Here we are in the last few days of October with Halloween fast approaching. The kids are all excited to get dressed up in their “scary” outfits and go out trick or treating throughout the neighbourhoods on the 31st of October.
What is even, ‘oooh scarier boys and girls’, than Halloween is this dispute between Canada and India with allegations of wrong doing being directed at India by our Prime Minister and supported by such heavy hitters as the Commissioner of the RCMP.
Seems that the Indian Government has been directing its officials here in Canada on how and by whom to neutralize, ‘woke’ language for assassinate, what they refer to as Sikh terrorists! Seems some of the Indian diaspora here in the Great White North want to start their own state within India for which the Indian Government is saying: “not on my watch”. For those old enough, remember Quebec in the 1970’s?
At least one Canadian citizen has been murdered and many of the community across the land have been threatened and extorted. So, how can Canada protect these folks? The list of countries we have to watch out for is growing. There is Russia, China, North Korea, Iran and depending on what happens on 4 November, perhaps the US.
This begs the question; “how does Canada’s security system work”?
From the web page of the International Civil Liberties Monitoring Group in its review of National Security Agencies I found the following information:
“There are 21 federal departments and agencies with national security responsibilities – including the Canadian Border Services Agency (CBSA), the Financial Transactions and Report Analysis Centre (FINTRAC), Foreign Affairs, National Defence, and Transport Canada. Only the 3 agencies in the table above have some sort of review mechanism – which we have seen is highly inadequate”.
Apparently it doesn’t work. OK, call me naive, but as someone who has spent a career in both law enforcement and government, how on earth are twenty-one agencies going to communicate sensitive security information without a huge boondoggle at some point?
Further to that how are those who are entitled to read any of the reports from the twenty-one agencies supposed to sort out what is fact and what is fiction? Never mind the current concern over foreign interference, how about the interference among the twenty-one federal departments who, of course, want to protect their own turf! I don’t believe it isn’t a factor.
And this is only with respect to federal jurisdictions. What about the security and intelligence gathering capabilities of the provincial law enforcement, regional and municipal agencies in this game?
If there was ever a need for a public inquiry, this may be it. Canada had better sit down and figure out how to operate in the current international security environment and allocate the required resources appropriate to run such an organization. There has already been ample talk in the media about reorganizing the RCMP due to its organizational failings.
Does Canada need an all encompassing organization such as the US’s CIA? For who ever is our next Prime Minister, one report, with its mandatory political cartoon, may be easier to digest than twenty-one pages with your morning Tim Hortons coffee.
Now when the kids come knocking at your door yelling; “trick or treat” this Halloween, you might ask yourself; “is this one of the kids from my neighbourhood, or, is it a cleverly disguised intelligence officer from a foreign country wearing a Justin Trudeau Halloween mask”?