources. The secretariat was formed within the PCO after the National Security Council cabinet committee was formed in 2023. Green also said that while the budget suggests a reduction in resources for PCO intelligence analysis, he suspects that the review may discover it needs more, not less. “Different agencies approach the same problem from different perspectives … you want analysts who can play that challenge function, and integrate insights across departments,” Green said. “What matters is co-ordination, not cutting for the sake of optics.” sbenson@hilltimes.com The Hill Times
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