David Harris responds to inaccurate statements made by Canadian Ambassador
Michael Wilson in Washington, DC
Statement by
David Harris
Senior Fellow for National Security
Canadian Coalition for Democracies
Ottawa - 19 June 2006
A statement made by Canadian Ambassador Michael Wilson in Washington, DC on
15 June 2006 regarding my service with the Canadian Security Intelligence
Service (CSIS) was factually incorrect, and serves only to distract from the
serious national security issues faced by Canada and the United States. I am
taking this opportunity as a first step in correcting the record both with
regard to Ambassador Wilson's assessment of Canada's security situation, and
my own service and involvement with CSIS.
The message from Ambassador Wilson's entourage in Washington on June 15 when
pressed by reporters to comment on the state of Canada's security was,
"We're secure". This optimistic assessment would seem to contradict Senator
Colin Kenny, chairman of the Senate Committee on National Security and
Defence. In an article on the same day in the National Post entitled "So
many threats. So few officers", below, Senator Kenny demonstrated his
respect for the ability of Canadians to handle the truth about Canada's
serious terrorism problem when he said, "The public doesn't need calming.
The public needs the truth". He went on to assert that CSIS faces particular
challenges, that the "RCMP is ... vastly understaffed", and that "[w]hoever
is responsible for the current mess, it is this government's job to repair
it". These are strong words, especially from a respected Liberal senator
criticizing the national security legacy of the recently-ousted Liberal
government.
Ambassador Wilson told the Associated Press on 9 June 2006 that "we've also
got a very good system for screening every applicant [for entry to Canada]".
This statement appears to directly contradict the testimony made a week
earlier by Jack Hooper, CSIS Deputy Director Operations, before the Senate
Committee on National Security and Defence (SCONSAD). Deputy Director Hooper
told the committee, "Over the last five years, in the order of 20,000
immigrants have come from the Pakistan-Afghanistan region. We are in a
position to vet one-tenth of those".
The message "We're secure" differs significantly from the message of Deputy
Director Hooper who testified, "All the circumstances that led to the London
transit bombing ... are resident here in Canada". The deputy director of
CSIS chose not to hide from Canadians the fact that 90% of immigrants from
the world's foremost terror-producing nations are entering our country
without scrutiny by CSIS, and that Canadians are no safer from terrorist
attack than Londoners were before 7/7.
Ambassador Wilson's confusion about my past CSIS involvement is of less
consequence in terms of national security. Nonetheless, it is revealing
that Canada's senior diplomat in the United States should be reduced to
making an ad hominem assault of a sort that has no place in a debate about
the substantive concerns raised by, among others, CSIS and our Senate
Committee on National Security and Defence. I appreciate that Mr. Wilson
found my testimony before the U.S. House of Representatives Judiciary
Subcommittee on Immigration, Border Security and Claims to have been
uncongenial to his mission. But I had hoped that he would address these
difficult issues on their merit, especially considering the Harper
Conservative government's commendable record to date in starting to resolve
the lapses identified.
I remain curious about how Ambassador Wilson and associated officials dealt
with legal issues of secrecy and privacy in making public statements to
reporters about my history of employment and involvement with CSIS. If Mr.
Wilson chooses to persist, I would respectfully ask the government to
relieve me, in writing, of my secrecy obligations under Canadian law, so
that I might defend myself in public by disclosing the full nature and
extent of my history of involvement with the Canadian Security Intelligence
Service.
I further regret that, in an apparent breach of journalistic standards and
ethics, producers of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation's The National
television news program broadcast journalist Alison Smith's report of
Ambassador Wilson's incomplete and potentially damaging assertions, without
having made any effort to contact me for comment.
None of these corrections are meant to diminish the fact that there have, at
times, been overreactions by US personalities who have called for the
closing of the Canada-US border. However, fear grows from distrust, and
Canada must present a consistent and honest picture of security preparedness
and the steps being taken to improve it.
I look forward to Ambassador Wilson's accepting my invitation to discuss
these issues in an open forum in order that Canadians and Americans may gain
a clearer picture both of the threats that exist from a weak security
legacy, and the encouraging steps taken by the present government to openly
address them.
-30-
For further information, please contact
David Harris
Of the Bar of Ontario
Senior Fellow for National Security
Canadian Coalition for Democracies
PO Box 72602 - 345 Bloor St. East
Toronto, ON Canada
Tel. 613-233-1220 Ottawa
Tel. 416-963-8998 Toronto
Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Web: www.CanadianCoalition.com
_____
Backgrounder
So many threats. So few officers
Colin Kenny
National Post
Thursday, June 15, 2006
As a Liberal member of the Senate, I should concede from the start that
Canada's current security and intelligence weaknesses cannot be blamed on
Stephen Harper's government.
Far from it. The holes in Canada's ability to defend its citizens from
man-made and natural disasters go a long way back, certainly to the
budgetary cuts made under my own Liberal government in the 1990s, and back
beyond that. Security has always been the easiest portfolio for federal
governments to underfund, since Canadians have by and large felt safe in the
myth of their peaceable kingdom.
Having conceded that this government has inherited many of our security
problems, however, let me be blunt: Whoever is responsible for the current
mess, it is this government's job to repair it.
The Senate Committee on National Security and Defence, which I chair, is
bipartisan. We see our job as producing fair, honest reports about the
things that are wrong (and right) with security in this country.
So far, our committee has witnessed a combination of the good, the bad and
the ugly from the new government. The good includes the government's
announced commitments to increase Canadian Forces personnel and to replace
outdated military equipment. The bad is that budgetary commitments to both
these ends fall short. Words without money are worthless. Beyond that, even
some of the words forthcoming represent an ugly approach to relating to the
public on security issues.
Responses to the arrest of 17 terrorist suspects in Toronto last week from
the most senior members of government -- including the Prime Minister --
were not encouraging. The essence of responses from the top was that the
fact that arrests were made should reassure Canadians that everything is
under control -- so calm down.
The public doesn't need calming. The public needs the truth. The truth is
that it is probably going to take us a decade to get up to speed on
monitoring and countering the potential threats at our airports and sea
ports, along our borders, and in neighbourhoods likely to incubate terrorist
threats.
It will take that long even if governments do the right thing, because
countering terrorism effectively is going to require a lot more personnel,
equipment, coordination and training.
While the government is ramping up in these areas, it is going to need a lot
of support from Canadians. One of the lessons learned in Toronto last week
is that the police are unlikely to succeed without information from people
who live their lives in proximity to would-be terrorists, or at least get
close enough to notice that something is amiss.
This is important because to accomplish their mission, terrorists only need
to be lucky once. The police need to be lucky all the time. The public is
far less likely to be attentive if the message is that everything is fine
out there. It isn't.
Consider this: CSIS Deputy Director (Operations) Jack Hooper told our
committee recently that "Over the last five years, in the order of 20,000
immigrants have come from the Pakistan-Afghanistan region. We are in a
position to vet one-tenth of those ... We believe we will need to be
increasingly active abroad to collect the information that will inform us
about threats resident in Canada."
He also said that CSIS used to estimate that there were about 10 threats to
Canadians' security for every one the agency was aware of, but that the
ratio had probably increased: "I think there may be more unknowns now than
ever."
The government should be honest about where it needs to go from here. The
public should know that it takes a tremendous reserve of trained personnel
to ferret out terrorist cells. In Toronto, 400 security professionals were
needed to arrest 17 suspects.
Canada is short of these kinds of people. Mr. Hooper told the Committee
that, despite welcome new permanent funding for CSIS missions overseas, the
agency is still short-staffed outside Canadian borders. Moreover, he said,
CSIS has been stealing from its domestic personnel in recent years to
bolster its overseas presence. In other words, CSIS has grown weaker at home
and has yet to build up sufficient strength overseas.
The RCMP is also vastly understaffed:
- 29 RCMP personnel are responsible for tackling crime at 19 Canadian ports
-- ports that handle approximately 240 million tonnes of cargo annually,
valued at more than $100-billion dollars.
- 100 RCMP personnel are responsible for tackling crime at the 89 airports
within the National Airport System.
- There are 139 ports of entry across Canada where border personnel work
alone at least part of the time.
- The RCMP Commissioner told us that at any given time his force can only
investigate about one-third of the organized crime units that it is aware
of.
This government is talking tough on security, which has finally become a
political issue. But it needs to put its money where its mouth is. Our
committee estimates that the RCMP needs more than 5,000 additional personnel
to do its job. The Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) is just now
getting back to its mid-1990s strength and is not nearly ready to tackle
post-9/11 challenges.
The government has put some seed money into improving these situations, but
not nearly enough. It should focus its get-tough resources on intelligence
and surveillance against plots to destroy the state, rather than routine
crime, which statistics show is already on the downturn.
We are one of the six countries on Osama bin Laden's notorious list. Some
people will not be happy until there is a check mark next to the word
Canada. No government should want that to happen on its watch.
- Senator Colin Kenny is chairman of the Senate Committee on National
Security and Defence.
<mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> [EMAIL PROTECTED]
C National Post 2006
_____
Statement by Jack Hooper, Deputy Director Operations
Canadian Security Intelligence Service
to the Senate Committee on National Security and Defence
(SCONSAD), May 29th, 2006
Good morning, honourable Senators. I am very pleased to be here with you
this morning. Before I begin my opening remarks, I want to pass on the
regrets of my director, Mr. Judd, who very much wanted to be here to address
you personally. He cannot be. I will do my very best to represent him and
the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, which is very grateful for this
opportunity. I do have some brief opening comments, which I will confine to
two general issues:
*
First, the current threat environment related to terrorism; and
*
Secondly, our organization's specific interests in Afghanistan.
Terrorist activities inspired by the "Al Qaida ideology and operational
doctrine" are currently the most prominent and immediate terrorist security
threat faced globally and domestically. It is a phenomenon that has been
manifested in many parts of the world.
In 2005 reported terrorism incidents of all types and affiliations reached
an historic high. Many of these were rooted in the Al Qaida ideology and its
operational doctrine.
The vast majority of these incidents did not occur in Western jurisdictions.
However, that trend has been changing and it will likely continue as attacks
over the course of the past five years in the United States, Spain, the
United Kingdom, and other countries bear witness. As well, terrorist
conspiracies in these and other Western countries have been foiled before
terrorist action was undertaken.
The threat of this kind of terrorism is global, complex and sophisticated.
The individuals and groups involved are often internationally
inter-connected and highly mobile. Most troubling, as we have seen most
prominently in the London transit attack last summer, is that the individual
operatives can be born and raised in the West and be thoroughly assimilated
into Western society's values.
They are often technologically sophisticated in their use of both materials
and the Internet. The latter is used increasingly as a multi-faceted tool
for communications, recruitment, proselytizing and the transfer of
techniques. It has been estimated that, at any given time, there are
approximately 4,500 terrorist-affiliated Web sites accessible on the
Internet.
There has been, as well, a growing trend towards non-terrorist criminal
activity by these individuals and groups to either generate revenue or
acquire materials in their terrorist planning.
Canada is not now, nor has it ever been immune to the threat of terrorism.
In fact, the committee will know that prior to the events of 9/11, the most
significant act of terrorism in contemporary history, if you measure it in
terms of casualties, had its roots in Canada. I am speaking of the Air India
bombing, which resulted in the deaths of 329 people.
Similarly, Canadian citizens have not been immune more recently as witnessed
in the deaths of Canadian citizens in the 9/11 attacks in the United States
or in Bali. As well, Canadian military personnel and a diplomat serving in
Afghanistan have been killed and wounded in terrorist attacks there and the
threat to our forces there remains high.
We have not been immune from terrorism in other ways as well. There are
residents in Canada that are graduates of terrorist training camps and
campaigns, including experienced combatants from conflicts in Afghanistan,
Bosnia, Chechnya and elsewhere.
As well, Canadian citizens or residents have been implicated in terrorist
attacks and conspiracies elsewhere in the world. For example, a young man is
now awaiting trial here in Ottawa because of his alleged involvement in a
bombing conspiracy in the United Kingdom. Others have been involved in
terrorist plots against targets in the United States, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia,
Israel, Singapore, Pakistan and other countries.
Canada has been named on several occasions as one of six Western "target
countries" by Al Qaida leaders, most recently last summer.
Let me conclude with a few words about Afghanistan. It is a country that has
been of interest to CSIS for a number of years. It continues to be of active
interest to us for three basic reasons.
First, it has a long-standing association with the global terrorist
phenomenon, particularly Al Qaida, dating back to the days of the Soviet
occupation. Many foreign nationals were active participants, along with
Afghan nationals, in the anti-Soviet campaign. Many of them continued their
links with that organization after the Soviet withdrawal. And a good number
of them, have since migrated elsewhere in the world, including to our
country.
Second, the deployment of Canadian Forces to Afghanistan has resulted in our
Service taking an active role to support our military colleagues in the
country. While I am not at liberty to discuss the operational details or
methodologies of that support, I can say two things about it.
This support has been principally focussed on the acquisition of
intelligence to help the Canadian Forces defend themselves against terrorist
attacks in that country. This intelligence is known to have saved lives,
uncovered weapons and arms caches, and disrupted planned terrorist attacks.
The third reason we have a continuing active interest in Afghanistan comes
back to concerns for the stability of the region, more broadly speaking.
Afghanistan is the current venue where the terrorist designs of a number of
organizations rooted in Pakistan, the central Asian republics and the
subcontinent are planned and operationalized, and where individual activists
seek support and sanctuary.
Our historical investigations have taught us at some point, this condition
of broader regional instability will be the progenitor of terrorist threats
in Canada. Therefore, we have to orient our collection programs not only
tactically in response to current circumstances in Afghanistan, but
strategically as well to better situate the Canadian security intelligence
community against future threats.
In the here and now, terrorism and insurgency is being brought to Canadians
in Afghanistan. At some future point, if we are to learn the lessons of
history, their practitioners may bring violence to the streets of our
cities.
With that said Senators I will end my remarks and take your questions,
bearing in mind that I may have to be somewhat circumspect on some of my
responses.
_____
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