For governments, there is no greater duty than ensuring the sovereignty of the country—that is, the right of a country to govern itself without outside interference, to defend itself against hostile acts and threatening actors, and to control its borders with respect to the movement of people and goods.
In these uncertain times—whether it is foreign interference directed at our democratic institutions, the Russian invasion of Ukraine and its threatening rhetoric toward the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, the surreptitious interest in the Canadian Arctic by Russia and China, peril to key nodes on supply chains such as Taiwan and the Strait of Hormuz, or United States president Donald Trump’s taunting that Canada should become the fifty-first state—our sovereignty is under serious threat.
Protecting Canada’s sovereignty takes more than a modern military; it also requires a well-thought-out foreign policy and effective diplomacy. Diplomacy is a profession of skill, strategy, leverage, and artful compromise. Effective foreign services are noted for the quality of their diplomats, not the quantity. Knowing what the other side wants and why is just as important as understanding what your country is seeking and how to get it. Relationships developed over time matter, both for better understanding one’s counterparts and because negotiating sensitive issues with strangers is always more challenging.
Yet debates in Parliament these days about our foreign service have tended to focus more on travel expenses and the cost of embassy residences in New York and elsewhere than on what our diplomats are trying to achieve and whether they are successful. Nor was the Justin Trudeau government’s rhetoric of having a “feminist foreign policy” a substitute for concrete foreign policy objectives, realism about trade-offs, and the diplomatic hard slogging of pushing Canada’s national interests in international forums.
The public can be excused for not knowing that Canada has a postwar history of effective and influential diplomacy; you never hear of it in Parliament and seldom read of it in the press. But the examples are many of pivotal diplomatic interventions where Canada punched well above its economic weight.
At the seminal Bretton Woods Conference of 1944 (which eventually created the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank), for instance, Bank of Canada governor Graham Towers was a significant player, finding ways to bridge often divergent views on key concerns of the two conference heavyweights: John Maynard Keynes of the United Kingdom and Harry Dexter White, then US treasury secretary. Lester Pearson, Canada’s deputy minister of foreign affairs at the time, was an influential participant in the international meetings leading up to the creation of NATO in 1949, as well as an early and strong advocate for the alliance to be based on strong political ties and military co-operation. The same Lester Pearson won a Nobel Prize for his role in finding a resolution to the Suez Crisis of 1956. In the 1980s, Canadian diplomacy was crucial in pushing the US and the UK to reverse course and demand the end to the apartheid regime in South Africa. More recently, negotiating the Canada–US Free Trade Agreement in 1988 was a political and diplomatic tour de force.
With the scale and scope of the geopolitical tensions and risks we face, Canada needs more of these sophisticated diplomatic skills and the ability to pursue complex foreign policy initiatives. None of today’s geopolitical tensions are likely to lessen in the near term; the relationship with the US is entering uncharted territory; and unforeseen events, such as recent conflicts in the Middle East and Ukraine, can always knock governments off course.
Most importantly, we need a more focused foreign policy closely aligned with our core national interests. Virtue signalling is neither useful nor helpful in a world of realpolitik and hard choices. Nor is overreach: when a country has too many foreign policy priorities, it really has none.
We are not a major power. We have to carefully pick and choose where we can gain advantage, where to intervene to protect our vital interests, and how best to use our limited resources. Having diplomatic missions in over 180 countries is not a sign of strength; it shows only that our efforts are highly dispersed.
The necessity today is to concentrate our foreign policy efforts and our diplomatic resources in the places where they will make the biggest difference to Canada’s long-term interests. At a time when the US is likely to be a less-than-reliable partner, we need new allies. Part of this is a matter of building strong relationships with like-minded countries where we have common interests and where there are possibilities for mutually beneficial partnerships.
What we need to build is foreign policy leverage. The Trudeau government’s failure to respond positively to requests for Canadian liquefied natural gas by Germany, Japan, and South Korea was a clear case of what not to do if we want to expand our base of allies. These countries, which are under serious energy security threats from their neighbours, have economies that are complementary to ours. They have advanced technologies that we need to reinvigorate our innovation and enhance our productivity, and they share our democratic values and world view.
South Korea, for example, is a mid-size democratic country with an interest in developing a stronger and broader partnership with Canada. Like us, the Koreans have been shaken by the new uncertainty in their relationship with the US, particularly given Trump’s quixotic views on North Korea and its leader. They have technological and industrial capacity that marries well with our strengths in agriculture, biotechnology, and artificial intelligence. Notwithstanding the recent political chaos in South Korea, longer term, this is a potential partnership that deserves not just greater attention from Canada but also a willingness to invest in closer bilateral links to our mutual benefit.
Canada’s relationship with Japan, which is still the third largest economy in the world, also demands much greater attention. The Japanese need our energy resources, and they are eager to diversify their international partnerships given lingering Trump 1.0 shocks to their traditional dependence on the US. As a Pacific nation, we are a natural partner.
As Jim Mitchell (one of the co-writers of this piece) noted in 2022: “The challenge for Canada [in relation to Japan] . . . is to revive a relationship that has suffered from neglect over the past twenty years or so. Our goal should be to elevate the relationship to one of ‘strategic partnership’ at the political level, one that would be based in part on a greater security engagement by Canada in the Indo-Pacific.”
Other targeted opportunities exist within the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, especially Indonesia, Malaysia, and Singapore. They offer potential for increased trade and investment, as well as possibly co-operation in technology. As well, they will increasingly be significant actors on the world stage in the twenty-first century, and we would benefit from being there with them if we are to advance our interests in that part of the world.
To execute on a more focused and effective foreign policy, we need less bureaucracy in the foreign service. This means fewer resources in Ottawa and more in our posts abroad; it means more downward delegation of responsibilities (especially to our ambassadors); and it means more willingness to support initiatives and risk taking abroad. The main driver of success ultimately will be talent—this means attracting exceptional talent to the foreign service, empowering those officers to take initiatives, and retaining them for the long term because successful diplomacy is not a short-term game.
As a department, Global Affairs must work more holistically with departments across the federal government. In a hyper-connected world, all elements of government are impacted in some way by developments beyond our borders. Global Affairs should be a leader within government in the use of AI and social media to collect real-time information on what is happening in countries of interest and issues of concern: Are potential pandemics stirring in some part of the world? Are supply chains of critical goods fraying? Is social unrest rising or falling in other countries? The list of unknowns is unfortunately lengthy.
We also have to learn from our failures. We should honestly ask ourselves: What are the lessons of failing to get elected to a United Nations Security Council seat twice in a decade—first in 2010 under the Stephen Harper government and again in 2020 under the Trudeau government? Were we not powerful enough to fear, not important enough to partner with, not generous enough with aid to befriend, not reliable enough to count on, not invested enough in foreign relationships to matter, or all of the above?
Canadians are proud of our status as a G7 nation, but we often forget that we no longer have a G7 military nor a G7 economy. To stay relevant in the G7 club, we need to up our game, and in addition to a strong economy, effective defence capability, and diplomacy, a world-class intelligence service has an indispensable role to play.
An essential element of protecting sovereignty is the capacity to gather and assess information—intelligence—about possible threats from within and from abroad.
Most governments have several such organizations, and Canada is no different. Here, the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) and the Communications Security Establishment (CSE) are the principal agencies. As well, there is the Canadian Forces Intelligence Command at the Department of National Defence for acquiring and assessing military intelligence, and some foreign intelligence–gathering capacity at Global Affairs through its Global Security Reporting Program. Canada also has an intelligence assessment and advisory capability housed in the Privy Council Office, which reports to the national security adviser to the prime minister.
Canada is a privileged member of the Five Eyes network of countries (US, UK, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand), which shares relevant intelligence gathered by their national intelligence agencies. This is a key intelligence portal for Canada, and our membership is a valuable multilateral asset.
Mandates define theatres of operations. CSE is a signals intelligence agency. CSIS is an agency mandated to collect security intelligence with a very limited mandate to operate abroad in support of that function. Canada does not operate a foreign intelligence agency like the US’s Central Intelligence Agency, the UK’s MI6, or similar organizations in many of our NATO allies.
There are several reasons for this limitation, starting with the fact that spying—the collection of foreign intelligence—is not something that Canadians or their governments have ever been comfortable with. A more important reason is that the country of greatest interest to Canada, as it is to every other country in the world, is the US. But it would neither make sense nor be advisable for Canada to spy on our closest friend and ally. A final reason is that building this kind of capacity, when we already have access to intelligence provided by the US and UK through the Five Eyes intelligence alliance, would be enormously expensive and probably a waste of money.
The intelligence activities of CSIS were unexpectedly thrust into the public spotlight in late 2022 and into 2023 by a series of articles in the Globe and Mail by Robert Fife and Steven Chase. This reporting, citing leaked CSIS documents, purported to expose Chinese interference in the 2019 and 2021 elections and nomination processes. The government, in September 2023, appointed a formal public inquiry into foreign interference in federal electoral processes and democratic institutions, with Justice Marie-Josée Hogue as commissioner.
The public inquiry was tasked with the difficult job of sorting through complex and often contradictory intelligence to arrive at conclusions and recommendations on how to stop foreign interference in our electoral processes and reassure the public that our elections are fair and free from outside influence. The interim report by Justice Hogue noted that “on some occasions, information related to foreign interference did not reach its intended recipient, while on others the information was not properly understood by those who received it.”
Public reporting and testimony suggested that intelligence materials were distributed without clarity as to their importance and impact, that officials receiving them may or may not have briefed their superiors as to the implications of the foreign interference intelligence materials, that people occupying key nodes on the intelligence distribution chain were not replaced when on holiday or absent, and that turnover at senior levels in the distribution network, including the national security adviser to the prime minister, was frequent. This is particularly concerning because the national security adviser, a senior public servant in the PCO, is the key interlocuter between the security agencies and the prime minister on matters of national security.
Taken together, this tale has a Keystone Cops air to it. It is not the narrative of serious security processes and protocols of a G7 country, one which is a member of the Five Eyes, in dealing with intelligence potentially impacting our sovereignty.
The final report of the Public Inquiry into Foreign Interference in Federal Electoral Processes and Democratic Institutions was released this past January. While the headline was “no traitors in Parliament,” the report was anything but sanguine about the extent of attempts by foreign governments to influence our democratic institutions and electoral processes. It faulted the government and Canada’s intelligence organizations for a lack of coordination, a lack of urgency, and a lack of transparency. Indeed, Justice Hogue stated that: “a great deal of information can be made public without compromising national security.”
Going forward, an overarching objective should be clear processes to determine on a regular basis who has seen what and why and when. And, as Justice Hogue noted, the government must determine whether there is “excessive reticence” in sharing sensitive materials, both by CSIS within government and by the government with the public.
This is not the time to underinvest in our capacity to better understand what bad actors are threatening to do to hurt Canadian interests. It is clearly not the time for sloppy intelligence handling within the senior ranks of the government and the public service.
Adapted and excerpted, with permission, from A New Blueprint for Government: Reshaping Power, the PMO, and the Public Service by Kevin G. Lynch and James R. Mitchell, published by the University of Regina Press, 2025.
James R. Mitchell served in government for seventeen years, first as a diplomat and then as a senior official in the Privy Council and the Treasury Board.
